USD/CAD Average Daily Range in Pips (2026 Data)

USD/CAD Average Daily Range in Pips (2026 Data)

USD/CAD’s average daily range (ADR) sets a practical ceiling on how far the pair is likely to travel in a session, which is the number position sizing and stop placement should actually be built around rather than a round number picked out of habit. This guide reports figures measured directly from Dukascopy daily bars covering January 2025 through July 2026 — no estimates, no forecasts — and shows how to turn that range data into a stop-loss and lot size.

Quick Answer

USD/CAD’s 20-day average daily range measured 55.0 pips as of July 31, 2026, the most recent complete trading day available in the Dukascopy dataset at the time of writing. Across 2026 through July, the typical (25th-75th percentile) daily range sat between 43.7 and 69.4 pips, with a median of 53.3 pips. The full 2025-2026 dataset average is 69.2 pips per day, pulled higher by an unusually volatile first half of 2025.

USD/CAD Daily Range Reference

All figures in this table are computed directly from downloaded price data, not estimated. The methodology section below explains exactly how.

Monthly Average Daily Range, January 2025 - July 2026

Measured from Dukascopy daily bars, as of August 13, 2026. Each row is the mean of (daily high - daily low) in pips for every trading day in that month; Sunday partial-liquidity sessions and near-zero-volume holidays (New Year’s Day, Christmas Day) are excluded so the average reflects full trading sessions only.

The pattern is a steady compression from the early-2025 volatility spike down to a quieter mid-70s-to-50s pip range for most of the back half of the dataset, with a smaller pickup in Q1 2026 before settling again through mid-2026. August 2026 is not yet in this table: Dukascopy had not published its monthly bar file for August 2026 as of this writing (August 13, 2026), so the most recent complete month available is July 2026.

Extremes: Widest and Narrowest Sessions

The widest single-day range in the full dataset was 407.3 pips on Monday, February 3, 2025 (high 1.47926, low 1.43853) — a session that fell inside a stretch of elevated USD/CAD volatility tied to US-Canada trade-policy headlines in early February 2025. Excluding thin Sunday-open sessions and holidays, the narrowest full trading day was 22.6 pips on Tuesday, May 26, 2026 (high 1.38209, low 1.37983).

Within 2026 specifically, the widest session was 180.3 pips on January 27, 2026 and the narrowest was the same May 26, 2026 reading of 22.6 pips. That roughly 8x spread between the calmest and most volatile 2026 sessions is the reason a single “average” number understates the tail risk — the 25th-75th percentile band above is a better planning input than the mean alone.

How This Data Was Measured

• Source: Dukascopy historical bid-price hourly bars, downloaded directly and resampled to daily (00:00-23:59 UTC) OHLC.
• Window: January 1, 2025 through July 31, 2026 (the most recent complete trading day Dukascopy had published at the time of writing).
• Cleaning: Sunday bars (the low-liquidity session that opens the forex week) and three near-zero-volume holiday sessions (New Year’s Day 2025, Christmas Day 2025, New Year’s Day 2026) were excluded from averages and extremes, since including them understates the range of a genuine full trading day. 410 of 495 raw daily bars qualified as full sessions.
• Range formula: for each session, (daily high - daily low) / 0.0001 pips.
• ADR window: the current 20-day ADR uses the most recent 20 qualifying sessions (July 6-31, 2026).
• Percentile band: the 25th and 75th percentiles are computed over all 151 qualifying 2026 sessions through July 31.

No figure in this article is an estimate, a rounded guess, or copied from a prior snapshot — every number above comes directly from this measurement.

Calculating ADR Yourself

ADR = (Sum of Daily Ranges) / Number of Days

Worked example using two sessions from the table above:

1. February 3, 2025 range: 1.47926 - 1.43853 = 0.04073 = 407.3 pips
2. May 26, 2026 range: 1.38209 - 1.37983 = 0.00226 = 22.6 pips
3. Average of just these two days: (407.3 + 22.6) / 2 = 214.95 pips — an illustration of why a 2-day sample is useless; a 20-day window is the practical minimum for a stable read.

