"0.10 lots" is a size, not a risk. Open the same 0.10 lots on two different brokers and you can have very different amounts of money on the line — which is exactly how a "small" position quietly blows a daily drawdown rule you thought you had plenty of room under.
Why the same lot size means different money
A lot is just a multiplier on the contract. What actually decides your risk is the money value of one pip for that symbol, on that broker, in your account currency. That value depends on three things that are not the same everywhere:
- Contract size — how many units one lot represents. One "lot" of gold is 100 ounces at most brokers, but some quote it as 10, and index CFDs range from 1 to 10 contracts per lot.
- Tick / pip size and tick value — how the broker defines the minimum price step and what that step is worth per lot.
- Quote vs account currency — a EUR-quoted or JPY-quoted symbol on a USD account carries an FX conversion that shifts the pip value with the exchange rate.
Two brokers can label a symbol the same way ("XAUUSD", "US30", "GER40") and still assign a different contract size, tick value, or number of decimal places. Same 0.10 lots, different dollars per pip. The label tells you nothing; the contract specification tells you everything.
A worked example
Take a mean-reversion EA that trades 0.10 lots of gold with a 20-pip stop. On Broker A the pip value is 10 per lot, so 0.10 lots risks 1.00 per pip and the stop costs 20. On Broker B the same symbol carries a pip value of 14 per lot because their contract size and point definition differ — now 0.10 lots risks 1.40 per pip and the same 20-pip stop costs 28.
Same lots, same stop distance, same chart — but Broker B risks 40% more money per trade.
Scale that across a 10-trade day and the account that was sized for a 200 daily loss is now exposed to 280. On a funded challenge with a fixed daily drawdown, that gap is the difference between a clean day and a breach you never saw coming.
The question that actually matters
Stop thinking in lots and start thinking in money per pip. The lot number is an input to your broker's platform; it is not a measure of exposure. Two figures describe your real risk: how much one pip moves your balance, and how many pips sit between entry and stop. Multiply them and you have the money on the line — the only number a drawdown rule actually cares about.
How to make two brokers equal
You don't match the lot size — you match the money risk. If you know the value per pip per lot on each broker, the equivalent size is simply:
lotsB = lotsA × (pip valueA ÷ pip valueB)
So if Broker A is 10 per pip per lot and Broker B is 7, then 0.10 lots on A is about 0.14 lots on B to keep the same money at risk. If Broker B is richer at 14 per pip, 0.10 lots on A becomes roughly 0.07 lots on B. The ratio is all that matters, and it moves in the opposite direction to intuition: a broker that pays more per pip needs fewer lots.
That's the whole idea behind the Lot Equivalence tool below — enter your Broker A lot size and the pip value per lot on each broker, and it returns the size on Broker B that keeps your money at risk identical, along with the risk-per-pip on both sides so you can sanity-check the direction of the adjustment.
Common mistakes running EAs across brokers
These are the traps that catch algorithmic traders when a strategy that passed on one account gets moved to another:
- Assuming a fixed lot size in the EA carries the same risk everywhere — it almost never does.
- Copying a position from a demo or backtest account to a funded account without re-checking the contract spec.
- Ignoring the account-currency conversion on non-USD symbols, where pip value drifts as the exchange rate moves.
- Trusting the symbol name instead of the broker's contract specification for contract size and tick value.
- Reading fractional-pip (5-digit / 3-digit) quotes as if they were full pips, inflating or deflating the perceived stop distance.
Takeaway
Before you copy a position from one broker to another — or move a strategy that passed on a demo to a funded account — check the pip value, not the lot number. Size the trade to the money you're willing to lose, let the lots fall where they may, and treat the fixed lot size baked into an EA as a starting point that has to be re-derived on every new account.
