Forex Position Size Calculator
Enter your account balance, the percentage you're risking, and your stop loss — get the exact lot size for any pair. Proper position sizing is the one habit that separates traders who last from traders who blow up.
…or enter prices below to auto-calc pips.
Auto-filled estimate — adjust to your broker.
Estimate only. Pip value depends on your broker, contract spec, and account currency — always confirm with your broker's calculator before trading real capital.
How to size a trade in three numbers
Position sizing answers one question: how many lots should I trade so a loss only costs what I planned to risk? You only need three inputs — your account balance, the percentage you're willing to risk, and how far away your stop loss sits in pips. The calculator does the rest:
Say you have a $10,000 account and risk 1% ($100) on a EUR/USD trade with a 20-pip stop. At ~$10 per pip per lot, that's $100 ÷ (20 × $10) = 0.5 lots. Widen the stop and your size shrinks; tighten it and your size grows — but your dollar risk stays fixed at $100 every time. That consistency is the whole point.
Why position sizing beats picking winners
Most blown accounts aren't killed by bad setups — they're killed by a couple of oversized trades. Fixed-percentage sizing caps the damage of any single loss and lets your edge play out over a long run of trades. It's the same logic behind how we score every signal in The Dossier in R (multiples of the amount you risked) rather than raw dollars — because risk, not profit, is what you actually control.
Questions
How do you calculate forex position size?
Position size = (account balance × risk %) ÷ (stop-loss in pips × pip value per lot). First decide how much of your account you're willing to lose on the trade (e.g. 1%), then divide that dollar risk by your stop distance in pips and the pip value of one lot. The result is how many lots to trade.
How much should I risk per trade?
Most disciplined traders risk 0.5–2% of their account per trade. Risking a small, fixed percentage means no single loss can seriously damage your account, and it keeps your position size consistent as your balance changes.
What is a pip and a lot?
A pip is the standard smallest price move for a pair (0.0001 for most, 0.01 for JPY pairs). A standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, where one pip is worth about $10 for USD-quoted pairs. Mini lots are 1/10 and micro lots are 1/100 of a standard lot.
Is this position size calculator accurate?
The math is exact given the pip value. Pip value varies by broker, contract specification, and account currency, so we pre-fill a typical USD estimate you can adjust. Always confirm against your broker's own calculator before trading real capital.
Sizing is step one. We'll handle the setups.
Breakout Alerts watches every pair and timeframe and sends you rule-based setups the moment they fire — each with a defined entry, stop, and target so you can size them with this exact math. Free for 14 days.