Know the odds before your money is on the line
TradeBinaryOptions started as a guide to binary options, the all-or-nothing trades where you know your payout and your loss before you click. Since then, most countries have banned them for everyday traders, and the reason is in the maths: the payout is set so that the seller wins over time. We kept that maths and built 53 free calculators around it, for traders, investors, freelancers and anyone trying to make their money work harder.
Free calculators to try
Browse all 53- YouTube RPM Calculator Turn CPM, monetized playbacks and your revenue share into YouTube RPM and monthly earnings from long videos and Shorts.
- Bollinger Bands Calculator Paste closing prices to get upper, middle and lower bands, %B and bandwidth, and spot a squeeze.
- YouTube Monetization Checker Check your channel against the Partner Program requirements and see how many months you need at your current pace.
- Dividend Adjusted Return Calculator Measure a dividend stock's total return with dividends as cash or reinvested, after dividend tax.
- Stop Loss Calculator Find the stop price that fits your risk budget and compare it with ATR and percentage stops for the same position.
- Risk Reward Ratio Calculator Get the reward to risk ratio, break-even win rate and expected profit of a trade from its entry, stop and target.
- Facebook Page Value Calculator Value a Facebook page on what it earns: reach, engagement, sponsored post rates and monetization, times a profit multiple.
- Affiliate Marketing Income Calculator Follow visitors through clicks, sales and commission, with refunds and recurring payouts, to your monthly affiliate income and EPC.
How binary options worked
A binary option asks one question: will the price be above or below a level when the clock runs out? If you were right, you won a fixed payout, often 70 to 90 percent of your stake. If you were wrong, you lost the whole stake. It did not matter whether the price beat the level by one cent or by a thousand dollars.
That certainty is what made them popular, and it is also what made them expensive. A win paid less than a loss cost, so a trader at an 85 percent payout had to be right on 54 out of every 100 trades just to stay level. Over short time frames, few people manage that for long.
The calculator at the top of this page runs exactly that sum. Move the payout and win rate and watch where break-even sits.
Where they stand today
- European Union
- Sale to retail traders banned since 2018
- United Kingdom
- Permanent ban for retail traders since 2019
- Australia
- Banned for retail clients since 2021
- Canada
- Options shorter than 30 days banned for individuals since 2017
- United States
- Legal only on CFTC-registered exchanges
Websites that still sell binary options to people in these countries are usually unregulated, and getting money back from them is hard. Before you deposit anywhere, use our regulation checker. Rules change, so confirm with your own regulator.
Our old strategy guides, turned into numbers
The strategies we used to write about still apply to stocks, forex and crypto. What was missing was a way to check whether they pay. Each idea now has a calculator that does that.
- The trend is your friend
- Trading with the trend only works if your stop gives the price room to move. Average True Range calculator
- Moving averages
- Bands around a moving average show when a price is stretched from normal. Bollinger Bands calculator
- Reversals at support and resistance
- A reversal setup is only worth taking when the target is far enough from the stop. Risk reward ratio calculator
- Protecting your account
- We used to call it hedging. Today the simplest protection is never risking too much on one trade. Position size calculator
- Testing a system
- Any system, from the 123 reversal to your own, comes down to win rate times average win. Trade expectancy calculator
- Practising on a demo first
- See how a strategy's results can swing on luck alone before you risk real money. Trading dice roll simulator
Questions about binary options and this site
Are binary options legal?
It depends on where you live. The EU banned their sale to retail traders in 2018, the UK made its ban permanent in 2019, Australia followed in 2021 and Canada banned short-term binary options for individuals in 2017. In the US they are only legal on exchanges registered with the CFTC. Websites that offer them to retail traders in these countries anyway are usually unregulated.
How does a binary option payout work?
You choose whether a price will be above or below a level when the option expires. If you are right you win a fixed payout, often 70 to 90 percent of your stake. If you are wrong you lose the whole stake. How far the price moves does not matter, only which side of the level it ends on.
Why can a high payout still lose money?
Because a win pays less than a loss costs. At an 85 percent payout you win $85 or lose $100, so you need to be right on more than 54 percent of trades just to break even. Most short-term price moves are close to a coin flip, which is why the odds favour the seller of the option.
What happened to the broker reviews?
We removed them. Binary options are now banned or tightly restricted for retail traders in most of the countries our readers come from, and we no longer review, rank or recommend any trading provider. The site now focuses on calculators that show the numbers behind a decision.
Are the calculators free?
Yes. Every calculator is free, needs no sign-up and runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter are never sent to us. Results are estimates for planning and learning, not financial advice.