ES Tick Value Calculator

What one tick of the E-mini S&P 500 is worth, and what a move in points comes to across any number of contracts.

The E-mini S&P 500 is the contract the rest of the equity index complex is priced against. CME defines it as fifty dollars times the index level, it trades in quarter-point increments, and one of those increments is therefore worth $12.50 to whoever holds a single contract. This page turns that $12.50 into the figures a trade is actually built from: the number of ticks to a stop, the cash standing behind it, and what a session's range comes to in the account's own units.

Formula: cash = points moved / tick size x tick value x contracts

Your figures

Currency

Contract

Sets the point value and tick size. Choose 'Custom' to enter them yourself.

Number of contracts

Price move

In points. Negative for a move against the position.

Conversion rate

Contract currency to your account currency. 1 when they match. Use the rate that applied on the day for a past trade.

Custom point value

Only used when Contract is set to Custom.

Custom tick size

Only used when Contract is set to Custom.

Results

Profit

+US$500.00

+10.00 points on 1 contract

Tick value, one contract: US$12.50
Tick value, whole position: US$12.50
Point value, whole position: US$50.00
Ticks moved: +40.00
Contract size: $50 × index
Exchange: CME

What this means

One tick on ES — E-mini S&P 500 is worth US$12.50 per contract, so a 40-tick move across 1 contract is US$500.00. Tick value is fixed by the contract specification — it does not change as the price moves.

Excludes commission and exchange fees, which are charged per contract per side and matter disproportionately on short-term futures trades.
Specifications are a reference and are occasionally revised. Verify against your broker or the exchange before trading.

The link reopens this calculator with the same numbers. Nothing you enter is sent to a server.

Continue with these figures

About the ES Tick Value calculation

The quarter-point increment is the detail that trips people up, because it puts four rows on the ladder for every index point. One point is four ticks and $50 a contract; ten points is forty ticks and $500. Levels on that ladder end in .00, .25, .50 or .75 and nothing else, so a price read off an indicator to two decimal places is not somewhere an order can sit, and it will be moved to the nearest quarter point with the risk figure following it.

Scale is where the surprise usually lands. A session covering forty points is $2,000 a contract from one edge of the range to the other, and a twelve-tick stop that looks tight on a chart is $150 before a single fee. MES, its micro, is the identical index on a $5 multiplier at $1.25 a tick, a tenth of everything, which is why a first ES contract and a first MES contract are not the same decision. Every figure below is arithmetic on a distance you type in; the site carries no live quotes.

ES Tick Value formula

ES specification (CME):
  multiplier   $50 x index
  tick         0.25 index points
  tick value   $50 x 0.25 = $12.50

ticks in a move = points / 0.25   ->   points x 4
cash            = ticks x $12.50 x contracts
                = points x $50    x contracts

Micro E-mini S&P 500 (MES):
  $5 x 0.25 = $1.25 a tick   ->   10 MES ticks = 1 ES tick

multiplier: The $50 CME attaches to one index point on ES. It is a term of the contract, so it does not move when the index does; only the notional value the contract controls does that.
tick: A quarter of an index point, and the smallest increment ES is quoted and filled in. Valid prices end in .00, .25, .50 or .75.
tick value: $12.50 on one ES contract, being the multiplier applied to a quarter point. Four of them make an index point, worth $50.
MES: The Micro E-mini S&P 500. Same index, same 0.25 tick, a $5 multiplier, so $1.25 a tick and a tenth of the exposure.

Depth is the practical consequence of ES being the benchmark, since this is where large-cap US index exposure is hedged and traded in size. For most of the session the contract is quoted a single tick wide with resting interest on both sides, which puts the cost of crossing the spread at roughly $12.50 a contract before commission. That is a rounding error against a fifteen-point swing and most of the trade against a four-tick scalp, which is why the same $12.50 reads as cheap or expensive depending entirely on how far the position is meant to travel.

An ES order rests on a quarter point or it does not rest at all, so a stop distance has to come out as a whole number of ticks. An entry at 5,512.25 against a stop at 5,505.00 is 7.25 points, which divides into 29 ticks exactly. Take the same stop from an indicator reading 5,505.63 and it does not divide: the order will sit at 5,505.50 or at 5,505.75, which is 27 ticks and $337.50 a contract or 26 ticks and $325.00, a full tick apart and neither of them the number the indicator implied. The rounding is small, but it is why a planned risk figure and a filled one rarely agree to the penny.

The micro is the same instrument with the multiplier divided by ten and the tick left alone at 0.25, so ten MES ticks at $1.25 come to the one ES tick at $12.50. Exposure is interchangeable; granularity is not. On MES the smallest step in position value is $1.25 a tick, so a risk budget can be spent close to the figure intended rather than being forced to the nearest $12.50 of a whole ES contract. Fees run the other way, because they are charged per contract and ten micros generate ten of them.

Converting a range into cash is the step that catches people sizing a first contract. One percent of a 5,500 index is 55 points, and 55 points on a single ES contract is $2,750, which is frequently larger than the intraday margin that was required to open it and larger than the daily loss limit on a good many funded accounts. Nothing about a move that size is remarkable for the S&P 500 in a week carrying an inflation print or a rate decision. Doing that conversion before the trade rather than after it is most of what this page is for.

