Risk to reward ratio calculator (R:R)
Get the risk to reward ratio of any trade and the win rate you need to break even. No sign-up.
Enter your entry, stop loss and take profit. The direction is worked out from where your stop sits, and the break-even win rate shows how often you need to win for the trade idea to pay.
How to read the result
| Risk to reward | Win rate needed to break even |
|---|---|
| 1 : 1 | 50% |
| 1 : 1.5 | 40% |
| 1 : 2 | 33.3% |
| 1 : 3 | 25% |
Break-even win rate = 1 / (1 + R), where R is reward divided by risk. This ignores spread and commission, which raise the real number slightly.
Common mistakes
- Picking the target to make the ratio look good instead of where the market is likely to go.
- Judging a strategy by risk to reward without checking its real win rate. Your journal shows both.
- Moving the stop wider after entry, which silently lowers the ratio you planned.
Size the trade with the position size calculator, and see how win rate and payoff combine in win rate, profit factor and expectancy explained.
This calculator is for education. It is not trading or investment advice.
From risk to reward ratio to win rate: the full table
The break-even win rate is the point where wins and losses cancel out before costs. In real trading you need more than that to be profitable, so the table also shows the win rate with a 5-point and a 10-point cushion for spread, commission and ordinary variation.
| Risk to reward | Break-even win rate | With a 5-point cushion | With a 10-point cushion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 : 0.5 | 66.7% | 71.7% | 76.7% |
| 1 : 1 | 50.0% | 55.0% | 60.0% |
| 1 : 1.5 | 40.0% | 45.0% | 50.0% |
| 1 : 2 | 33.3% | 38.3% | 43.3% |
| 1 : 2.5 | 28.6% | 33.6% | 38.6% |
| 1 : 3 | 25.0% | 30.0% | 35.0% |
| 1 : 4 | 20.0% | 25.0% | 30.0% |
| 1 : 5 | 16.7% | 21.7% | 26.7% |
A 1:0.5 trade, where you risk 2 to make 1, needs you to win about two trades in three just to stand still. A 1:3 trade only needs one in four. Neither is better in itself: what matters is whether your strategy's real win rate clears the break-even rate for the ratio it actually delivers.
A worked example (hypothetical numbers)
Suppose a long on a forex pair at 1.0800 with a stop at 1.0770 and a target at 1.0860. The risk is 30 pips and the reward is 60 pips, so the ratio is 1:2 and the break-even win rate is 1 / (1 + 2) = 33.3%. If your journal shows that this setup has won 40 times in 100, you have a margin of about 6.7 points above break-even, which is worth having but easily eaten by two or three pips of spread on each trade if your stops are tight.
Now suppose the same setup, but you habitually move the stop out to 1.0755 when price approaches it. The risk becomes 45 pips, the ratio falls to 1:1.33 and the break-even win rate rises to 42.9%. The trade that looked profitable on paper now loses money at a 40% win rate. A journal that records the planned stop and the actual stop makes this visible in a way memory never does.
Planned ratio versus realised ratio
The calculator gives the planned ratio. Your results depend on the realised one, which is what your trades actually delivered after early exits, moved stops and partial closes. Add these columns to your journal and compare them:
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Planned risk to reward | The ratio you chose at entry |
| Realised result in R | Profit or loss divided by the amount risked at the original stop |
| Exit reason | Target hit, stopped out, closed early, stop moved |
| Plan followed (yes/no) | Whether the exit matched the plan |
If the average realised winner is much smaller than the planned reward, you are cutting winners early (see cutting winners early) and the break-even win rate you actually face is higher than the table suggests.
Choosing a target honestly
- Start from the chart, not the ratio. Place the stop where the idea is wrong and the target at the next level where price has reacted before. Then read the ratio the market gives you.
- Skip trades with a poor ratio. If the nearest sensible target gives less than the ratio your strategy needs, passing on the trade is a valid decision.
- Use your own history. The win rate you plug into this tool should come from your logged trades for that setup, not from a guess or a number you saw online.
- Do not forget costs. On a tight scalping stop, the spread can be a large share of the risk. Include it when you compare ratios.
How it connects to position size and expectancy
Ratio only describes the shape of one trade. Position size decides how much that trade is worth to your account, which the position size calculator handles. Expectancy combines ratio and win rate into the average value of a trade; see the expectancy calculator. A strategy with a poor ratio can still be profitable if its win rate is high enough, and a strategy with a large ratio can still lose money if its win rate falls short, which is why you need the journal data for both.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good risk to reward ratio?
How do I calculate risk to reward?
What is the break-even win rate?
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- Free drawdown recovery calculator
- Free trading expectancy calculator
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- Free trading compounding calculator
- Free losing streak calculator
- Prop firm drawdown calculator (daily and maximum loss)
- Prop firm risk calculator: how many losing trades until the limit
- Risk of ruin calculator for traders
- All trading journal comparisons
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