Risk/Reward & Break-Even Win Rate Calculator
Free risk-reward calculator: find the break-even win rate for any reward-to-risk ratio, factor in costs, and check whether your win rate is a real, positive edge.
Win rate alone is meaningless. Find the win rate you need to break even at your reward-to-risk — after fees and slippage — and see whether your edge is actually positive.
QuantDojo · Free tool
Risk/Reward & Break-Even Win Rate
How often must you win to break even at a given reward-to-risk — after costs — and does your win rate actually clear that bar?
How it works: break-even % = (1 + cost) ÷ (1 + R) · expectancy = winrate × (R + 1) − 1 − cost (in R). Costs (commissions + slippage) are entered in R — e.g. a $10 round-turn on a $100 risk is 0.1R.
Educational tool — not financial advice. Assumes a fixed reward-to-risk; partial exits and variable costs will shift the real numbers.
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Why win rate alone is meaningless
A 90% win rate sounds elite — but if your winners are tiny and your losers huge, you still lose money. What matters is win rate paired with reward-to-risk. This calculator shows the win rate you'd need just to break even, and whether your actual win rate clears that bar.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good risk-reward ratio?
There's no magic number, but the higher your reward-to-risk, the lower the win rate you need to stay profitable. At 2:1 you only need to win about a third of the time; at 1:1 you need more than half.
How do I calculate trading expectancy?
Expectancy per trade (in R) is win rate × (R + 1) − 1 − cost, where R is your reward-to-risk and cost is your round-turn fees and slippage expressed in R. Positive means a statistical edge — but only if those inputs are real and not curve-fit to the past.
Why express costs in R?
R is your risk per trade, so it is the natural unit. A $10 round-turn cost on a $100 risk is 0.1R — directly comparable to your reward, and exactly what eats into your edge. Enter it in the calculator to see how much your break-even win rate rises.
Backtest numbers are easy to fool yourself with. Run yours through quantcheck to see if the edge survives proper, multiple-testing-corrected validation.