Leverage Calculator

Two ratios that are easy to confuse

The leverage a broker advertises and the leverage you end up using are different numbers, and only the second one is about your trade. The advertised figure is a ceiling on how much market value it will let you control per unit of equity. The used figure is a description of what you actually did.

Nothing in that list decides how big the trade should be. A 1:500 account and a 1:30 account produce the same effective leverage from the same lot count; the only thing that changes is how much of the balance the broker freezes as margin, and whether the order is accepted at all. Size comes from your risk budget and your stop distance — the position size calculator and the forex version do that part. This page takes the size as given and reports the ratio.

That ordering is the whole point of the page. If leverage is an input, every trade quietly grows to whatever the broker allows. If it is an output, it is a number you can look at before you click and decide whether you meant it.

Worked example: one lot of EUR/USD on a 10,000 account

Equity 10,000.00 USD, EUR/USD at 1.1000, one standard lot, broker offering 1:30, ceiling set at 5:1. Every line below is one operation you can repeat on a phone calculator.

The last row is the one to keep. Halving the size from one lot to 0.45 does not halve the leverage ratio and then stop; it takes it from 11.00:1 to 4.95:1, which is under the 5:1 ceiling — and the rounding is what puts it there rather than exactly on it. Rounding down is the safe direction on this page too, for the same reason it is on a size: the discarded fraction is exposure you did not plan to hold.

Notice also what the 1:30 line does and does not tell you. It says 3,666.67 of the account is frozen. It says nothing about whether the trade is sensible, and it does not change the 110,000.00 of exposure or the 11.00:1. The ceiling on the account is a separate thing from the ceiling in your head, and the useful comparison is between those two numbers.

One lot is not one size

Every forex contract in the dataset below holds 100,000 units — but 100,000 of what, priced against what, is not the same question. A lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 euros. A lot of USD/JPY is 100,000 dollars. A lot of AUD/USD is 100,000 Australian dollars, which is a much smaller number of US dollars. On the same account balance, the same lot count therefore produces different effective leverage on different pairs.

The practical consequence is that a rule written in lots travels badly. "I never trade more than two lots" is a 13,000 exposure limit on AUD/USD and a 250,000 one on GBP/USD, at these prices. A rule written as a leverage ceiling, or better as a risk budget, means the same thing whichever pair it lands on.

Two of the five rows needed no conversion and three did. That is the same split you will meet in the table below: the pair's quote currency decides whether the notional is already in your account currency or has to be carried across at a rate you have to supply.

The 67 forex contracts, as published

Below is the complete forex block from the contract specification file that ships with this site, reproduced exactly as it is published — no rounding, no reordering, no symbols omitted. These are the defaults the calculator above reads when you pick a pair.

Three things are worth pulling out of those 67 rows, because they decide what your leverage number means.

All 67 share one contract size and one step. Every forex pair is 100,000 units to a lot, tradable in increments of 1,000 units — so 0.01 of a lot is the smallest change you can make. That uniformity is why people start thinking in lots and stop noticing the currency attached to them. Other asset classes in the same file do not share it: gold is 100 ounces, US30 is 1, and the crypto pairs are 1.

Only four of them are quoted in USD. EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD and NZD/USD. For those four the notional comes out in dollars with one multiplication. Twenty-one have USD as the base currency, which is the easier case still: a lot of USD/JPY is 100,000 dollars of exposure whatever the yen does. The remaining 42 are crosses where neither side is your account currency, and the figure has to be carried across at a rate you supply — which is why the calculator has a fourth field.

Seven quote in JPY and use a pip size of 0.01. The other 60 use 0.0001. That is a hundredfold difference in what "one pip" means between USD/JPY and EUR/USD, and it is the reason a stop distance in pips cannot be compared across those two groups without converting it into money first.

Where the margin number stops being useful

Margin on this page is one division: notional divided by the leverage offered. It answers a single question — will the platform take the order, and how much of the balance disappears into it until the trade closes. It is not a measure of danger, and it is not the same quantity as the money you stand to lose.