ES Tick Value: a worked example

Three ES contracts, a stop 7.25 points away and a target 14.75 points away. The page prices one distance at a time, so this takes two passes: enter 3 contracts with a 7.25-point move, read the total, then change the move to 14.75 and read it again. Everything after that is arithmetic on those two readings.

Tick size and tick value, shown by the page0.25 points, $12.50 a tick — four ticks to the point
First pass — stop distance in ticks7.25 / 0.25 = 29 ticks
First pass — what the page returns29 x $12.50 x 3 = $1,087.50
Second pass — target distance in ticks14.75 / 0.25 = 59 ticks
Second pass — what the page returns59 x $12.50 x 3 = $2,212.50
The two readings against each other, by hand2,212.50 / 1,087.50 = 2.03 : 1
One tick of slippage each way, from the same tick value2 x $12.50 x 3 = $75.00

A stop seven and a quarter points away, barely a line's width on a chart, is $1,087.50 across three contracts; the same distance on three MES would be $108.75. The 2.03:1 figure is arithmetic on the two readings rather than a probability, so it says what the exit distances are worth and nothing about how often either is reached. A tick of slippage at each end is $75, which is 7% of the risk before any fee is counted.

How to use the ES Tick Value calculator

Enter the move you care about. Points and ticks are interchangeable on ES at four ticks to the point, so a 3-point stop and a 12-tick stop are the same input arriving two ways.
Enter the number of contracts. One ES is ten MES, so it is worth pricing the position both ways before settling on a size.
Read the per-tick figure first, then the total. The $12.50 is the unit every other number on the page is multiplied up from.
Check that the distance you entered is a whole number of ticks. A level taken from a moving average or a Fibonacci retracement usually is not, and the fill will land on the nearest quarter point either side of it.
Convert a typical session range into cash before choosing a contract count rather than after. Forty points and $2,000 are the same fact, and only one of them is stated in the account's units.
Add your own commission and exchange fees to the result. They are charged per contract on each side of the trade and are not part of this arithmetic.

Limitations of the ES Tick Value calculator

Every calculation makes assumptions. These are the ones that matter here.

The $12.50 holds only while CME's published specification does. Exchange notices revise contract terms, so treat the current spec as the authority rather than a figure printed here.
Cash totals assume every fill lands on the price typed. ES is deep, but it gaps across the daily maintenance break and the Sunday reopen, and several quarter points can pass without a print at a resting level when a scheduled release hits.
Commission, exchange and clearing fees sit outside this arithmetic. They land per contract on each side of the trade, barely register against a 29-tick stop, and are a large share of a four-tick scalp worth $50.
A point on the ES chart is not a point on the cash S&P 500 at the same instant. The future trades at a basis to the index reflecting financing less the dividends forgone, so turning an index move into ES cash is an approximation rather than an identity.
Every figure is in US dollars, because ES settles in US dollars. An account funded in sterling or euros carries exchange-rate movement on top of the position, and none of that is modelled here.
No market data is used anywhere on the page. The range, the stop distance and the contract count are all yours, so the output is only as representative as the numbers chosen to go into it.

Frequently asked questions about ES Tick Value

Why does ES usually quote a single tick wide?

Because it is the contract institutions use to take and hedge large-cap US index exposure, so there is normally size resting on both sides of the quarter-point grid. The practical effect is that crossing the spread costs about $12.50 a contract rather than several ticks, which is what makes short holding periods arithmetically viable in the first place. That depth thins overnight, around the maintenance break, and in the seconds either side of scheduled data.

How many MES contracts equal one ES?

Ten. The multiplier is $5 against $50 while the tick stays at 0.25, so an MES tick is $1.25 and ten of them come to the $12.50 of one ES tick. The exposure matches exactly and the cost does not, because fees are charged per contract and ten micros generate ten chargeable contracts instead of one.

My platform would not accept a stop at 5,512.40. What happened?

That is not a price ES trades at. The contract moves in 0.25 increments, so valid levels end in .00, .25, .50 or .75, and anything between them is either rejected or snapped to the nearest one. The consequence for risk is that the distance shifts by up to half a tick, or $6.25 a contract, away from whatever the indicator or the spreadsheet said it would be.

How many ticks away is a sensible place for a stop on ES?

This page will not name a figure, because the choice is a trade-off rather than a setting. A stop a few ticks away is cheap when it is hit but sits inside ordinary noise, so it is hit often; a stop measured in tens of points survives that noise and costs a multiple of the same $12.50 per tick when it is reached. Where the balance falls depends on the account, the holding period and what the entry was based on, none of which this arithmetic can see. What it can do is price each candidate distance in cash so the comparison happens in money rather than in chart pixels.

Is a point on the ES chart the same as a point on the S&P 500 index?

Not at the same moment. The future carries a basis to the cash index, reflecting the cost of carrying the position to expiry net of the dividends an index holder would have received, so the two sit a few points apart and converge as expiry approaches. They track each other closely enough for most purposes, but reading an index move, converting it to ES points and then to cash applies a small error twice.

What does a day's range work out to in cash on one contract?

Multiply the range in points by $50: thirty points is $1,500, sixty points is $3,000, and a hundred-point day on a single contract is $5,000. The range itself has to be supplied by you, since nothing here reads the market. The reason to run it is that the answer arrives in the account's units, where it is almost always larger than the points figure made it sound.

Last reviewed 6 October 2026. See our methodology and editorial policy.

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