How much is 1 lot of gold?
One standard XAUUSD lot is 100 troy ounces. That means a $1 move in gold is $100 per lot, a 0.01 move is $1.00, and at $4,150 one lot controls $415,000 of metal. Enter your size below to convert lots into ounces, notional value, dollars per move and margin.
All sizes at once
Lot size table
Same price, same contract size — this is what each common position size is worth in dollars.
| Lots | Ounces | Notional | Per $1 move | Per 0.01 move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | ||||
Read this before sizing
Four numbers, and one of them is ambiguous
Gold is quoted in dollars per ounce to two decimals, which is why "pip" means two different things depending on who is talking.
- Notional is lots × ounces × price. A 0.10 lot at $4,150 controls 10 ounces and $41,500 of metal — the number your leverage and margin are calculated from.
- Dollars per move beats pips. On a 100 oz contract, $1 of price is $100 and $0.01 is $1. Quoting risk in dollars per ounce removes the pip debate entirely.
- "Pip" is not standardised on gold. Some brokers call 0.01 a pip and 0.10 a point; others invert it. If a broker quotes a stop in pips, ask which decimal they mean before you size anything.
- Margin is not risk. At 1:100, one lot needs about $4,150 of margin but a $40 adverse move is $4,000 — the margin number tells you nothing about what the position can lose.
Gold lots that are not 100 ounces
The 100-ounce figure is a convention, not a law. XAUUSD contracts are quoted in troy ounces but the size behind "1.00 lot" is a broker decision, and the difference is not cosmetic:
- 100 oz — the standard XAUUSD CFD on most MetaTrader and cTrader brokers. $1 move = $100 per lot.
- 10 oz — a mini or micro XAUUSD contract on some platforms. $1 move = $10 per lot, so ten times the lots for the same exposure.
- 1 kg (32.1507 oz) — used by some brokers and by MCX gold futures in India. $1 move = $32.15 per lot.
- COMEX GC futures — 100 troy ounces per contract, the futures contract the CFD price tracks.
If you move between a 100 oz and a 10 oz account and keep the same lot size, you have just cut your risk by ninety percent — or increased it tenfold in the other direction. The contract size field above exists so you can price the account you actually have, not the one in a tutorial.
What 0.01 lots actually costs
At 100 oz per lot, 0.01 lots is one ounce. With a 30-cent spread, opening and closing that position costs about 30 cents; the same trade at 1.00 lot costs $30. Multiply by the number of round turns you take in a week and the spread alone becomes a budget line rather than a rounding error — the arithmetic is worked through in the gold EA cost stack.
From lot size to a position you can survive
Lot size answers "how much am I controlling". It does not answer "how much can I lose", because that depends on where your stop is. That is a separate calculation: balance × risk percentage ÷ (stop distance × ounces per lot). The position size calculator does it in one step, and today's levels give you the stop distance the desk is working from.
Two things the table above cannot show: slippage on a fast print, and the swap charged for holding overnight. Both come out of the same money. Nothing here is investment advice — see the risk disclaimer.