Standard vs mini vs micro lot: what 1.00, 0.10 and 0.01 really mean
A lot is a block of the base currency: 100,000, 10,000 or 1,000 units. What 1.00, 0.10 and 0.01 mean on a MetaTrader ticket, and what each does to a small account.
A lot is a fixed block of the base currency. A standard lot is 100,000 units, a mini lot is 10,000 and a micro lot is 1,000, each a tenth of the one above. On a MetaTrader ticket they are written 1.00, 0.10 and 0.01, which is why "0.1 lots" and "one mini lot" are the same trade.
Three names for one ladder
Currencies move in pips, and a pip is a tiny slice of the price. Trading one euro at a time would make each pip worth a fraction of a cent, so the market deals in blocks. IG's guide to lot sizes puts it plainly: lots exist to trade those small movements "in large batches".
| Lot | Units of the base currency | MetaTrader volume | One pip on EUR/USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 100,000 | 1.00 | $10 |
| Mini | 10,000 | 0.10 | $1 |
| Micro | 1,000 | 0.01 | $0.10 |
The units and the pip values are IG's. The notation is the one OANDA's help centre gives for MetaTrader 4: "a standard lot is 1, a mini lot is 0.1, and a micro lot is 0.01".
IG also lists a nano lot of 100 units, worth $0.01 a pip. Even so, 0.01 is the usual minimum at a retail broker, as our guide to starting capital explains.
The misreading that costs ten times
MetaTrader has no "mini" or "micro" button. It has one volume box, measured in lots, and every size is a decimal of the standard lot. Read 0.1 as a micro lot and you have opened ten times the trade you meant.
The safe way to read it is by decimals. 1.00 is a standard lot, 0.10 is a mini lot and 0.01 is a micro lot.
The sizes also add up: 0.37 lots is 3 mini lots plus 7 micro lots, or 37,000 units. That is how our position sizing guide can arrive at 0.4 lots and call it 4 mini lots in the same breath.
Units of what? Of the first currency
A lot counts the base currency, the first one in the pair. One lot of EUR/USD is €100,000, one lot of GBP/USD is £100,000 and one lot of USD/JPY is $100,000. Our guide to currency pairs explains why the first currency is the one you are buying or selling.
So a standard lot of EUR/USD is worth more than $100,000. At 1.1411, the European Central Bank (ECB) reference rate on 23 September 2026, it was a position of $114,110, the figure we used in margin vs leverage. A mini lot was $11,411 and a micro lot $1,141.10.
The pip runs the other way. A standard lot moves 10 units of the quote currency per pip: $10 on EUR/USD, ¥1,000 on USD/JPY. When the quote currency is not your account currency, the money value has to be converted, as our pip value guide shows step by step.
What each size does to a small account
Here is one trade at three sizes: EUR/USD, a USD account of $1,000 and a 30-pip stop. The margin column uses the 30:1 figures from our margin post, scaled down by ten at each step.
| Lot | Loss if the stop is hit | Share of a $1,000 account | Margin at 30:1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (1.00) | $300 | 30% | $3,803.67 |
| Mini (0.10) | $30 | 3% | $380.37 |
| Micro (0.01) | $3 | 0.3% | $38.04 |
The standard lot cannot even be opened: its margin is almost four times the account. The mini lot opens, but one stopped trade costs 3%, above the 1-2% that the same position sizing guide calls common.
On this account, staying inside that range means 0.04 to 0.06 lots, which risk $12 (1.2%) to $18 (1.8%). Only micro-lot steps can express those sizes.
Not every lot is 100,000 units
A lot is a contract, and the contract belongs to the symbol, not to the market. MetaTrader 5's own help defines contract size as the "number of units of the commodity, currency or financial asset in one lot".
On currency pairs it is the 100,000 units of the table. On metals it is not.
Our calculators use 100 ounces for a lot of gold and 5,000 ounces for a lot of silver, the conventions behind the per-lot figures in our gold and silver guides. Both guides warn that your broker may use a different contract, and the same goes for anything that is not a currency pair.
To see yours, right-click the symbol in MetaTrader 5's Market Watch and open Specification. Three fields matter: the contract size, the minimal volume and the volume step.
Some platforms skip lots altogether. OANDA's own platform lets you trade "from as small as 1 unit of currency", so the ladder is a convention, not a law of the market.
What this post does not tell you
It does not tell you which size to trade. That number comes from your stop distance and the money you are willing to lose, and our position sizing guide does that calculation; the pip value calculator does the conversion for any pair.
A lot only tells you how big the block is. How many blocks you can afford is a separate question.
