Pip Value Calculator — Forex, Metals & Indices
A pip — “percentage in point” — is the smallest standard price move in a forex pair, usually the fourth decimal place (or the second for JPY pairs). Knowing what a pip is worth for your exact lot size is the first step in sizing risk. Pick a pair, your account currency and a trade size to see the value of a single pip, instantly.
The same arithmetic works beyond forex. Switch to Metals for gold and silver, where the lot is measured in troy ounces rather than currency units, or to Indicesfor the value of one index point. Indices have no pip and no universal contract size — the value per point is set by your broker — so that tab asks you for your broker’s figure and shows the full working rather than assuming a number on your behalf.
Pip value inputs
Live rate · updated 08:25 UTC
How it works
The value of one pip is the pip size multiplied by the number of units you are trading, expressed first in the pair’s quote currency and then converted to your account currency:
Pip value (quote ccy) = pip size × (lots × contract size) Pip value (account ccy) = pip value (quote ccy) ÷ (account ccy per quote ccy) Example — 1.0 lot EUR/USD, USD account: = 0.0001 × (1.0 × 100,000) = 0.0001 × 100,000 = 10 USD per pip
- Standard lot (1.0) = 100,000 units → about 10 units of the quote currency per pip on most pairs.
- Mini lot (0.1) ≈ 1 quote-currency unit per pip; micro lot (0.01) ≈ 0.10 per pip.
- When the quote currency differs from your account currency, the value is converted at the current cross rate, so it drifts slightly as that rate moves.
Once you know your pip value, plug it into the position size calculator to find the lot size for a fixed-percentage risk, check the margin the trade requires, and project the outcome with the profit & loss calculator. Live pair prices are on the forex rates board.
Gold, silver and index points
Metals behave like a currency pair with a different unit. Gold and silver are quoted in US dollars, so on a USD-denominated account there is no conversion step at all — the value of one pip is simply the pip size multiplied by the number of troy ounces you hold. What varies is the contract: a gold lot is conventionally modelled on the 100-troy-ounce COMEX contract and silver on 5,000 ounces, but brokers set their own sizes, and they also disagree on whether a gold pip is 0.01, 0.10 or 1.00. Both fields are editable here for exactly that reason — overwrite them with the numbers on your broker’s contract specification and the result is exact.
Indices are the case where the honest answer is that we cannot fill the box for you. A stock index is a level expressed in points, not a currency quote, so the 0.0001 pip convention has nothing to attach to. Instead your broker defines what one index point is worth per contract, and unlike the 100,000-unit FX standard lot there is no market-wide convention behind that figure — it differs between brokers and changes without notice. Publishing a table of per-index point values would produce confident numbers that are wrong at most brokers, so this calculator takes yours as an input and shows the arithmetic instead.
Metals — value of 1 pip = pip size × (lots × ounces per lot) Gold example, 1.0 lot at 100 oz, pip 0.01: = 0.01 × (1.0 × 100) = 1.00 USD per pip Indices — value of 1 index point = value per point × number of contracts (value per point comes from YOUR broker's spec) Then converted from the contract currency into your account currency at the current cross rate.
Live reference levels for the metals are on the commodities board and for the benchmarks on the world indices page. Note that FXMARE’s gold and silver prices are front-month futures prints, not spot — they are a reference level, and they do not affect the pip-value arithmetic above.
How much is one pip actually worth?
The question people usually type is some version of one pip is equal to how much, and the honest answer is that a pip is not worth a fixed amount of money at all. A pip is a price increment. It only becomes cash when you multiply it by a position size, and it only becomes cash in your account when you convert it into the currency you fund the account with. So the answer depends on exactly three things: how big one pip is on that pair, how many units of the base currency you are holding, and what your account currency is.
