Forex Lot Sizes Explained: Micro, Mini & Standard

A lot is the unit of trade size in forex. A standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, a mini lot is 10,000 units (0.1), a micro lot is 1,000 units (0.01), and a nano lot is 100 units (0.001). Each step down is simply 10× smaller, and the smaller the lot, the less each pip of movement is worth.

The four forex lot sizes

* Approximate pip value on a standard USD pair (e.g. EUR/USD). Not all brokers offer nano lots; the most common minimum is the micro lot (0.01).

What is a "lot" anyway?

Currencies move in tiny increments, so you can't trade them one unit at a time. You'd need a position worth thousands to make a single pip meaningful. A lot is just a standardised bundle of currency units that makes trade sizes practical. When someone says they "bought one lot of EUR/USD," they mean a position of 100,000 euros.

The key thing every lot size controls is pip value, or how much money you make or lose for each one-pip move. That's the entire reason lot size matters for risk.

Standard lot (1.0 = 100,000 units)

The full-size unit. One pip is worth about $10 on most USD pairs, so a 50-pip move is roughly $500. Standard lots are for well-funded accounts. At sensible 1% risk you'd typically want a five-figure balance before trading them.

Mini lot (0.1 = 10,000 units)

One-tenth of a standard lot, about $1 per pip. A comfortable middle ground for growing accounts in the low-thousands.

Micro lot (0.01 = 1,000 units)

One-hundredth of a standard lot, about $0.10 per pip, and the minimum size at most brokers. This is where most beginners and small accounts trade, because your risk per pip is small enough that mistakes stay cheap while you learn.

Nano lot (0.001 = 100 units)

One-thousandth of a standard lot, about a cent per pip. Only some brokers offer them, but they're useful for testing a strategy with real money at almost no risk.

Which lot size should you trade?

There's no fixed answer. The right lot size depends on your account balance and your stop-loss distance, not on a label. As a rough guide, beginners and accounts under a few thousand dollars trade micro lots; mini lots suit mid-sized accounts; standard lots are for larger ones.

For the specifics by balance, see what lot size to use for a $100, $500 or $1,000 account, and for the method behind it, how to calculate position size in forex.

Why pip value scales with lot size

Notice the pattern in the table: every time the lot size drops by 10×, the pip value drops by 10× too. That's not a coincidence. Pip value is just the lot's unit count multiplied by the size of one pip. So a micro lot (1,000 units) is always worth one-hundredth of a standard lot (100,000 units). Once you know one, you know them all.