Pick your pair and lot size below. USD-quoted majors resolve instantly; JPY pairs, USD/CAD, USD/CHF, and EUR/GBP ask for one current rate first, because their pip value isn’t natively in US dollars.
Pip-value calculator
Select a pair and enter a lot size above to calculate.
Educational tool, not investment advice. Verify pip value against your broker's platform before sizing a trade.
What a Pip Is Worth, by Pair Type
A pip is the smallest standardized price increment most forex pairs quote in — 0.0001 for most pairs, 0.01 for pairs quoted in Japanese yen. What that pip is worth in dollars depends on the quote currency (the second currency in the pair), the contract size, and — for anything not already quoted in USD — a conversion rate. That last part is where a flat “a pip is $10” assumption breaks down, and it’s the whole reason this calculator exists instead of a static table.
There are four quoting patterns the calculator handles:
USD-quoted pairs — EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD, NZD/USD — already have the dollar as the quote currency, so a pip’s value in quote currency is its value in USD. No conversion, no rate to enter. At a standard lot (100,000 units), pip size 0.0001, that’s a fixed $10 per pip.
JPY-quoted pairs — USD/JPY, EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY, AUD/JPY — use a pip size of 0.01 instead of 0.0001, because the yen trades at a different order of magnitude. A standard lot’s pip is worth ¥1,000 regardless of which pair it is, but converting that into US dollars always requires the USD/JPY rate specifically — not the pair’s own cross rate — because that’s the rate that prices yen in dollars.
CAD- and CHF-quoted pairs — USD/CAD and USD/CHF — have a pip value that’s fixed in CAD or CHF (10 units per standard lot, same as any 0.0001-pip pair) but needs dividing by the current USD/CAD or USD/CHF rate to reach USD, since that rate is quoted as “quote-currency units per one US dollar.”
GBP-quoted pairs — EUR/GBP — work the other direction. The pip value in pounds gets multiplied by the GBP/USD rate, because GBP/USD is quoted as “US dollars per one pound,” the opposite convention from USD/CAD or USD/JPY.
For anything outside this list — gold, silver, index CFDs, or a broker-specific instrument — the calculator’s Custom option lets you enter the pip size and the quote currency’s USD value directly.
The Conversion Math
The calculator never fetches a rate. For pairs that need one, you enter today’s rate from your own broker or data feed, and the math is fully shown in the result:
Pip value (quote currency) = pip size x contract size x lots
Pip value (USD) = pip value (quote currency) / rate [USD/JPY, USD/CAD, USD/CHF]
= pip value (quote currency) x rate [EUR/GBP]
Contract size is a fixed convention — 100,000 units of base currency per standard lot — not a market price, so it never needs a live source. Only the exchange rate does, and that field starts empty with no prefilled figure, by design: any default we picked would go stale the moment it’s published, and a stale rate silently produces a wrong pip value with no indication anything is off.
Worked example, using the same illustrative rate our lot sizes explained guide uses: at a USD/JPY rate of 150.00, one standard lot’s pip is ¥1,000, and ¥1,000 / 150.00 = $6.67 — noticeably less than the $10 a USD-quoted pair gives at the same lot size. At 140.00 the same pip is worth $7.14; at 160.00 it’s $6.25. The value moves with the rate, which is exactly why the calculator asks you to supply it fresh rather than assuming a number.
Why This Matters for Position Sizing
Pip value isn’t just a curiosity — it’s a direct input into how many lots you should trade for a given dollar risk. Our position-size calculator uses this same per-pair pip-value logic automatically, so you don’t have to run this calculation separately and then re-enter the result. If you assume $10 per pip on a JPY pair or a CAD/CHF cross when the real figure is different, your position ends up sized for a risk percentage you didn’t actually choose — sometimes higher, sometimes lower, depending on the pair and the prevailing rate. The risk management guide covers what a mis-sized position costs across a losing streak.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a pip always worth $10 on a standard lot?
Only when the quote currency is the US dollar, as with EUR/USD or GBP/USD. On USD/JPY a pip is 1,000 yen, and converting that to dollars depends entirely on the prevailing USD/JPY rate — use the calculator with today’s rate rather than assuming a figure. On USD/CHF the value is above $10 whenever the franc trades below parity to the dollar, and below $10 when it trades above parity. Check the quote currency and, for non-USD-quoted pairs, the current rate before assuming a number.
Why does the calculator need my own exchange rate instead of showing one?
Because a rate baked into the page would be wrong within hours and there would be no way for you to tell it had gone stale. Entering your broker’s current rate keeps the pip value accurate to the moment you’re actually sizing a trade, and it keeps this tool from making a claim about the market it can’t stand behind.
Does pip value change if I’m trading a mini or micro lot instead of a standard lot?
Yes, proportionally. A mini lot (0.10) is worth one-tenth the standard-lot pip value, and a micro lot (0.01) is worth one-hundredth. Enter your actual lot size in the calculator — it multiplies through automatically rather than requiring you to scale a standard-lot figure yourself.
What’s the difference between this calculator and the position-size calculator?
This one answers “what is a pip worth right now for this pair and lot size” in isolation. The position-size calculator answers a different question — “how many lots should I trade given my balance, risk percentage, and stop distance” — and uses the same pip-value logic internally so you don’t have to look up a pip value and then do a second calculation by hand.