The number most people have in their head - ten dollars a pip - is a special case, not a rule. It is true for one standard lot of a pair quoted in US dollars, held in a US dollar account. Change any one of those three conditions and the number changes. On a yen pair the pip arrives as 1,000 yen, so the dollar figure is 1,000 divided by the USD/JPY rate - which is below ten whenever that rate is above 100. On a pair where the dollar is the base currency it depends on the price. On a cross like EUR/GBP the pip arrives in pounds and converts at GBP/USD, so it exceeds ten whenever a pound is worth more than a dollar. On a euro-funded account none of the dollar figures apply directly at all.
Getting this number right matters more than it looks, because everything downstream inherits the error. Pip value is the price tag on your stop distance, so it feeds directly into your lot size, into your projected profit and loss, and into every risk-reward ratio you calculate. A pip value that is wrong by a factor of ten makes a position ten times the intended size, and the trade will look completely normal on the ticket.
- Pip size - 0.0001 on most pairs, 0.01 on anything quoted in Japanese yen.
- Position size in units - a standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, a mini lot 10,000, a micro lot 1,000.
- Account currency - determines whether a conversion is needed at all, and in which direction.
Pip size: 0.0001 on most pairs, 0.01 on yen pairs
A pip - percentage in point - is conventionally the fourth decimal place of a currency quote. EUR/USD moving from 1.0840 to 1.0841 is one pip. The convention exists because it puts a pip at roughly one hundredth of one percent of the price for pairs that trade near 1.00, which is a useful granularity for a market that moves in fractions of a percent.
Yen pairs break the convention for a simple reason of scale. A yen quote sits in the hundreds rather than near 1.00, so a fourth decimal place would be absurdly fine - about a millionth of the price. The market therefore settled on the second decimal. USD/JPY moving from 156.32 to 156.33 is one pip. Same idea, shifted two decimal places to keep a pip a comparable fraction of the price.
The practical consequence is a factor of one hundred, not ten, and that catches people out constantly. 0.01 divided by 0.0001 is 100. One pip on a standard lot of a non-yen pair is 0.0001 x 100,000 = 10 units of the quote currency; on a yen pair it is 0.01 x 100,000 = 1,000 units of the quote currency. Those are yen in one case and dollars, or whatever else, in the other, so the two only become comparable after conversion - but the pip-size arithmetic itself is a straight hundredfold difference.
Separately, most brokers display one extra decimal - a fifth for standard pairs, a third for yen pairs. That final digit is a fractional pip, usually called a pipette, and it is one tenth of a pip. On one standard lot of EUR/USD in a USD account, a pipette is 0.00001 x 100,000 = 1.00. If a price feed shows 1.08405, the 5 is a pipette, not a pip.
Non-yen pair (EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD ...) pip size 0.0001 0.0001 x 100,000 = 10 units of the QUOTE currency Yen-quoted pair (USD/JPY, EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY ...) pip size 0.01 0.01 x 100,000 = 1,000 JPY Ratio of the two pip sizes = 0.01 / 0.0001 = 100 One pipette = one tenth of a pip in both cases.
The formula, derived rather than memorised
Hold the derivation in your head and you will never need to remember the formula. A quote of 1.0840 on EUR/USD means one euro costs 1.0840 dollars. If the quote rises by 0.0001, every single euro you hold has gained 0.0001 dollars. Hold 100,000 euros - one standard lot - and you have gained 0.0001 x 100,000 = 10 dollars. That is the entire first step: pip size multiplied by units held, and the result is always denominated in the quote currency, because the quote currency is what the price is measured in.
The second step exists only when the quote currency is not your account currency. Then you convert. If your account is in euros and the pip value came out in dollars, you divide by the EUR/USD rate, because EUR/USD tells you how many dollars one euro costs. If your account is in dollars and the pip value came out in pounds, you multiply by GBP/USD, because that rate tells you how many dollars one pound is worth. Getting the direction right is easier if you think in terms of what the rate means than if you try to remember a rule about dividing.
One useful shortcut falls out of this. When the pair's own quote currency is the one you need to convert from, and the pair contains your account currency, the pair's own price does the conversion. A GBP-funded account trading GBP/JPY converts JPY back to GBP at the GBP/JPY price itself.
