Size every trade to your exact risk — across forex, indices, gold and crypto. Enter your balance, risk, entry and stop, and get the precise lot size, dollar risk and reward-to-risk in real time.
Position size calculator$1 per point per lot (CFD default — edit to match your broker).
Position size comes down to a single question: how many lots — or contracts, or coins — can you hold so that if price hits your stop, you lose exactly the amount you chose to risk, and not a dollar more? Three numbers decide it:
The formula is: Position size = Risk amount ÷ (Stop distance × Point value). The calculator above does the point-value part for each instrument type — pips on forex, points on indices, dollars-per-ounce on gold, straight coins on crypto — so you never have to look up contract specs by hand.
Most blown accounts aren’t killed by bad setups — they’re killed by good setups sized wrong. Risk 10% on a trade and an ordinary five-loss streak (which every strategy has) roughly halves your account. Risk 1% and that same streak barely leaves a mark. Sizing is the line between surviving variance and getting wiped by it.
Fixing your risk per trade also makes your results readable. When every trade risks the same 1%, your P&L is measured in R — clean multiples you can actually compare, review and improve. Size by gut instead and your equity curve tells you nothing about whether your edge is real.
“Lot size” and “position size” are the same number in different clothes. Position size is raw exposure — units, ounces, coins. Lot size is that exposure counted in your broker’s blocks. One standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, a mini is 10,000, a micro is 1,000. Get the contract spec wrong and the sizing maths is wrong with it, so here is the lookup:
| Instrument | One unit | Standard | Mini | Micro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forex (USD quote) | 1 pip = 0.0001 | $10.00 | $1.00 | $0.10 |
| Forex (JPY quote) | 1 pip = 0.01 | ~$6.70* | ~$0.67* | ~$0.07* |
| Gold (XAU/USD) | $1 move | $100.00 | $10.00 | $1.00 |
| NAS100 / US30 CFD | 1 point | $1.00† | $0.10† | $0.01† |
| Bitcoin (BTC/USD) | $1 move | $1.00 per coin | — | — |
* JPY pip value moves with the USD/JPY rate — it is not fixed. Shown at roughly 150.00.
† Index point value is broker-specific. CFD desks commonly quote $1 per point per lot; CME futures are $20 (NQ), $50 (ES) and $5 (YM) per point per contract. Check yours before sizing — this single number is the most common source of a position that is 20× too large.
A pip is 0.0001 (0.01 on JPY pairs) and a standard lot is 100,000 units, worth about $10 per pip on USD-quote pairs. USD/JPY’s pip value drifts with the exchange rate; the calculator adjusts for it automatically. If you want the pip figure on its own, the pip value calculator does that job.
Quoted in points, and point value is broker-specific. Set your broker’s value in the point-value field rather than trusting a default.
One lot is 100 troy ounces, so a $1 move is worth $100 per lot. Gold is also where broker lot conventions diverge most: some desks call 0.01 lots a micro, others quote gold in a 10 oz contract entirely.
Sized directly in coins. A $1 move is $1 per coin, so your position is simply risk ÷ stop distance in dollars.
The case for small risk is not caution, it is arithmetic. Losing streaks are not a sign that something has gone wrong — a strategy that wins 50% of the time throws five losses in a row roughly once every thirty trades. What decides whether that is an inconvenience or the end of the account is the number you chose before it started. The right-hand column is the part people miss: a drawdown always costs more to recover than it cost to create.
| Risk per trade | After 5 losses | After 10 losses | Gain needed to recover |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5% | 2.5% | ||
| 1% | 4.9% | ||
| 2% | 9.6% | ||
| 5% | 22.6% | ||
| 10% | 41.0% |
Compounded on the remaining balance, which is how a real account loses money. Recovery figure is from the ten-loss drawdown. To price any depth — and to see how many trades your edge needs to climb back out of it — use the drawdown recovery calculator.
Leverage decides what your broker will permit, never what you should take. Same setup, same stop, same risk — a 1:500 account and a 1:30 account take the identical size.
“I’ll use a quarter of my account’s buying power” is not a risk decision, because it says nothing about where your stop is. A tight stop and a wide stop at the same margin are wildly different risks.
On a 20-pip stop, a 2-pip spread is 10% more risk than you calculated. On scalps it is the difference between 1% and 1.3% risk on every single trade, compounding all day.
The stop belongs where the idea is invalidated. If the resulting size feels too small, that is information about the setup, not a reason to move the stop closer.
