What is a pip worth to you — and what does the trade cost?
Pip value tells you what a move is worth. Spread and commission tell you how far it has to move before you own any of it. Both come from the same three inputs, so this tool does them together.
Diagnosis
A pip value on its own is a unit of measurement. These checks turn it into a judgement: is one pip too heavy for this account, and is the cost too large a share of the move you are trying to catch?
What size does to the numbers
Pip value and cost both scale straight with lot size. The cost in pips does not — it is the same at every size, which is why cutting size makes a losing setup smaller but never makes it cheaper.
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What the trade costs before it moves
Spread plus commission, converted to your account currency and then back into pips — the distance price has to travel just to get you to zero.
Why measure cost in pips
In money, cost looks small on small positions and large on big ones, which tells you nothing about whether the strategy can pay for it. In pips it is size-independent: a strategy targeting 8 pips with 2 pips of cost is giving away a quarter of its edge no matter what lot it trades. That is the number to compare against your average win.
How this is calculated
Pip value is pip size × contract size × lots, converted to your account currency. For most FX pairs a pip is 0.0001 and a standard lot is 100,000 units, which is where the familiar "$10 a pip" comes from. Pairs quoted in JPY use 0.01 as the pip, so the same lot moves the same money for ten times the price change.
Spread costs you the pip value times the spread, once, when you open. Commission is usually charged per lot per round turn. Together they are the head start the market has on you: the price must travel that far in your favour before the position is worth anything.
When the pair does not settle in your account currency, the value has to be converted — and we ask you for the rate rather than inventing one. A tool that quietly approximates every cross with USD/JPY is wrong on every pair that is not USD/JPY, and it never tells you by how much.
Nothing is uploaded. Every number on this page is computed in your browser, and the link you copy carries only the values you typed.
Related tools
Spreads widen around news and at the session roll, and some brokers charge commission in the quote currency rather than the account currency. Treat the output as the cost on a normal day.