Step 1 - value in the quote currency pip value (quote) = pip size x lots x contract size Step 2 - convert to your account currency if quote ccy == account ccy -> no conversion if pair is ACCT/QUOTE -> divide by the pair price otherwise -> apply the relevant cross rate Lot conventions: standard 1.00 lot = 100,000 units of base currency mini 0.10 lot = 10,000 units micro 0.01 lot = 1,000 units
Worked examples: converting into your account currency
Two examples, both with assumptions stated in full and both using assumed illustrative rates rather than live prices. The first is the case where a conversion is genuinely needed: a euro-denominated account trading GBP/USD. The pip value arrives in dollars and has to be turned into euros.
The second is the shortcut case: a sterling-denominated account trading GBP/JPY. The pip value arrives in yen, and because the account currency is the base of the pair being traded, the pair's own price performs the conversion. No third rate is required.
Both conversions move with the market. The euro figure of 4.00 is only 4.00 while EUR/USD sits at the assumed 1.2500 - the underlying dollar amount of 5.00 per pip does not change, but what it is worth in euros does. That is a real effect on cross-currency positions and it is why the converted figure should be refreshed rather than written down once.
A) EUR account, GBP/USD, 0.5 lots assumed rate: EUR/USD = 1.2500 units = 0.5 x 100,000 = 50,000 GBP pip value USD = 0.0001 x 50,000 = 5.00 USD pip value EUR = 5.00 / 1.2500 = 4.00 EUR B) GBP account, GBP/JPY, 1.0 lot assumed rate: GBP/JPY = 200.00 units = 100,000 GBP pip value JPY = 0.01 x 100,000 = 1,000 JPY pip value GBP = 1,000 / 200.00 = 5.00 GBP In B the pair price IS the conversion rate, because the account currency is the base of the traded pair.
Why the answer is not 10 on every pair
For a US dollar account, one standard lot gives a pip value of exactly 10.00 on any pair where the dollar is the quote currency - EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD, NZD/USD. Nothing to convert, nothing that drifts. This is the case the ten-dollar rule of thumb comes from, and it covers a large share of retail volume, which is why the rule of thumb survives.
Everywhere else it breaks. When the dollar is the base currency - USD/JPY, USD/CHF, USD/CAD - the pip value arrives in the quote currency and has to be divided by the pair price to get back to dollars. For the non-yen ones that division is 10 divided by the price, so any price above 1.00 gives less than 10.00 per pip and any price below 1.00 gives more. Yen pairs work the same way from a base of 1,000 yen rather than 10 dollars: 1,000 divided by the rate, which at yen prices in the hundreds lands well under 10.00.
Crosses that contain no dollar at all, like EUR/GBP, are the third case. The pip value arrives in the cross's quote currency - pounds, in that instance - and needs a separate rate to reach dollars, multiplying by GBP/USD rather than dividing.
The table below uses assumed illustrative rates purely to make the shape of the result visible. Do not treat the numbers as current; treat the pattern as permanent.
Pair Pip in quote ccy Conversion Pip in USD ------- ---------------- --------------- ---------- EUR/USD 10.00 USD none 10.00 GBP/USD 10.00 USD none 10.00 USD/CHF 10.00 CHF / 0.9000 11.11 USD/CAD 10.00 CAD / 1.3600 7.35 USD/JPY 1,000 JPY / 160.00 6.25 EUR/GBP 10.00 GBP x 1.2500 (GBP/USD) 12.50 Rates above are assumed examples for illustration only. Scale linearly for other sizes: a 0.10 lot is one tenth of each figure, a 0.01 lot one hundredth.
When pip value is fixed and when it drifts
Whether your pip value is a constant or a moving number depends entirely on whether a conversion is involved. If the pair's quote currency is your account currency, the pip value is locked by lot size alone. One standard lot of EUR/USD in a dollar account is 10.00 per pip today, tomorrow and at any price level. You can write it down.