This calculator is built into CRTLAB's trade bar. Set your risk once, 1% or $50, and the lot size box follows your stop: draw the stop with the position tool, or press From chart and it reads the entry and stop off the chart. Buy and Sell then trade that exact size.
That matters most when you backtest. A test run at a flat 1 lot mixes a 5-pip stop and a 50-pip stop into one result, so the equity curve and the drawdown mean nothing. Sized to 1% a trade, every loss costs the same, and the numbers you get back are the ones your account would actually live through.
How much of a losing streak a given size survives is itself a calculable number rather than a feeling. Feed your win rate and reward:risk into the risk of ruin calculator and it simulates thousands of accounts running your strategy at every risk per trade from 0.25% to 10% — the same edge, only the size changing — and shows you where the drawdowns stop being survivable.
Correct sizing guarantees you survive a losing streak. It does not tell you whether the setup was worth taking — for that you need a sample, and a sample is the one thing a live account is a slow and expensive way to collect. Work out how many trades you need before the numbers mean anything, then check your plan against the mistakes that make backtest results lie. Once you are taking real trades, what you log decides whether you can ever improve the sizing decision you are making here.
Futures are not sized in lots and they are not valued in pips — a contract moves in ticks, and one tick is worth a fixed number of dollars set by the exchange. The arithmetic is the same shape but the inputs are different, so it has its own tool: the futures tick value calculator covers ES, NQ, gold, crude and every micro, and tells you how many contracts your risk rule actually allows.
Four real calculations, start to finish. Each one opens the calculator with those exact numbers already in it, so you can change one field and watch what it does to the size.
Half a standard lot. Five mini lots and no leverage figure anywhere in the sum.
Open this exampleGold moves in dollars, not pips. Sizing it off a pip table is how accounts get hurt.
Open this exampleSized against the daily loss limit, not the profit target — four of these in one day is still inside a 5% daily cap.
Open this exampleCrypto is sized in coins directly. The stop is wide because the instrument is — that is the point of sizing off the stop.
Open this exampleIt tells you exactly how many lots, contracts or units to trade so that if price hits your stop-loss, you lose only the amount you decided to risk. Enter your balance, risk, entry and stop — it returns the size.
Most consistent traders risk 0.5–2% of their account per trade. Lower keeps you in the game through losing streaks; higher grows the account faster but sharply raises the odds of a deep drawdown. At 1% risk, ten losses in a row costs about 10% of the account. At 5% it costs 40%, and you now need a 67% gain just to get back to flat.
No, and this is the single most common mistake in trading. Leverage decides whether your broker will let you open a position — it has nothing to do with how big that position should be. Size is set by your stop distance and your risk, full stop. A 1:500 account and a 1:30 account trading the same setup with the same stop should take the exact same size.
They are the same thing expressed differently. Position size is the raw exposure — units of currency, ounces, coins, contracts. Lot size is that exposure counted in your broker's standard block: 1 standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, a mini is 10,000, a micro is 1,000. The calculator gives you both.
The formula is identical — only the point value changes. Forex uses pip value per lot, indices use point value per contract, gold is 100 oz per lot, and crypto is sized directly in coins. This calculator handles each instrument type for you.
Yes, if you want the risk figure to be true. Your stop is hit on the bid or the ask depending on direction, so a 2-pip spread on a 20-pip stop is a real 10% more risk than you calculated. On tight intraday stops it matters a lot; on a 200-pip swing stop it rounds away. Add the spread to your stop distance before sizing, and treat commission as part of the loss.
Pip and point values are usually quoted in the quote currency, so an account denominated in GBP, EUR or AUD needs one more conversion at the current rate. Size in the quote currency first, then convert the risk figure into your account currency — or set your account currency in the calculator and let it do it. Getting this wrong typically misprices risk by 10–30%, which is enough to matter.
Size against the rule that fails you first, which is almost never the profit target. Most challenges have a daily loss limit and a total drawdown limit; your per-trade risk has to be small enough that a normal losing streak cannot touch either. On a 5% daily limit, risking 1% per trade means five losses in a day ends your session — so most funded traders size at 0.25–0.5% and take the slower path.
Yes. The same calculator is built into CRTLAB's trade bar. Set your risk once, as a percentage or a dollar amount, draw your stop with the position tool or press From chart, and the lot size follows it. Buy and Sell then trade that size, so every trade in a backtest risks exactly what you asked for.
Yes — completely free, no signup, no limits. Use it as often as you like.
Prove yours the only way that counts — backtest your setups candle by candle on real market history. Free, no card.
Open the chart
