XAUUSD Pip Value Calculator
What one pip of gold is worth per lot, where a lot is 100 ounces and a pip is 0.01 — neither of which matches a currency pair.
Gold trades on the same platforms as the currency majors and is quoted in much the same shape — XAU against USD, a price with a decimal point, a size entered in lots — and that family resemblance is the whole reason this page exists. Almost nothing about gold's contract follows the currency convention, so a pip figure carried across from EUR/USD is not slightly off. Depending on which half of the convention gets carried over, it is out by a factor of ten, a hundred or a thousand.
Formula: pip value = pip size x contract size x lots x quote-to-account rate
Your figures
Choose Custom to enter your broker's own pip size and contract size.
How large the position is, in the unit selected above.
Rate to convert the pair's quote currency into your account currency. Enter 1 if they are the same.
Price increment of one pip. Only used when Instrument is Custom.
Units of the base asset in one lot. Only used when Instrument is Custom.
Results
Value of one pip
US$1.00
for 100 units of XAU
- Pip value in USD (quote currency)
- 1.00
- Pip size for this pair
- 0.01
- Position size in lots
- 1.0000
- Per standard lot (100)
- US$1.00
- Per mini lot (10)
- US$0.10
- Per micro lot (1)
- US$0.01
What this means
Each one-pip move in XAU/USD changes the value of this position by US$1.00. A 20-pip move is therefore worth US$20.00. Pip value is fixed by position size — it does not change as the price moves.
- A conversion rate of 1 assumes your account is denominated in USD. If it is not, enter the rate that converts USD into your account currency.
Value of one pip: US$1.00
The link reopens this calculator with the same numbers. Nothing you enter is sent to a server.
Continue with these figures
About the XAUUSD Pip Value calculation
This calculator takes a size in lots or ounces and reports what one pip of gold is worth, in dollars first and then in the currency your account is denominated in. The specification behind it is a hundred troy ounces to the standard lot and a pip of 0.01, which is the common retail arrangement — but gold is precisely the instrument where brokers depart from the common arrangement, so a custom option exists for entering the contract size and pip your own platform publishes.
Every figure is arithmetic on what you typed; no gold price is fetched and none is needed. Pip value here depends on the number of ounces held and on nothing else, which is why it reads the same with gold near 1,950 as it does near 3,400 — even though the notional value of those ounces, and the margin posted behind them, plainly do not.
XAUUSD Pip Value formula
units (ounces) = lots × 100
pip value (USD) = 0.01 × units (ounces)
pip value (account) = pip value (USD) × USD-to-account rate
1.00 lot = 100 ounces → $1.00 per pip
0.10 lots = 10 ounces → $0.10 per pip
0.01 lots = 1 ounce → $0.01 per pip
100 pips of gold = $1.00 of gold price- 100
- Troy ounces of gold in one standard lot under the common specification. A currency lot holds 100,000 units, so gold's contract is a thousand times smaller.
- 0.01
- One pip of gold where the price is quoted to two decimal places — a hundred times a major pair's 0.0001, and the figure most worth checking against your own platform.
- units (ounces)
- Ounces the position controls, which is lots times the contract size rather than lots times 100,000.
- USD-to-account rate
- What one US dollar is worth in your account currency. It is 1 for a dollar account, since gold against the dollar is already priced in dollars.
Gold's two departures from the currency convention pull in opposite directions, which is what makes the result so hard to hold in your head. The contract is a thousand times smaller — a hundred ounces against a hundred thousand units — while the pip is a hundred times larger. Multiplied together, those factors leave gold's standard lot at a dollar a pip: a tenth of what a standard lot of a major pair is worth, not a thousandth of it and not a hundred times more than it.
The first line carries all of the risk on this page. Feed it a currency contract size and the two-decimal pip then multiplies against a hundred thousand units, returning a thousand dollars a pip where one dollar belongs. This site shipped exactly that mistake once. It was not caught quickly, because a four-figure pip value is not self-evidently absurd on a screen full of four-figure gold prices — which is the argument for reading the contract specification off your platform rather than inferring it from whatever instrument happens to sit beside gold in the same dropdown.
The third line does no work at all for most readers of this page. Gold against the dollar is quoted in dollars, so a dollar-denominated account leaves the rate at one and the pip value stands as calculated. The conversion earns its place only for accounts kept in sterling, euros or anything else, where the dollar figure has to be restated before it can be set against a risk budget held in another currency.
XAUUSD Pip Value: a worked example
Holding 0.40 lots of XAU/USD in a euro-denominated account, with the broker's gold contract at the common 100 ounces and one US dollar worth 0.9150 euros. The page opens on one lot in a dollar account, so adjust the size and the conversion rate to follow this.
