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Lot size chart
What a move of 1, 10, 100 or 1,000 pips costs at every lot size, in your account currency, for any pair you can name. Your own size and your own stop are dropped into the grid and highlighted, and every figure is an estimate — which the page says out loud rather than hiding.
The formula
Cell = value of one pip on one lot, in your account currency × lots × pips moved
Value of one pip on one lot = pip size × contract size, converted
- Pip size — 0.0001 for most pairs, 0.01 for anything quoted against the yen. Metals, indices and crypto have no standard pip, so the chart calls the unit a point and takes the tick from your contract specification.
- Contract size — 100,000 units of the base currency for one standard FX lot, and a broker setting for everything else.
- The conversion — three cases and only three. If your account currency is the quote currency there is nothing to do. If it is the base currency, divide by the price, which is why those rows move every day. If it is neither, multiply by a rate, which is the number this page asks you for rather than inventing. The pip value calculator takes that step apart properly.
One consequence is worth seeing before you read the grid: 100 pips on 0.01 lots and 1 pip on 1.00 lot are the same money. Equal amounts run diagonally, because the arithmetic multiplies distance by size and does not care which of the two you changed. Your risk management should care a great deal, which is the whole reason the two inputs are separate decisions.
Six worked cases
One row for each conversion case the chart has to handle, all in a dollar account. Prices are illustrative rather than live quotes — this page fetches nothing — and every figure is produced by the same code the grid above runs.
| Instrument | Per unit, 1 lot | 100 on 0.10 | 100 on 1.00 | 1,000 on 1.00 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EUR/USD The pip is already in dollars, so the whole grid is fixed for ever. | 10.00 USD a pip | 100.00 USD | 1,000.00 USD | 10,000.00 USD |
| USD/JPY The dollar is the base, so every cell moves as the price does. | 6.36 USD a pip | 63.61 USD | 636.13 USD | 6,361.32 USD |
| GBP/JPY A yen cross: the grid depends on USD/JPY, not on GBP/JPY. | 6.36 USD a pip | 63.61 USD | 636.13 USD | 6,361.32 USD |
| EUR/GBP Neither leg is the dollar, so it needs a rate you supply. | 12.70 USD a pip | 127.00 USD | 1,270.00 USD | 12,700.00 USD |
| Gold (XAU/USD) Gold is in points at 100 ounces a lot, not pips. | 1.00 USD a point | 10.00 USD | 100.00 USD | 1,000.00 USD |
| US30 / Dow (CFD) An index CFD at one dollar a point on one lot. | 1.00 USD a point | 10.00 USD | 100.00 USD | 1,000.00 USD |
Why this is an estimate, not a quote
Broker charts of this shape are usually printed without a caveat, which makes them look more certain than they are. Six things stand between a cell and the money that actually leaves your account, and every one of them makes the real figure worse rather than better.
- The price and the rate are yours, and they are stale. You read them off a platform some seconds or some days ago. Nothing here refreshes them, because nothing here talks to a server. On a pair that needs a conversion, a rate that has moved one per cent moves every cell in the grid by one per cent.
- Contract size and pip size are broker settings. For currency pairs they are close to universal. For gold, silver, indices and crypto they are not: a point on gold is worth a dollar at one broker and ten at another, and no chart that hard-codes one is right for both.
- Costs are missing. Spread, commission and swap are real money and appear nowhere in the grid, so a 10-pip win is worth less than the cell says and a 10-pip loss costs more. The trading cost calculator prices all three together and expresses them as a fraction of your risk, which is where they become comparable to an edge.
- Stops fill past the level. Slippage is one-directional on a stop, so the distance you planned is a floor rather than a promise. A trade sized to lose exactly one cell in the grid routinely settles a little beyond it, and it does so precisely when the market is moving fastest.
- Base-currency pairs convert at the close. If your account currency is the base currency of the pair, the platform converts the result at the price when the trade closes, not when it opens. Over a small move that is a rounding error. Over the 1,000-pip column on USD/JPY it is about six per cent, and the working under the grid spells the arithmetic out whenever it applies.