If a conversion is involved, the pip value moves with the conversion rate. The size of that movement is easy to underestimate. On one standard lot of USD/JPY, an assumed rate of 150.00 gives 1,000 / 150 = 6.67 dollars per pip; an assumed rate of 160.00 gives 1,000 / 160 = 6.25. That is a 6.25 percent change in the cash value of your stop, from nothing more than the rate the position is being valued at. Over a longer horizon these shifts are larger still.
For practical purposes this means the pip value you use should be refreshed at the time you size the trade, not carried over from a note you made last month. It also means the loss on a cross-currency position is not perfectly determined at entry, because the conversion applied at exit may differ slightly from the one you assumed. On a normal-sized position the effect is small; it is worth knowing about rather than worrying over.
Common mistakes, and where the number goes next
The pip value error that does real damage is the yen pip size, because it does not produce an obviously silly answer - it produces one that is off by a factor of one hundred in a plausible-looking direction. Suppose you are working to a yen-denominated risk budget of 25,000 JPY on USD/JPY with a 25 pip stop. The correct pip value is 1,000 JPY per standard lot, so 25 pips costs 25,000 JPY and the position is 1.0 lot. Use 0.0001 as the pip size and you get 10 JPY per pip, a 25 pip stop apparently costing 250 JPY, and a suggested position of 100 lots. Nobody catches that on the ticket in time.
The other errors are less dramatic but just as capable of skewing a risk plan. Most of them are unit confusions - lots against units, pips against pipettes, quote currency against account currency - and all of them are avoidable by writing the calculation out in two explicit steps rather than reaching for a remembered figure.
Once the pip value is right, it becomes an input everywhere else. The position size calculator divides your cash risk by stop distance times pip value to produce a lot size. The profit and loss calculator multiplies pip value by the pips gained or lost. The margin calculator does not use pip value at all - margin depends on notional value and leverage, not on pip economics - which is exactly why the two numbers must never be confused.
- Using 0.0001 on a yen pair. Pip size there is 0.01 - a factor of 100, not 10.
- Confusing pips with pipettes. The extra fifth or third decimal is one tenth of a pip.
- Assuming 10 per pip on every pair. That holds only for a standard lot of a pair quoted in your account currency.
- Multiplying when you should divide. Decide the direction from what the rate means, not from a memorised rule.
- Mixing lots and units. 0.10 lots is 10,000 units, not 10,000 lots and not 0.10 units.
- Treating a converted pip value as permanent. On cross-currency positions it moves with the conversion rate.
Frequently asked
Does pip value change with price?
For pairs quoted in your account currency (e.g. EUR/USD on a USD account) the pip value is fixed by lot size. For other pairs it converts through a cross rate, so it moves marginally as that rate changes.
What is a pip on a JPY pair?
JPY pairs are quoted to two decimals, so one pip is 0.01 rather than 0.0001. The calculator applies the correct pip size automatically per instrument.
What about fractional pips (pipettes)?
Many brokers show a fifth/third decimal — a tenth of a pip, or 'pipette'. This tool works in whole pips; divide the result by ten for a pipette.
Do stock indices have pips?
No. A stock index is a level expressed in points rather than a currency quote, so the 0.0001 pip convention does not apply. Brokers instead define a value per index point for each contract, and that figure is what determines your profit or loss per point moved.
How do I calculate the value of one index point?
Multiply your broker's value per index point by the number of contracts, then convert from the contract currency into your account currency. Because the value per point is set by each broker individually and has no market-wide standard, take the figure from your broker's contract specification and enter it in the Indices tab above.
What is one pip worth on gold?
Gold is quoted in US dollars, so the pip value is the pip size multiplied by the troy ounces you hold, with no conversion needed on a USD account. The usual retail lot follows the 100-ounce COMEX contract, but brokers set their own sizes and differ on whether a gold pip is 0.01, 0.10 or 1.00 — both fields are editable in the Metals tab so you can enter yours.