Risk / Reward Calculator
Risk / reward calculator
Reward : risk
Move to stop
Move to target
Win rate to break even
The last figure is the useful one: at a reward-to-risk of 2:1 you need to be right just over a third of the time to break even, and at 1:2 you need to be right two-thirds of the time. It says nothing about whether you will hit that rate. Fees, funding and slippage all push the required rate higher than shown. Runs entirely in your browser. Not advice.
What this calculator does
From an entry, a stop and a target it returns the reward-to-risk ratio, the percentage move to each level, and the win rate that ratio would require for you merely to break even.
The fourth number is the point
Reward-to-risk on its own is easy to misread. A 5:1 setup sounds excellent until you notice it only pays off one time in ten. The break-even win rate converts the ratio into the thing that actually determines whether a strategy survives:
- At 1:1 you need to be right 50% of the time
- At 2:1 you need 33.3%
- At 3:1 you need 25%
- At 1:2 you need 66.7%
- At 1:3 you need 75%
Read that list in both directions. A high ratio lets you be wrong most of the time. A low ratio demands accuracy that very few people sustain. Neither is a recommendation — a 1:2 setup taken by someone who genuinely wins 80% of the time is profitable, and a 3:1 setup taken by someone who wins 15% of the time is not.
Break-even is not the target
The win rate shown is the point at which you stop losing money, before costs. Fees, spread, slippage and funding on leveraged positions all push the required rate higher, and none of them are modelled here. A strategy that needs 33.3% to break even on paper needs meaningfully more than that in practice, and how much more depends on how often you trade.
The assumption underneath
All of this assumes your stop and target both fill at the prices you set. In crypto neither is guaranteed: markets gap, books thin out under stress, and a stop can fill well past where you placed it. That makes the real risk larger than the calculated risk, which makes the real required win rate higher again.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good reward-to-risk ratio? There is no single answer, and we will not invent one. The useful test is whether your own win rate clears the break-even rate for the ratios you take.
How many units should I buy? That is a different calculation — see the position size calculator.
Does it work for shorts? Yes. Put the stop above the entry and the target below; the ratio and required win rate are computed from absolute distances.
Is this advice? No. See our disclaimer.