Enter your ATR reading, a multiplier, and an optional minimum spacing floor to get a recommended grid spacing in pips. Add your lot size, currency pair, equity, and accepted drawdown to also see a rough guide to how many grid levels per side your account can fund.
Grid-spacing calculator
Enter an ATR value and multiplier above to calculate spacing.
Educational tool, not investment advice. Spacing and level counts here follow the rule-based grid blueprint; verify against your own broker's spread, margin requirements, and lot step before running a live grid.
How the Grid-Spacing Calculator Works
Grid spacing decides how far apart each buy and sell level sits, and getting it wrong in either direction has a cost: too tight, and normal volatility fills every level and stacks a losing position fast; too wide, and the grid barely trades during calm sessions. Our rule-based grid blueprint derives spacing from volatility rather than a fixed number, and this calculator applies that formula to numbers you supply — it does not fetch a value or recommend one on its own.
The calculator does two things:
- Recommended spacing — your ATR value multiplied by your multiplier, floored at a minimum you optionally set.
- Grid levels per side (guide) — given a fixed lot size, currency pair, account equity, and how much floating drawdown you’re willing to accept if one entire side of the grid fills, the largest number of levels that stays inside that budget.
Neither figure is a signal or a forecast. Both are arithmetic applied to inputs you control.
The Formulas
Spacing, from the ATR method in our dynamic grid trading guide:
spacing = ATR value x ATR multiplier
spacing = max(spacing, minimum floor) [floor is optional]
The multiplier field defaults to 0.9, the figure used in that guide’s EUR/USD configuration — the guide documents a 0.8x-1.2x range generally. That default is an example, not a recommendation for your pair or timeframe. The floor mirrors the rule-based grid blueprint’s rule that spacing should stay at least K times your pair’s typical spread, so a widening spread can’t eat an outsized share of each level’s target; enter that floor in pips directly rather than re-deriving it from a spread figure and a K you’d have to choose separately.
Grid levels per side, from the blueprint’s per-level sizing rule (section 4), which states the worst-case floating loss if one entire side fills:
MaxFloat = lot x pip_value x spacing x L x (L + 1) / 2
The blueprint solves this for the lot size given a level count L. This calculator solves the same equation the other direction — for the largest integer L such that MaxFloat(L) stays within a drawdown budget (D percent of equity) you set:
L(L + 1) / 2 <= (D x equity) / (lot x pip_value x spacing)
D isn’t a number this tool prescribes. The blueprint’s own guidance is to keep it “well under a quarter” of equity, decided before the grid runs — the field defaults to 20% as one illustrative point under that ceiling, clearly labeled as an example.
Worked Example
ATR reads 22 pips on EUR/USD’s H1 chart, multiplier 0.9, no floor entered:
- Spacing: 22 x 0.9 = 19.8 pips
Add a $2,000 account, 0.02 lots per level, EUR/USD (pip value $10/lot, no rate needed), and a 20% accepted drawdown:
- Drawdown budget: $2,000 x 20% = $400
- Dollar-per-pip at 0.02 lots: 0.02 x $10 = $0.20
- Solving
L(L+1)/2 <= 400 / (0.20 x 19.8)gives 13 levels per side — 13 levels filled floats a loss of $360.36, and a 14th would push it to $415.80, over budget.
Switch the floor to 10 pips with a lower ATR reading of 8 pips (multiplier still 0.9): raw spacing is 8 x 0.9 = 7.2 pips, which is below the 10-pip floor, so the floor takes over and spacing becomes 10 pips instead. This is the floor doing its job — spacing derived from a quiet ATR reading would otherwise sit too close to typical spread cost.
Why This Belongs Next to the Blueprint, Not Instead of It
This calculator only mechanizes arithmetic that’s already published in the rule-based grid blueprint and the dynamic grid trading guide. It doesn’t run the market-condition filter that decides whether a grid should be running at all — regime, range containment, event windows, and spread cost still need checking by hand or by an EA before any level goes live. It also doesn’t replace the position-size calculator or pip-value calculator, which this tool’s pip-value lookup reuses internally.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does this calculator’s spacing formula come from?
Spacing = ATR value x ATR multiplier, floored at a minimum you supply. This is the ATR method described in our dynamic grid trading guide (spacing = ATR(14) x 0.8-1.2, with 0.9 used in its EUR/USD configuration) combined with the spacing floor from the rule-based grid blueprint. The calculator does not invent a new rule — it applies those two published formulas to numbers you enter.
Why does the calculator ask for equity and a drawdown percentage just to suggest a spacing?
Those two fields aren’t used for the spacing figure itself — they drive the second output, a rough guide to how many grid levels per side your account can absorb if one side fills completely. That guide comes from the blueprint’s per-level sizing rule, solved for the number of levels instead of the lot size.
Does the calculator fetch a live ATR value or exchange rate?
No. It runs entirely in your browser and never makes a network request. You read the current ATR value off your own chart and type it in, and for pairs that need a conversion rate (JPY crosses, USD/CAD, USD/CHF, EUR/GBP) you enter that yourself too, the same way our position-size and pip-value calculators work.
What does it mean if the calculator says I’m below one grid level?
It means the lot size you entered, at the computed spacing, already exceeds your drawdown budget for even a single filled level. Reduce the lot size per level, raise the accepted drawdown percentage — within reason, see the blueprint’s “well under a quarter” framing — or increase account equity, rather than launching a grid your account can’t fund a single level of.