FREE TOOL · XAUUSD
Gold lot size calculator
Work out the right XAUUSD position size for your balance, risk and stop. Unlike most calculators, this one also tells you when the answer is a lie — because on a small account the broker minimum quietly makes your trade riskier than you asked.
Stop loss in dollars of gold price movement — if you enter at 2400 and your stop is at 2390, that is 10.
One XAUUSD lot is 100 troy ounces, so a $1 move is $100 per lot and $1 per 0.01 lot. Results assume your broker uses the standard 100oz contract and a 0.01 minimum — check yours. This is an arithmetic tool, not financial advice.
The formula
Worked example: a $1,000 account risking 1.5% is $15. With a $10 stop, one lot would risk $1,000, so you need 0.015 lots — which rounds down to 0.01 and risks $10. Now run the same 1.5% on a $150 account: you want to risk $2.25, which needs 0.00225 lots. Your broker cannot go below 0.01, so the trade risks $10 — about 6.7% of the account, more than four times what you asked for. Nothing warns you. That is the trap.
Note what actually fixes it, though: that same $150 account with a $2 stop risks $2 on 0.01 lots — 1.3%, exactly where it should be. The problem was never the balance on its own, it was the balance relative to the stop distance. This is why a single “minimum account size” number is misleading, and why the calculator works it out from your inputs instead of quoting one.
Common questions
How do you calculate lot size for gold?
Divide the amount you are willing to risk by the value of your stop distance for one lot. One XAUUSD lot is 100 troy ounces, so a $1 move in gold is $100 per lot. The formula is lots = risk amount ÷ (stop distance in dollars × 100). Risking $15 with a $10 stop gives 15 ÷ 1,000 = 0.015 lots, which your broker will round down to 0.01.
What is the pip value of XAUUSD?
It depends on how your broker defines a pip on gold, which is why this calculator works in dollars of price movement instead. On a standard 100oz contract, a $1.00 move in the gold price is $100 per 1.00 lot, $10 per 0.10 lot and $1 per 0.01 lot. If your broker quotes gold to two decimals and calls 0.01 a pip, that is $1 per lot per pip.
Why does my calculated lot size get rounded up?
Because brokers enforce a minimum trade size, almost always 0.01 lots. If the correct size for your risk is smaller than that, the trade cannot be made small enough — so it gets clamped up to 0.01 and you end up risking more than you intended, sometimes several times more. That is the single most expensive thing a small gold account does not know about, and this calculator flags it whenever it happens.
How much money do I need to trade gold properly?
There is no fixed answer, because it depends entirely on your stop distance. The rule is simply that 0.01 lots has to cost less than the amount you want to risk. One 0.01 lot risks $1 for every $1 of stop distance — so a $10 stop risks $10, which is 10% of a $100 account but 1% of a $1,000 one. Trade tighter stops and a small account works fine; trade wide stops on a small account and every trade is oversized no matter what percentage you configured. Our own bot runs from $100 for exactly this reason: it is workable, as long as you know what your stop distance is doing to your real risk.
How much should I risk per trade on gold?
Most systematic traders use 1% to 2% of the account per trade. Gold moves several times the daily range of a major FX pair, so a percentage that feels conservative on EURUSD can produce much larger swings on XAUUSD. What matters more than the number is that it is consistent and that your account is large enough for the number to actually be applied.
Is this calculator accurate for my broker?
It assumes the standard 100 troy ounce contract and a 0.01 minimum lot with 0.01 steps, which covers most MT4 and MT5 brokers offering XAUUSD. A few use different contract sizes or minimums, so check your symbol specification if the numbers look off.
Or let the bot do it every trade
This calculation is one of the things Tech Kick Bot runs automatically before every entry, along with the spread check, the news calendar and the daily loss lock. It runs from $100, and it does the same check this page just did at startup — so if your balance and stop distance are pulling your real risk above what you configured, it tells you rather than letting you find out later.