Crypto Position Size Calculator

How a budget turns into a coin count

Crypto sizing is one division. The money you accept losing, less the cost of getting in and out, divided by how far price can travel against you before the trade is wrong. Nothing in that sentence is specific to crypto — what is specific is the contract underneath it.

1. The budget is set before the chart is read. It comes from your balance and the percentage you have decided to risk, and it is the only number here you choose without looking at price.
2. The stop distance is price, in the quote currency. On a USDT pair that is dollars of price per coin. The spread is added to it, because you cross the spread on the way out just as you did on the way in.
3. The division gives coins, not lots. Contract size is 1 across every crypto row in the reference dataset, so one unit of size is one coin and there is no second step converting units into lots.
4. Rounding happens last, and downwards. Venues accept a minimum increment — 0.001 of a coin on all 43 pairs here — and the size goes to the nearest step below, never above.

The last two lines of the formula are the ones people skip. Notional is not risk: it is how much of the coin you are holding, and on a wide stop a small risk budget can still buy a position worth a third of the account. Checking it is what tells you whether the size fits the account at all.

Worked example: 1% of 10,000 against a 90.00 stop on ETHUSDT

Every price below is an input you type, not a quote — the page has no feed. ETHUSDT in the reference dataset quotes in USD with a pip size of 0.01, a contract size of 1 coin and a unit step of 0.001.

1. Risk budget: 10,000.00 × 1% = 100.00 USD.
2. Stop distance: 3,000.00 − 2,910.00 = 90.00, which is 3% of the entry price.
3. Effective stop distance: 90.00 + 0.50 = 90.50 per coin.
4. Budget left after commission: 100.00 − 6.00 = 94.00 USD.
5. Coins: 94.00 ÷ 90.50 = 1.0386740 ETH.
6. Round down to the step: 1.0386740 ÷ 0.001 = 1038.67, floor to 1,038 steps, so 1.038 ETH.
7. Check the worst case: 1.038 × 90.50 = 93.939, plus 6.00 commission = 99.94 USD. Inside the 100.00 budget.
8. Check the notional: 1.038 × 3,000.00 = 3,114.00 USD, which is 31.14% of the account while the risk is 1%.

Step 7 is the check that catches almost every sizing error: recompute the loss from the size you are actually sending, not from the size the division produced. The gap between 100.00 and 99.94 is the 0.0002 ETH the flooring removed, and it is a rounding in your favour.

Forty-three crypto pairs, three identical numbers

Forex traders carry a mental table of contract sizes: 100,000 units to a lot, 100 ounces of gold, 1,000 barrels of WTI. Crypto does not need one. Below is every crypto instrument in the site's reference dataset, and the three columns that decide the money are the same on every single row.

Two consequences fall straight out of that uniformity. First, the sizing arithmetic on this page transfers unchanged between any two rows — only the prices you type differ. Second, the quote currency is USD on all 43, so a dollar account does no conversion at all, and a euro or yen account does exactly one, with a rate you supply.

What one tick is worth on a one-coin contract

A pip of 0.01 and a contract of 1 coin means one tick of price moves a one-coin position by 0.01 of the quote currency. Multiply by the size and the tick has a dollar value, which is what lets you read a stop in ticks, in price or in money and know they agree.

On the worked example the size is 1.038 coins, so one tick of price is worth 0.0104 USD and the 9,000-tick stop is 90.00 of price per coin. That is the same 90.00 you typed as entry minus stop, reached by a different route — worth doing once by hand, because it is the check that catches a pip size copied from the wrong instrument.

Note how small the bottom row is. A tick on the smallest size a venue accepts is worth a hundred-thousandth of a dollar, which is another way of saying the step is not a constraint for anyone risking real money. Compare it with an index CFD, where the step is one whole contract, and the difference in what a small account can do is entirely down to that column.

Budget against stop distance, five by five

Because the contract is the same on all 43 rows, the size a budget buys depends on two numbers only: the money at risk and the stop distance in dollars per coin. Below is that grid, rounded down to the 0.001 step.

Read across a row and the size falls as the stop widens; read down a column and it rises with the budget. Both directions are linear, which is the useful property: halve the stop and you double the coins, and the risk stays where you set it. The rounding to the step is invisible at these numbers, and the table below says why.

The step costs you less than a fiftieth of a percent of the budget at every one of those sizes. That is the honest answer to the question people expect the step to answer, and it is why the number worth watching on a small account is a different one.

Where small crypto accounts actually get stopped

Two floors exist, and only one of them is arithmetic.

• The unit step rounds you to zero. A 50.00 account risking 1% has 0.50 to work with. Against a 610.00 stop per coin — a 600.00 move plus a 10.00 spread — that is 0.00082 of a coin, and flooring to 0.001 gives 0.000. The calculator says zero because the trade cannot be sized, not because you should round up. At the unrounded size the position would still be worth 49.18 of notional, so the coin is affordable; it is the increment that is not.
• The venue's minimum order value rejects the order. A 400.00 account risking 1% has 4.00, less 1.00 of commission leaves 3.00, and against a 7.02 stop that is 0.427350, rounded to 0.427 coins. At 140.00 the notional is 59.78 — 14.95% of the account for a 4.00 risk. If the venue's floor is 10.00 of notional this order goes through; if it is 100.00 it does not, and no amount of arithmetic changes that.

