Pip Value Calculator

How a pip turns into money

A pip is a slice of price. It becomes money through two multiplications and, at most, one currency conversion, and nothing else enters the arithmetic.

1. The pip size belongs to the instrument. Currency pairs quote to four decimals and a pip is 0.0001; JPY pairs quote to two and a pip is 0.01; silver quotes to three and a pip is 0.001; an index quotes in whole points and a pip is 1. None of those is a preference you get to set — it is how the price is printed.
2. The contract size turns the slice into a quantity. One standard lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 units, one standard lot of XAU/USD is 100 ounces and one standard lot of US30 is one unit. That column, not the pip size, is what makes gold sizes look small next to forex ones.
3. The conversion happens last, and once. Everything is computed in the quote currency first and then multiplied by a single rate. Converting twice, or converting a figure that is already in your currency, is the most common way this number goes wrong.

Everything else people ask of a pip value — the cost of a spread, the loss from a move of a given size, the distance a budget buys — is this figure multiplied or divided by something. That is why it is the one number worth being able to do by hand.

Worked example: two lots of XAG/USD on a euro account

Silver in the reference dataset has a pip size of 0.001 and a contract size of 5,000 ounces. Take two standard lots and put the account in euros, so the dollar figure has to be converted once.

1. Units: 2 lots × 5,000 ounces = 10,000 ounces.
2. Pip value in the quote currency: 0.001 × 10,000 = 10.00 USD per pip.
3. Convert: you type a rate of 0.9217 EUR per 1 USD — that is 1 ÷ 1.0850, an EUR/USD quote of your own. 10.00 × 0.9217 = 9.22 EUR per pip.
4. A thirty-pip move: 30 × 10.00 = 300.00 USD, which is 30 × 9.217 = 276.51 EUR against you.
5. Read it backwards: 100.00 EUR ÷ 9.217 = 10.85 pips. That is the distance your hundred euros actually buys at this size.
6. The smallest tradable pip: the minimum step on this contract is one ounce, so one pip on the smallest size you can hold is 0.001 × 1 = 0.001 USD.

Step 3 is where the rate comes from: you. This page has no feed and will not invent one, because a rate fetched once and displayed all day is stale before you read it and a rate guessed is wrong in a way you cannot see. Leave the field empty and every figure stays in dollars, with a line saying so.

Change the instrument to US30 and the same two steps give a different shape: the pip size is 1 and the contract size is 1 unit, so five lots is five units and one index point is 5.00 USD, and a hundred-point move costs 500.00 USD. No conversion is needed on a dollar account, and none is applied.

What one pip is worth on twenty contracts that are not currency pairs

Forex pairs are the easy case, and they are the reason most traders carry the number 10.00 around in their heads: 0.0001 × 100,000 is 10.00, so a pip on a standard lot of a major is ten dollars. That number does not survive contact with anything else on a platform. Below is every contract in the reference dataset whose minimum step is one unit — four metals, three energies, twelve index CFDs and the stock entry — with the three columns that decide the money, copied straight from the dataset.

Two things stand out before any arithmetic happens. The pip sizes differ by a factor of a thousand — 0.001 on silver and natural gas, 0.01 on gold, platinum, palladium, WTI and Brent, and 1 on every index — and the contract sizes differ by a factor of ten thousand, from one unit on an index to 10,000 on natural gas. Those two columns multiply, and the products are not where most people expect them to land.

Every row here also shares a unit step of 1, which is not true of currency pairs: those step in 1,000-unit increments, so the smallest size you can hold on EUR/USD is a thousandth of the contract, not a millionth of it. On the contracts above, the step and the unit are the same thing, and on the index rows the step is the entire contract.

Four per-lot answers, and none of them is ten dollars

Multiply the two specification columns and the twenty contracts collapse into four distinct per-lot pip values. The table below is that multiplication, done once per group, with no rounding beyond two decimals.

The surprises are at both ends. Silver pays 5.00 USD per pip on a single lot — half of what a forex major pays — because a 0.001 pip on a 5,000-ounce contract is five dollars, while gold pays 1.00 USD because a 0.01 pip on a 100-ounce contract is one. WTI, Brent and natural gas all land on 10.00 USD, the forex number, by two completely different routes: 0.01 on 1,000 barrels, and 0.001 on 10,000 units.

Index CFDs sit at 1.00 USD per point, and the stock entry at 0.01 USD per pip, which is what happens when the contract is one unit and the pip is a hundredth of a dollar. On a dollar account none of these needs converting. On anything else, the rate you type is the last multiplication, and it is the only number on this page that is not derived from the contract.

Lot fractions and the smallest pip you can actually trade

Mini, micro and nano are one tenth, one hundredth and one thousandth of the contract, so the per-lot figures above scale straight down — but not to where you can always use them. The contract sizes in this dataset are typical retail defaults, not values published by an exchange, and brokers vary in both the contract and the smallest fraction they will accept.

The last two columns are where a small account meets the arithmetic. A micro lot of silver is 50 ounces and pays 0.05 USD per pip, which is a usable number. A micro lot of an index is a hundredth of a unit, and a broker that deals in whole contracts will reject it outright; the same is true of a nano lot of gold, which would be a tenth of an ounce. Check the smallest size your broker accepts before you believe the bottom row of this table.

