What is grid trading?
Grid trading places a ladder of buy and sell orders at fixed price intervals between a lower and an upper bound. As the market chops up and down inside that range, the bot buys at each lower level and sells at the next one up, pocketing the gap on every completed pair. It's a strategy built for ranging, sideways markets — it thrives on volatility without needing the price to trend in any particular direction.
This calculator turns a range, a grid count and a budget into the concrete numbers you need to configure the bot: the price step between levels, the capital and quantity placed at each one, and the profit captured per filled grid in both dollars and percent.
How to use this calculator
- Set the lower and upper price of the range you expect the market to trade inside.
- Choose how many grids to split that range into.
- Enter your total investment to spread across the levels.
- Read your profit per grid, grid step, capital per grid and quantity per grid — all update as you type.
How grid numbers are calculated
This tool uses an arithmetic grid, where every level is the same dollar distance apart:
The headline profit per grid % is simply the step expressed against the midpoint of the range — it's how much you gain each time price travels from one level to the next and a pair fills. Multiply that percentage by the capital sitting on a single grid and you get the dollar profit per filled grid. The quantity per grid uses the midpoint as a representative price; in practice each level buys a slightly different amount because the price at each rung differs.
Worked example
You set a range of $40,000 to $60,000, split it into 10 grids, and commit $1,000. The grid step is (60,000 − 40,000) ÷ 10 = $2,000, and the midpoint is (60,000 + 40,000) ÷ 2 = $50,000. Profit per grid is 2,000 ÷ 50,000 = 4.00%. Each grid gets 1,000 ÷ 10 = $100 of capital, which buys roughly 100 ÷ 50,000 = 0.002 coins, and every time a grid fills it captures 100 × 4% = $4.00 gross. If price swings across the full range repeatedly, those $4 fills stack up — but remember the figure is approximate and before fees.
When and why traders use grids
Grid bots shine in choppy, range-bound conditions — the kind of market that frustrates trend traders. Instead of guessing direction, you profit from oscillation: the more the price ping-pongs inside your range, the more pairs fill. Traders use grids to automate accumulation in a consolidation, to harvest volatility on a coin they're neutral on, and to stay mechanically disciplined instead of chasing every wiggle by hand. The wider your range and the more grids you set, the more market scenarios you cover — at the cost of thinner profit per fill.
Common mistakes
- Setting profit per grid below your fee cost. Every filled grid is a buy and a sell, so two fees apply. If a grid nets 4% but your round-trip fees are larger than the step, the bot bleeds money. Always check the step clears fees with margin to spare.
- Too many grids for the range. Cramming 100 grids into a tight range makes each step tiny and each fill barely profitable, while fee drag multiplies. Match grid count to volatility.
- A range that's too narrow. If price breaks out below your lower bound you're left holding underwater coins with no new buys; break out above and you sit in cash earning nothing. Size the range to the move you actually expect.
- Treating grids as set-and-forget. A strong trend turns a grid against you. Re-centre or pause the bot when the market clearly leaves its range instead of letting it average into a one-way move.
From plan to running bot
Once the step, capital per grid and profit per grid look right, the deciding factor is execution cost. Because grid profits are small and frequent, run the bot where fees are low and liquidity is deep, so each fill keeps most of its 4% rather than handing it back in spread and commissions. Confirm the profit per grid comfortably beats two taker fees before you commit capital.