That gap is easiest to see at the extremes. An account offering 1:500 holds 220.00 against the 110,000.00 EUR/USD example above. An account offering 1:30 holds 3,666.67 against the identical trade. The exposure is the same, the loss at a given stop is the same, and the only difference is how much of the balance is unavailable for the next idea — and how little price movement it takes before the broker starts closing things.

The check worth running is the comparison between the two ratios in the tool. If the effective leverage you are using is above the leverage offered, the order will not open, and the fix is a smaller lot count rather than a different broker. If it is below, you have room — and the question of whether to use that room belongs to your risk budget and your stop distance, not to the margin figure. The distinction between the two concepts is set out in the leverage and margin guide; this page only does the arithmetic.

Before you accept the number

• Take the contract size from this pair's own specification. The word "lot" covers 100,000 units here and one contract of an index elsewhere, so a lot count carried over from another instrument is not a like-for-like number.
• Price the notional in your account currency. On a cross, that means supplying the conversion rate yourself — the tool will not guess one, and a guessed rate produces a guessed leverage figure.
• Compare the effective ratio against the ceiling you chose, not against the one the broker offers. The offered figure only decides whether the order is accepted.
• Do the reverse calculation before you size up. Ask how many lots fit under the ceiling, and round that number down to the step rather than up to the nearest round lot.
• Confirm the margin leaves enough free balance for the trades already open. Margin is the one thing a platform aggregates across the book; risk across tickets is not, and only you can add it up.
• Treat the leverage figure as a report on a decision you already made about size. It is not the input that produces that decision.

Open the position size calculator

What people call this

A forex leverage calculator is this page with a pair selected from the list: 100,000 units to the lot, a price, and a balance, producing the same two ratios. A crypto leverage calculator and a leverage calculator crypto ask the identical question against a different contract file — one unit of the coin to a contract rather than 100,000, and the exchange's own maintenance rules standing where a broker's leverage cap stands here.

A leverage trading calculator and a trading leverage calculator are the general form of the same thing, usually wanted by someone who has just noticed their platform reports a leverage number they never chose. Whichever of those names brought you here, the arithmetic is the two divisions in the box at the top, and neither of them tells you how much to trade.

Questions traders ask

Divide the market value of the position by your account equity. One lot of EUR/USD at 1.1000 is 100,000 x 1.1000 = 110,000.00 of exposure, and against 10,000.00 of equity that is 11.00:1. Nothing about your broker's advertised cap enters that calculation — it only decides whether the order is accepted.

No. The offered figure is a ceiling; the effective figure is what you actually did. On the worked example the trade uses 11.00:1 whether the account is capped at 1:30 or at 1:500 — the cap only changes the margin, from 3,666.67 down to 220.00, and the exposure stays at 110,000.00 either way.

Because a lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, and base currencies are not worth the same in dollars. At the example prices on this page one lot is 65,000.00 of exposure on AUD/USD and 125,000.00 on GBP/USD — 6.50:1 against 12.50:1 on the same 10,000.00 balance.

Ceiling times equity, divided by the notional of one lot, rounded down to the step. On EUR/USD at 1.1000 with 10,000.00: 5 x 10,000.00 = 50,000.00 of allowed exposure, 50,000.00 / 1.1000 = 45,454.54 units, which rounds down to 45,000 units or 0.45 lot, landing at 4.95:1.

It lets you, but it does not tell you to. A higher cap lowers the margin held — 3,666.67 becomes 220.00 in the example above — while the exposure and the loss at your stop stay exactly where they were. How large the position should be comes from your risk budget and your stop distance, which the forex position size calculator works out.

Related guides

• Leverage, margin and position size — why leverage is an output rather than an input.
• Lot size calculator — lots into units, and units back into lots, with the margin alongside.
• Position size by instrument — contract size and step for all 131 symbols, and why the same budget gives a different lot count on each.
• Forex position size calculator — risk budget and stop distance turned into units.
• How much should you risk per trade? — where the budget behind that size comes from.