If you need a forex calculator, such as a pip calculator, or a position or lot size calculator, you’ve come to the right place. Here is our collection of what we think are the best forex calculators. You can use these to help you get the right position on your trades, and calculate your profit, loss, compounding, and drawdown. All of these tools are courtesy of cashbackforex.com, which is a great resource for traders interested in forex rebates.
Table of contents
The best forex calculator – Position size calculator
We have placed this calculator at the very top of our list as we think it’s the most useful forex calculator there can be. In order to stick to the risk management principle of never risking more than 1-2% of your account per trade, a position size calculator will quickly tell you what the size of your trade should be.
Simply enter the instrument, the account currency, the price at which you are entering your trade, your stop-loss price, your account size, and how much of your account you want to risk.
Hit calculate, and the tool will tell you how big your trade should be. It will also print out how much capital is at risk, so you can confirm that it has calculated the position size correctly.
As well as defining your risk as a percentage of your balance, you also have the option to enter exactly how many units of your account balance you would like to risk on the trade. The calculator will then give this figure as a percentage of your balance.
Lot size calculator notes
With forex pairs, the calculator assumes the standard contract size of 100,000 units, so 1 lot is 100,000 units of the base currency. This means that on a mini lot account, you will need to change the contract size to 10,000. And on a micro lot account, you will need to change it to 1,000.
You will also need to set the correct contract size when it comes to things like indices, commodities, and crypto, as different brokers will have different contract sizes. You can do this by clicking on the “Calculate lot size in MT4/MT5?” button, and typing in the correct contract size figure for the instrument. Don’t know what the contract size is? No problem, it’s easy to check. In MT4 or MT5, simply right-click on the instrument in the Market Watch list, and click on Specification. The field “Contract size” will give you the answer.
Instead of entering a stop loss price, you can also enter the size of your stop loss in pips. The calculator will then give you the correct lot size based on how much of your account you are risking.
Pip size calculator
Of course, sometimes you may need to know the size of a pip itself. That’s where the pip calculator comes in handy. Simply enter the number of pips, the instrument, the size of the trade, and the account currency, and the calculator will tell you.
Pip size calculator notes
Once again, the calculator assumes a standard lot size of 100,000 units per lot, and unfortunately, it doesn’t seem possible to change this.
And just like the position size calculator, the rules are slightly different for commodities, indices, and crypto. That’s because of varying contract sizes between brokers, so you’ll have to enter exactly how many units are being traded. The answer to this will be the lot size multiplied by the contract size as shown under the instrument specification.
Margin calculator
This tool shows you exactly how much margin you need in order to open a trade. Simply enter the instrument, deposit currency, the leverage on your account, and the size of the trade. You can enter this as the lot size or as individual units. For forex pairs, the calculator considers 1 lot as 100,000 units, so you will have to take that into account when entering the size of a trade if you have a mini or micro account.
Drawdown calculator
This tool is very simple – it tells you what the drawdown to your account will be after a series of losses. Simply type in your account balance, how much you are risking per trade, and the number of losses you would like to calculate, and the tool will tell you what your balance is.
This tool is a fantastic demonstration of the importance of good risk management, and not risking more than 1% of your balance on a trade. For example, if you experience 5 losses in a row after risking 1%, you will still have over 95% of your account capital remaining. But if you risk 5%, you will have lost nearly a quarter of your balance. And if you risk 10%, you will have lost over 40% of your account. Ouch.
Forex calculator – Profit & loss calculator
This is another fun tool that lets you calculate what you stand to gain or lose on any given trade. Simply type in the instrument, account currency, the open and close prices, the size of the trade, and whether you’re going long or going short.
Once again, this tool assumes a standard lot size of 100,000 units to 1 lot for forex pairs. You can choose whether to enter the trade size in lots or in units. Once again, for crypto, commodities, and indices, you can only enter the trade size in units.
Risk of Ruin calculator
This is a fascinating tool that uses a mathematical model to calculate the chances that a given trading system will blow the account. Simply enter the system’s win rate, the average profit or loss from each trade, the amount of capital risked per trade, the number of trades made, and the maximum drawdown reached or expected.
The tool will then calculate the expected probability of reaching the maximum drawdown limit at any time, and the probability of that drawdown resulting in the largest cumulative decline in account equity from a previous equity high. This is also known as “peak-to-valley drawdown”.
Forex calculator – compounding calculator
If the lot size tool is the most valuable calculator, then we think this tool is the one most likely to capture people’s interest or imagination. The compounding calculator shows what happens when forex trading profits are reinvested into the account. It gives us an accurate picture of how an account can grow over time and the rewards that can come with being patient and consistent.
Simply enter the starting balance, the number of periods you wish to calculate, and the gain per period as a percentage. The calculator then shows what the account balance will be, and its overall gain as a percentage.
Periods, of course, could mean anything – days, weeks, months, or even years. It’s up to you to determine the timescale.
Forex rebate calculator
Forex rebates or forex cashback both refer to the same thing: a third-party cashback system that allows traders to make a little bit extra for every trade they make. They will still get a rebate even if the trade itself closes at a loss. The rebate could be expressed as a portion of the commission, or it could be part of the spread. For example, if the broker charges a commission of $6 for every lot traded, then the rebate could be $0.60 per lot. Alternatively, if the spread between a currency pair is 2 pips, then the rebate could be 0.5 pips. For the trader, this effectively means smaller commissions or tighter spreads.
To use the calculator, simply type in the instrument, the account currency, the size of the trade, and the size of the rebate per lot. You can select the form of the rebate via the drop-down list, either as a pip or as a currency of your choice. The calculator will then show you the result in the currency of your trading account.
For example, at the time of writing, let’s say I have a USD account with a British broker that offers 0.70 GBP per lot traded. A 10-lot trade on AUD/USD would give me a forex rebate of £7. But obviously, this account is in USD, so the result is given in USD, which is $8.45.
Fibonacci calculator
This tool allows you to plot the Fibonacci retracement or extension levels of a currency pair, commodity, index, or cryptocurrency.
Simply select the direction of the trend and enter the low and high prices. For the extension mode, you will need to enter the end price. The tool will then produce a projection of the instrument’s price, based on standard Fibonacci levels.