Work out exactly what a trade made or lost — in your own account currency, after commission. Enter your entry, your exit and your position size, and the calculator handles the pip maths and the currency conversion. Pair it with our position size calculator before you enter and our pip value calculator to understand what each pip is worth.
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Forex profit and loss calculator
The quote currency is the second currency in the pair. Trading USD/CAD with a CAD account? Leave the rate at 1. Trading EUR/USD with a CAD account? Enter the USD→CAD rate (roughly 1.36). Commission is the full round-turn cost your broker charges — leave it at zero for spread-only accounts.
How to use it
- Direction — long if you bought, short if you sold. Getting this wrong flips the sign on your result.
- Pair type — JPY pairs price to two decimals, so a pip is 0.01 rather than 0.0001. Pick the right one or your pip count will be off by a factor of a hundred.
- Entry and exit — the prices you actually filled at, not the ones you hoped for.
- Position size — standard, mini or micro lot, or type in custom units.
- Quote → account currency rate — leave at 1 when the second currency in the pair is already your account currency.
- Commission — the full round-turn charge. Raw-spread accounts charge this; standard accounts usually bake the cost into a wider spread instead, in which case leave it at zero.
The formula behind it
Net P&L = (exit − entry) × direction × units × conversion rate − commission
Everything else is bookkeeping. The pip count is just that same price difference divided by the pip size for the pair, which is why the pip figure and the dollar figure always move together. The conversion rate is the part people forget: if you hold a CAD account and trade EUR/USD, your profit arrives in US dollars and has to be converted before it means anything to your balance.
Worked examples in CAD
Example 1 — a winning long on USD/CAD. You buy one standard lot at 1.3600 and close at 1.3660. That is a 60-pip move. The quote currency is CAD, which is already your account currency, so no conversion applies: 0.0060 × 100,000 × 1 = CAD $600. On a raw account charging $7 round turn, your net is $593.
Example 2 — a losing short on EUR/USD. You sell one mini lot at 1.0850 and buy back at 1.0890 — the market went the wrong way by 40 pips. Gross result: −0.0040 × 10,000 = −US$40. With USD/CAD at 1.36 that becomes −CAD $54.40. This is the trade that should have had a stop on it.
Example 3 — a micro lot on USD/JPY. You buy 1,000 units at 157.20 and exit at 157.85, a 65-pip move on a two-decimal pair. Gross: 0.65 × 1,000 = ¥650. Converted at roughly 0.0092 JPY→CAD, that is about CAD $6. Micro lots keep both the wins and the losses small, which is exactly why they suit anyone still learning.
Notice what example 3 really shows: the same 65-pip move on a standard lot would have been about $600. Position size, not pip count, is what determines whether a trade matters to your account.
Costs this calculator does not include
A realistic picture of what a strategy earns has to account for more than the price move. Three things sit outside this tool:
- The spread. You buy at the ask and sell at the bid, so you start every trade slightly behind. On majors this is often under a pip; on exotics it can be many times that.
- Swap and overnight financing. Hold past the rollover and you pay or receive interest based on the rate differential between the two currencies. Over weeks this can dwarf the commission.
- Currency conversion on deposits and withdrawals. Moving CAD into a USD-denominated account and back out again costs you at both ends. A broker offering a native CAD account avoids this entirely — see our Canadian broker comparison.
There is also tax. Canadian traders owe either capital gains treatment or full business-income treatment depending on how the CRA classifies their activity, and the difference is substantial. Our guide to forex trading taxes in Canada walks through how that determination gets made.
Keep leverage limits in mind
A large position size can produce impressive numbers in this calculator that a CIRO-regulated account would never let you take. Canadian leverage is capped at roughly 50:1 on major pairs. If a scenario here requires more than that, it is not available to you at a regulated Canadian broker — and the offshore firms offering 500:1 are not legally permitted to solicit Canadians. See our leverage caps explainer.
This tool is educational and simplified. Trading forex and CFDs carries a high risk of loss; nothing here is financial advice.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate profit and loss in forex?
Profit or loss equals the price difference multiplied by your position size, converted into your account currency. For a long trade it is (exit price minus entry price) x units x conversion rate; for a short trade you reverse the price terms. Then subtract any commission. The calculator above handles the direction, the pip sizing and the currency conversion so you do not have to do it by hand.
What is a pip worth in dollars?
For most pairs a pip is 0.0001, so a standard lot of 100,000 units gives roughly 10 units of the quote currency per pip. If the quote currency is not your account currency you convert at the prevailing rate. JPY pairs use 0.01 as the pip, which produces a different figure. Our pip value calculator breaks this down pair by pair.
Does this calculator include swap and overnight financing?
No. This tool covers the price move and your commission. Positions held past the daily rollover also accrue a swap charge or credit, which can matter a great deal on trades held for weeks. Check your broker's swap table for the pair you are trading and add that to the net figure here.
Why is my broker's profit figure different from this one?
The usual reasons are the spread, the conversion rate used at the moment of the trade, and financing. You enter at the ask and exit at the bid, so the round-trip spread is already baked into your real fills. Brokers also convert profits at their own rate, which may differ slightly from the rate you entered here.
Is a paper profit the same as a realised profit?
No, and the distinction matters for tax as well as for psychology. An open position shows an unrealised gain that can disappear before you close. Only a closed trade produces a realised result. For Canadian tax reporting, what generally matters is realised outcomes during the tax year — see our guide to forex trading taxes in Canada.