- Your broker rounds the size. Most accept two decimals, some accept fewer, and the size you type here may not be a size you can place. The position size calculator rounds down to your lot step, so the figure it gives never risks more than you asked for.
None of that makes the grid useless. It makes it an order of magnitude rather than a quote, which is exactly what you need before an entry and exactly what a broker's confirmation screen is for afterwards.
What the number is actually for
The grid exists to turn a distance on a chart into an amount of money before you commit to it. Read your stop's column at your own size first: that is the number the trade is really about. Then read the row above and the row below, because those are what one notch of size does to the same idea, and the gap between them is usually larger than people expect.
Type an account balance in and the grid stops being about money and starts being about risk. Each cell picks up its share of the account, and the tinting marks where a single trade has become a drawdown event rather than an ordinary loss. Anything past ten per cent of the balance in one move is not a position size, it is a decision about whether the account survives a bad week — which is the subject of the risk per trade calculator and its rather sobering streak table.
What the grid cannot do is make pips comparable. Ten pips on EUR/USD and ten on GBP/JPY are different amounts of money and different amounts of risk, and a chart denominated in pips quietly encourages the comparison anyway. Once you are reviewing rather than planning, the right unit is the R-multiple, which divides the sizing back out and lets a hundred scattered results become one distribution you can actually read.
Questions
Why is this only an estimate?
Because every input is a number you typed rather than a number we fetched. The price and the conversion rate were true when you read them off your platform and are already stale; the contract size and the pip size are your broker settings, not facts about the world; and the grid contains no spread, no commission, no swap and no slippage, all of which make a losing move cost more than the cell says. The arithmetic is exact. The inputs are approximations, so the answer is one too.
Which is bigger, 100 pips on 0.01 lots or 1 pip on 1.00 lot?
Neither. Both are ten dollars on EUR/USD in a dollar account, because a cell is only ever the pip value multiplied by the lot size multiplied by the distance. That is why the equal values run in diagonals across the grid, and it is the fastest way to see that distance and size are interchangeable in the arithmetic even though they are completely different decisions.
Why does the 1,000-pip column carry a warning on USD/JPY but not on EUR/USD?
Because on USD/JPY your account currency is the base currency of the pair, so the platform converts the result at the rate that applies when the trade closes rather than when it opens. A 1,000-pip move on USD/JPY takes the price from about 157.20 to 147.20 or 167.20, which shifts that conversion by roughly six per cent. On EUR/USD in a dollar account there is no conversion at all, so the last column is as exact as the first.
Why do I have to type a price or a rate?
This page loads nothing from anywhere. There is no script from a third party, no API call and no tracker, which means any rate we filled in would be a number frozen on the day it was written, and a chart built on a stale rate is wrong in a way you cannot see. Asking for the one number we need is the honest version, and the conversion is printed in the working so you can check it.
What is a pip on gold or on an index?
Nothing standard, which is why the chart says point rather than pip for both. A common retail specification is 100 ounces a lot for gold with a 0.01 tick, making one point a dollar a lot, and one index point a lot for a CFD. Some brokers use a tenth of that and some ten times it. The contract size and the tick are editable here for exactly that reason: read them off your own contract specification and type them in.
Can I use a pair that is not in the list?
Yes. Choose Other pair at the bottom of the instrument list and type any six-letter code, base currency first: EURNOK, USDPHP, XAUEUR. Every ISO currency code is recognised, plus the offshore yuan, and the four precious metals work as the base. The chart assumes 100,000 units a lot and the conventional pip for the quote currency, both of which you should correct against your broker if they differ.
Your statement already has the real numbers
Every closed trade in your MT4 or MT5 statement carries the size, the prices and the money, so the cost of a pip on the sizes you actually trade is already recorded — with the spread and the commission included, which no chart can do. Drop the file on the page and read it: no signup, no upload, parsed inside your browser tab.
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