Win Rate & Expectancy Calculator

Win rate & expectancy calculator

A high win rate doesn't mean a profitable strategy. Enter your win rate and your average win and loss to see what each trade is really worth over time.

Free

No sign-up

Runs in your browser

Win rate

Average win

Average loss

As a positive number.

Number of trades (optional)

Expectancy per trade

+$75.00

+0.5R per trade

Profit factor

Payoff ratio

Breakeven win rate

33.3%

Over 100 trades

+$7,500.00

Profitable: your 50.0% win rate is 16.7 points above the 33.3% this payoff needs.

Stop calculating by hand

SetMetric is a free trading journal that does this math for every trade you take — position risk, R-multiples, win rate, expectancy and drawdown — and shows you which setups, times and habits make or lose you money.

Expectancy: what each trade is worth

Expectancy = (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss).

It's the average amount you can expect to make or lose per trade over many trades. A 50% win rate with a $300 average win and a $150 average loss has an expectancy of +$75 per trade — so 100 trades are worth about $7,500, before fees.

Profit factor and payoff ratio

Profit factor is gross profit divided by gross loss. Above 1 a strategy makes money; many traders look for 1.5 or more. The payoff ratio is your average win divided by your average loss.

Win rate and payoff ratio pull against each other. Strategies that take quick profits usually win often with a small payoff; trend-following strategies win less often with large payoffs. Both can work — the calculator shows whether your combination does.

Use your real numbers

The most common mistake is plugging in the win rate you remember instead of the one you have. Pull at least 30–50 trades from your broker history to get a meaningful average — SetMetric's free trade analyzer can compute these from your CSV in seconds.

Frequently asked questions

It depends on your average win and loss. The breakeven win rate is 1 ÷ (1 + average win ÷ average loss). If your average win is twice your average loss, you need to win more than 33.3% of trades.

Multiply your win rate by your average win, multiply your loss rate by your average loss, and subtract the second from the first. The result is your average profit per trade.

Above 1.0 is profitable; 1.5 to 2.0 is generally considered solid and above 2.0 strong, provided it comes from enough trades to be meaningful.

Only if your losses aren't much larger than your wins. With a 70% win rate, an average loss more than 2.33 times your average win makes the strategy unprofitable.