The second floor is a venue rule, so it is a field you fill in rather than something a page can know. Type it into the contract panel above the results and the page flags any size whose notional falls under it. The fix, when it does, is a tighter stop or a smaller risk percentage — never a size typed in by hand to make the order look valid.

What neither floor changes is the relationship at the top of this page: the coins you can hold are the money you accept losing divided by the distance to your stop. When that division returns something the venue will not accept, the trade is not sizeable on that account, and that is information rather than an obstacle to work around.

This page and the crypto futures page, side by side

Both work from the same contract specification and the same division, and they split the subject at the product line.

• This page counts coins. It answers how much of the asset a budget buys, what one tick is worth at that size, and whether the rounded size clears the venue's floor. It says nothing about borrowing.
• The crypto futures page deals with the borrowed version: contract count, margin, funding payments and the liquidation price that sits on the other side of your stop. Read it when the position is a perpetual rather than a coin you own.
• Neither decides the risk percentage. That belongs to the page on risk per trade, where the losing-streak and drawdown arithmetic behind the choice is spelled out.

If you arrived here looking for a forex or stock equivalent of the same calculation, the position size calculator on the home page runs the identical formula against all 131 instruments in the dataset, including the 67 currency pairs where the contract size is 100,000 rather than 1.

Questions traders ask

How do I calculate my crypto position size?

Divide the money you accept losing, after commission, by the distance from your entry to your stop with the spread added, then round down to the venue's step. On the example above: 100.00 − 6.00 = 94.00, the stop is 90.00 + 0.50 = 90.50, so 94.00 ÷ 90.50 = 1.0386740, floored to 1.038 ETH. Recompute the loss from that rounded size — 1.038 × 90.50 + 6.00 = 99.94 — to confirm it is inside the 100.00 you started with.

Why does the calculator return 0.000 coins?

Because the size the division produced is smaller than one step of 0.001, and the page rounds down rather than up. A 50.00 account at 1% risk has 0.50 to spend; against a 610.00 stop per coin that is 0.00082, which floors to zero. The trade cannot be sized at that risk on that account — the honest responses are a tighter stop, a larger risk percentage or a larger account, not a hand-typed size.

Is contract size 1 the same as one coin?

Yes, on all 43 crypto pairs in the reference dataset: the contract size column reads 1, so one unit of size is one coin and no lot conversion is needed. That is unlike forex, where one lot is 100,000 units, and unlike gold, where one lot is 100 ounces. It is the reason a crypto size looks small in coins and large in money.

What is one tick worth on a crypto pair?

Pip size times contract size times the size you hold: 0.01 × 1 × your coins. At 1.000 coin a tick is 0.01 of the quote currency and a 1.00 move is 1.00; at the minimum step of 0.001 coin a tick is 0.00001. On the worked example's 1.038 coins one tick is worth 0.0104, and the 9,000-tick stop is 90.00 of price per coin.

Do I have to convert anything on a USDT pair?

Only if your account is not in dollars. All 43 crypto rows quote in USD, so on a USD account the rate is 1 and nothing is converted; on any other account currency you type the rate as units of your currency per one dollar, and the budget is converted into dollars once before the division. Leave it blank and the figures stay in dollars with a note saying so.

Risk is 1%, so why is a third of my account in the trade?

Because exposure and risk are different quantities. On the example, 100.00 of risk at a 90.00 stop buys 1.038 ETH, and 1.038 × 3,000.00 is 3,114.00 of notional — 31.14% of a 10,000.00 account. A wide stop in dollars per coin buys few coins, but each coin is expensive, and the two effects do not cancel. Whether that much exposure is acceptable is a separate decision from whether the risk is.

What the coin count does not cover

It is the size of one position, decided before the order goes in. Four things sit outside it on purpose.

• The exit. A stop is an instruction, not a guarantee. In a market that trades through the weekend, a gap fills where the market is, so the loss can exceed the distance you sized against.
• Costs charged while you hold. Funding on a perpetual, borrow interest, and the difference between maker and taker tiers are not entry costs and do not belong in the stop distance. The futures page handles the funding side.
• What the coin does next. The calculator has no view on direction, and a size derived from a stop you did not really believe in is a number with nothing behind it.
• Other positions already open. Four trades at 1% each are close to 4% of the account at once, and on correlated coins it is closer to one bet placed four times. The account-level risk page adds them up.

Everything on this page runs in your browser from the numbers you type and the 43 published specification rows above. The dataset behind it, with the same columns, is published as an open reference dataset.

Size the crypto trade from your risk

Related guides

• Position sizing for crypto futures — contract count, funding and the liquidation price that sits behind your stop.
• Position size by instrument — contract size, pip size and unit step for all 131 symbols in the dataset.
• Position sizing on a small account — what to do when the minimum size is bigger than the risk allows.
• Forex risk calculator — add the tickets already open and see what the account is actually carrying.
• Pip value calculator — what one pip is worth on metals, energies, indices and stocks.
• Open reference dataset — the four CSV files behind every table on this page.