- Ounces held0.40 × 100 = 40 troy ounces
- Pip size0.01 — two decimal places, not four
- Pip value in USD0.01 × 40 = $0.40
- Converted to EUR$0.40 × 0.9150 = €0.37
- A 350-pip stop350 × 0.366 = €128.10, and 350 pips is $3.50 of gold price
- Same sum with a currency contract0.01 × 40,000 = $400 per pip — a thousand times too high
One pip is worth about €0.37 at that size, so a $3.50 move in the gold price costs roughly €128. The last step is there as a check: if a pip value for gold comes back in the hundreds on a sub-one-lot position, the contract size is wrong rather than the market being unusual.
How to use the XAUUSD Pip Value calculator
- Select XAU/USD so the calculator applies a pip of 0.01 and a contract of 100 ounces instead of the currency defaults.
- Open your broker's contract specification for gold and check two numbers against it: ounces per lot, and whether the platform labels 0.01 or 0.1 a pip. If either differs, switch to the custom instrument option and enter their figures — including over the ones used here.
- Enter the size in lots or directly in ounces. Under the standard specification 0.10 lots and 10 ounces are the same position described two ways.
- Set the USD-to-account rate, leaving it at 1 for a dollar account, since the quote is already in dollars.
- Read the pip value for your size alongside the per-lot reference figures, and convert a stop measured in dollars of gold price into pips by dividing it by 0.01 before comparing the two.
Limitations of the XAUUSD Pip Value calculator
Every calculation makes assumptions. These are the ones that matter here.
- The 0.01 pip is a convention rather than a rule. Some brokers label 0.1 a pip on gold, which makes every figure here ten times too small on their platform, and a few quote gold to three decimals, which cuts the other way.
- Contract sizes vary far more for gold than for currencies. Hundred-ounce standard lots are usual and ten-ounce and one-ounce contracts are widely offered, but some brokers size gold to their own design and only their specification governs your account.
- One pip of gold is a trivially small move in price. Spreads on gold commonly run to twenty or thirty pips and widen sharply around data releases, so a stop placed a handful of pips from entry sits inside the dealing cost before the market has done anything.
- Nothing here knows how far gold travels. Two thousand pips of daily range is unremarkable for gold and would be a historic session in EUR/USD, so a pip count transplanted from a currency pair describes a stop of an entirely different size.
- Leveraged gold positions attract financing charges shaped nothing like currency swap, and no part of a pip value reflects them. The pip states money per increment of price and says nothing about the cost of holding the ounces overnight.
- Exchange-traded gold is different again. The COMEX contract is 100 ounces and its micro sibling 10, and both move in ticks of 0.10 — worth $10 on the full contract but $1 on the micro, since the tick value follows the ounces. Tick arithmetic does not share this shape.
Frequently asked questions about XAUUSD Pip Value
Why is one pip of gold worth less than one pip of EUR/USD?
Because the smaller contract outweighs the larger pip. Gold's hundred ounces are a thousandth of a currency lot's hundred thousand units, while its 0.01 pip is a hundred times a major pair's 0.0001. A thousandth multiplied by a hundred is a tenth, which is why a standard lot of gold comes to about a dollar a pip against roughly ten dollars on a dollar-quoted major.
My broker shows $10 a pip on one lot of gold. Which convention is this calculator using?
Both figures can be internally consistent, because they are measuring different increments. This page treats 0.01 as a pip, giving a dollar per pip on a hundred ounces; a platform that labels 0.1 a pip is quoting the same position as $10 per pip. What neither convention changes is the money: a hundred ounces gain or lose $100 for every dollar the gold price moves. Where the two disagree, your platform's definition is the one your statement will use.
How many pips is a one-dollar move in the gold price?
A hundred pips, where the pip is 0.01 — the same factor that makes gold's pip figures look small per pip and large per dollar of movement. On a platform that calls 0.1 a pip the same move is ten pips. This is the conversion most worth doing deliberately rather than in your head, because a stop you think of in dollars of gold price has to become pips before it can be multiplied by any pip value.
What stop distance in pips should I use on gold?
Naming a number is not something this page can do honestly, because the figure is a trade-off rather than a fact. A tight stop in pips keeps the loss per contract small but sits closer to the spread and to gold's ordinary noise, so it is reached more often; a wide one survives the noise but costs more when it is hit, and forces a smaller position for the same risk budget. The arithmetic here prices whichever distance you enter — it has no view on which distance suits your account.
Do mini and micro gold contracts follow the same tenfold steps as currency lots?
The steps shown here do: ten ounces at a tenth of the pip value and one ounce at a hundredth, mirroring the mini and micro pattern. Brokers are not bound by it. Gold is offered in sizes that do not divide neatly by ten, and some platforms describe a ten-ounce contract as their standard gold lot, which shifts every derived figure by a factor of ten unless you enter their size directly.
Does the pip value change when gold itself gets more expensive?
No. The pip value falls out of the pip size and the ounces held, neither of which the price touches, so it reads identically at 1,950 and at 3,400. What does change with the price is the notional value of the position and the margin required to open it, and both of those move proportionally — which is why a size that felt routine at one gold price can tie up considerably more of the account at another.
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