That is also the reason the tool above prints the value of one pip at the minimum step as a separate line. It is the smallest money figure the instrument can produce, and it is the number that decides whether a one-pip stop, or a one-pip target, is even worth placing.

When the quote currency is not your account currency

Three cases, and the page handles each one from your own input rather than from a feed.

• Your account currency is the quote currency — XAG/USD on a USD account, or any of the twenty contracts above, all of which quote in dollars. The rate is exactly 1 and no conversion is applied.
• Your account currency is the base currency — USD/JPY on a USD account. The rate is 1 ÷ the price you typed, and the note names that price so you can check it.
• Anything else — XAG/USD on a EUR account, GBP/USD on a JPY account. You type the rate. Leave it blank and the figures stay in the quote currency with a warning rather than being converted by a number the page cannot know.

The rate is expressed as units of your currency per one unit of the quote currency, which is the direction that makes the multiplication work in one step. Ten dollars per pip converts like this:

One caution about the direction: a broker quoting EUR/USD at 1.0850 is quoting dollars per euro, which is the wrong way round for this multiplication. The figure to type is its reciprocal, 0.9217. Getting the direction backwards is the single most common error in a hand conversion, and it produces a pip value that is either too large or too small by the square of the rate.

This page and the pip calculator, side by side

Both pages work from the same contract specification, and they answer different questions.

• The pip calculator prices a move. You give it a pip count and it returns what that move costs at your lot size, along with the cost of a one-pip spread and of a twenty-pip move. Use it when you already know the distance and want the money.
• This page holds the distance still and examines the rate itself. The questions it answers are which contract you are on, what the lot fraction does, what the broker's minimum step costs, and what happens when the account is denominated somewhere else.
• Neither one picks a size. A pip value tells you what a move costs at a size you already have; to choose the size you start from the money you are willing to lose and the distance to your stop, which is what the position size calculator takes as its inputs.

If you arrived here searching for a forex pip value calculator, the instrument list covers all 67 pairs in the dataset as well as the twenty contracts above, including the JPY crosses where a pip is 0.01 of price rather than 0.0001. The contract behind the whole list, with the formula that generates it, is published as an open reference dataset.

Questions traders ask

How much is one pip worth on gold?

1.00 USD per standard lot on XAU/USD in this dataset: the pip size is 0.01 and the contract is 100 ounces, so 0.01 × 100 = 1.00. Two lots pay 2.00 USD per pip, and a ten-dollar move in the price is a thousand pips, costing 1,000.00 USD per full contract. Platinum and palladium share the same 0.01 pip and 100-unit contract, so they share the same 1.00.

Why is silver worth more per pip than gold?

Because the contract is fifty times larger. Silver trades a 5,000-ounce contract at a 0.001 pip, so one lot pays 5.00 USD per pip; gold trades 100 ounces at a 0.01 pip, so one lot pays 1.00. The cheaper instrument per ounce is the more expensive one per pip, and that is entirely down to the contract size column rather than to the price.

Is a pip on an index the same as a point?

On the twelve index CFDs in this dataset, yes: the pip size is 1 and the contract size is 1 unit, so one index point on one lot is 1.00 USD. Five lots pay 5.00 USD per point and a hundred-point move costs 500.00 USD. The minimum step is also one unit, so the smallest size and one lot are the same thing.

Why does my broker's pip value differ from this page?

Almost always the contract size. The values here are typical retail defaults published in the reference dataset, not figures from an exchange or from your broker, and brokers vary them by account type. Open the contract specification panel above the results and type your own pip size and contract size; every figure on the page recalculates from your numbers.

Do I need to convert the pip value myself?

Only when your account currency differs from the quote currency, and then with a rate you supply. Type it as units of your currency per one unit of the quote currency — 0.9217 EUR per 1 USD, not 1.0850. With no rate the figures stay in the quote currency and the page says so, rather than converting with a rate it cannot know.

What the per-pip figure leaves out

It is a rate, not a forecast, and four things are missing from it on purpose.

• Direction. The figure is what one pip costs whichever way price goes. It is not an opinion about where price is going, and it does not improve because you have had a good week.
• Everything except the spread. Commission, funding on a position held overnight and the swap on a carry trade are charged on their own terms and are not part of a pip value. The page on spread and commission puts them where they belong, which is inside the stop distance.
• The gap. A pip value prices ordinary movement. Weekend gaps and news spikes fill where the market is, not at the next pip, so the realised loss on a bad morning can exceed anything a per-pip figure describes.
• Whether the trade is worth taking. A cheap pip on a contract you do not understand is still a loss. The number belongs after the decision to trade and before the decision about size, and nowhere else.

That ordering is the whole method: find the distance first, turn it into money with the contract, then let the size follow from the money you are willing to lose. The forex position size calculator runs that order in one screen once you have the per-pip figure in hand.

Size the trade from the pip value

Related guides

• Pip calculator — price a move you already have in mind: the pips you type, a 1-pip spread and a 20-pip move, at each lot size.
• Lot sizes explained — standard, mini, micro and nano, and which fractions brokers actually accept.
• Position size by instrument — contract size, pip size and unit step for all 131 symbols in the dataset.
• Stop loss calculator — the distance your budget pays for, once the pip value is known.
• Position sizing for gold — a 100-ounce contract and a 0.01 pip, worked in dollars rather than pips.
• Open reference dataset — the four CSV files behind every table on this page.