Using ADR for Stop-Loss and Position Sizing

ADR tells you how far a session is likely to travel; it does not tell you where price will stall, so it is an input to stop distance and lot size rather than a trade signal by itself.

Worked example using the current 20-day ADR of 55.0 pips and a $5,000 account risking 1% per trade:

1. Risk budget: $5,000 x 1% = $50
2. Stop distance: place the stop at roughly 1x-1.5x the current ADR to sit outside normal daily noise. At 1.2x ADR, that is 55.0 x 1.2 = 66 pips.
3. Pip value: for USD/CAD, pip value depends on the account’s quote-currency conversion rate — use the pip value calculator rather than assuming a fixed dollar-per-pip figure.
4. Lot size: with the stop distance and pip value known, plug both into the position size calculator along with the $50 risk budget to get an exact lot size — do not eyeball it.

For the reasoning behind the 1% figure and how to size around drawdown tolerance rather than a single trade, see the forex risk management guide.

What Moves USD/CAD’s Daily Range

USD/CAD’s volatility profile differs from EUR/USD’s in a few structural ways worth knowing before you size a trade against it:

• Oil-price correlation. The Canadian dollar is a commodity currency with meaningful sensitivity to crude oil prices, since energy is a large share of Canadian exports. Sharp oil moves — on OPEC+ decisions, inventory data, or geopolitical supply shocks — tend to show up as wider USD/CAD ranges even on days without a scheduled USD or CAD data release.
• BoC and Fed meeting timing. Bank of Canada and Federal Reserve rate decisions rarely land on the same day, so USD/CAD can see two separate volatility windows in a month that EUR/USD experiences as overlapping Fed-only events. Check both central banks’ calendars, not just the Fed’s, when anticipating a range expansion.
• US-Canada trade and tariff headlines. The widest session in this dataset (February 3, 2025) coincided with a period of active US-Canada trade-policy news. Cross-border trade friction is a recurring USD/CAD volatility driver that does not have a direct EUR/USD analogue.
• Lower liquidity than EUR/USD. USD/CAD trades with less depth than EUR/USD, so a given volume of order flow moves it proportionally further — part of why its tail events (the 400+ pip session above) can be larger relative to its typical range than EUR/USD’s tail events are relative to its own.

None of this is a basis for predicting where USD/CAD goes next; it is context for why the range data above moves when it does, and a reason to treat the current ADR reading as a snapshot that can shift quickly around oil, BoC/Fed, or trade-policy events.

USD/CAD vs. EUR/USD Average Daily Range

Both pairs are measured from the same Dukascopy source, so the comparison is apples-to-apples:

USD/CAD’s typical range runs somewhat narrower than EUR/USD’s through 2026, but its extremes — like the 407-pip session in February 2025 — can exceed anything EUR/USD produced in the same window, which matters more for stop placement than the average alone.

Automate a USD/CAD Strategy

If a strategy sizes its grid spacing or stops off USD/CAD’s ADR, a free MT4 Expert Advisor can apply that spacing automatically instead of doing the math on every trade:

• GridMaster EA — grid trading with configurable spacing
• SteadyPips EA — EMA trend following sized to ADR
• BreakWave EA — Bollinger Bands squeeze breakout

Download the free EAs →

Further Reading

• EUR/USD Average Daily Range in Pips — the same methodology applied to EUR/USD
• Forex Risk Management Guide — sizing stops and position risk against range data
• Position Size Calculator — turn a stop distance and risk budget into a lot size
• Pip Value Calculator — get the dollar value per pip for USD/CAD at your account’s conversion rate
• Best Forex Pairs for Grid Trading — using ADR to judge grid suitability

This guide is for educational purposes only. Forex trading involves substantial risk, and past average daily range data does not guarantee future ranges. Position sizes, stops, and targets should always reflect your own risk tolerance and account size.