Margin Calculator

The Margin Calculator shows how much of your account balance will be used as margin when opening a trade.

It calculates the required margin based on the instrument you’re trading, your account leverage, your position size, and the current market price.

This helps you understand how much of your capital will be tied up in the trade and whether you have enough free margin available to open it.

Example:
If you want to buy 10 shares of Apple at $280 without leverage, you need at least $2,800 in your trading account. With 1:5 leverage, the required margin drops to $560, allowing you to open the same trade using only a portion of your account balance.

When trading with leverage, instead of paying the full value of the position, you only have to cover a small portion of it, and that portion is called margin.

Margin determines how many trades you can open and how much exposure you take on. If a trade requires more margin than what you have available, the broker simply won’t let you open it.

For example, if one ounce(0.01 lot) of gold costs $4200, without leverage you would need $4200 in your account to open that trade. If gold rises from $4200 to $4300, you would make $100 profit.

With 1:100 leverage, you only need $42 to open the exact same trade, and if the price rises to $4300, you still make the same $100. Leverage changes the required capital, not the profit or loss per price movement.

It’s also important to understand that margin is “locked” while the trade is open. You cannot use the same margin for multiple trades. So if your account balance is $5000 and you open a gold position that requires $4200 margin, then only $800 remains available for other trades.

1. Select the instrument you want to trade.

2. Select your trading account currency.

3. Enter the leverage your broker provides for this specific instrument (for example, 500:1).

4. Enter the size of your trade in lots or units.

5. Enter the current market price if needed (the calculator will prefill this field automatically).

6. Press Calculate to see the exact margin required to open the trade.

No. Margin is not a cost, a fee, or something you lose automatically. It is simply the amount of capital required to open a trade. Your profit or loss only depends on how much of what you buy or sell and where you close the trade.

For example, if you buy gold at $4200 and sell it at $4100, you lose $100 regardless of whether your margin was $42, $420, or $4200.

Different instruments have different leverage limits. Brokers assign higher leverage to less volatile assets (like major forex pairs) and lower leverage to more volatile assets (like stocks, gold, indices, and crypto).

So even if your account says “up to 1:500,” it doesn’t mean every instrument uses 1:500 leverage. Each asset category has its own leverage setting, which is why the required margin can be very different even for the same trade size.

Make sure to check your broker’s website to see the exact leverage offered for each asset.

Margin is determined by three factors: the asset price, the size of your position, and the leverage for that instrument.

If Stock A costs $100, buying 10 shares without leverage requires $1,000. If Stock B costs $200, buying 10 shares requires $2,000.

With 10:1 leverage, you can open the same positions using only 1/10 of the amount required to buy them. In this case, 10 shares of Stock A would require $100 margin, and 10 shares of Stock B would require $200.

Higher-priced assets and larger position sizes always require more margin, and lower leverage multiplies the margin requirement further.