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Win Rate Calculator

Work out your win rate, and the win rate your reward to risk actually requires.

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: 1
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Your Result

Your Win Rate 42.50%
Break-even win rate at this R:R
How far above or below
Trades counted
Expected result per 100 trades, in R
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The calculation runs in your browser. Rates used for currency conversion are indicative — check your broker for the exact figure.

A win rate on its own says almost nothing. Ninety percent is a losing strategy if the tenth trade gives back everything, and thirty percent is a very good one at four to one. The number only becomes meaningful next to the reward to risk it was earned at.

So this shows both: the rate your record produced, and the rate your ratio requires to break even. The gap between them is the edge, and the last line turns that gap into a figure in R over a hundred trades, which is the honest way to compare two strategies that trade at different sizes.

When to use it

  • When reviewing a month of trading and deciding whether to continue.
  • When a strategy has a high win rate and you want to know whether the targets justify it.
  • Before switching to wider targets, to see what win rate you can afford to lose.
  • When comparing your own record against a strategy someone else is selling.

The rate counts wins against decided trades, and the requirement comes from the ratio alone.

Win Rate = Wins ÷ (Wins + Losses)
Break-even Rate = 1 ÷ (1 + R:R)
Expectancy in R = (Win Rate × R:R) − (1 − Win Rate)
  • Breakeven trades are counted in the total but excluded from the rate, because a trade that decided nothing should not be scored as a loss.
  • The break-even rate ignores costs. Spread, commission and swap raise the real requirement, and on frequent trading they raise it noticeably.
  • Fewer than about thirty decided trades is not a rate, it is noise. The figure is still shown, because hiding it would be worse, but it should not be trusted yet.
  • This assumes every win is the same size and every loss is the same size. Real records vary, which is what the expectancy calculator handles.

Eighty decided trades, thirty-four of them winners, at an average of two to one.

Trades counted80
Your win rate42.50%
Break-even rate at 2:133.33%
Above the requirement by9.17 points
Per 100 trades+27.5 R

Working: thirty-four wins out of eighty decided trades is 42.5%. Two to one only needs 33.33%, so this record clears the bar by just over nine points. Over a hundred trades that is about twenty-seven and a half times the amount risked per trade, before costs.

What is a good win rate?

There is no such number without the ratio next to it. At one to one you need over half. At three to one you need a quarter. A trader with 35% and a trader with 65% can be equally profitable, and equally unprofitable.

Should breakeven trades count as losses?

Not in the rate. They cost nothing and won nothing, so counting them as losses understates the rate. They are included in the trade count here so you can see how many of them there were, which is itself worth watching.

How many trades before the number means something?

Thirty decided trades is the rough point where a rate stops swinging wildly, and a hundred is where it starts to settle. Below that, a run of five wins can move the figure by ten points and mean nothing at all.

My win rate is above the requirement but I am still losing. Why?

Most often because the average reward to risk you entered is better than the one you actually get — winners cut short, losers allowed to run past the stop, or costs not counted. The journal answers this; a calculator cannot.

Count Your TradesWins, losses, breakevens
Enter Your Average R:RFrom your journal
Compare the Two RatesYours against the requirement
Read the GapThat gap is your edge

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