Markets & Instruments
Options profit calculator
“For this options structure, where does it break even, what is the most it can make or lose, and what does the payoff look like across the underlying's range?”
Build a structure from sixteen presets or from scratch — up to eight legs, calls, puts and stock — and see its payoff at expiry across the underlying's range. Break-even, maximum profit and maximum loss are computed per leg and summed, and unlimited genuinely reads as unlimited.
Free to use, nothing to sign up for, and nothing you type here is sent anywhere — the arithmetic runs in your browser.
What it computes
intrinsic (call) = MAX(0, underlying - strike) intrinsic (put) = MAX(0, strike - underlying) long leg P&L = (intrinsic - premium) x contracts x 100 short leg P&L = (premium - intrinsic) x contracts x 100 break-even (call) = strike + premium (put) = strike - premium
What you type in
| Field | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy preset | Sixteen presets across basic, spreads and advanced — long call, covered call, credit spread, calendar, iron condor, butterfly, collar and more. | Long call |
| Legs | Up to eight, each with kind (call/put/stock), side, quantity, strike, premium and expiry. Fully editable after a preset seeds them. | 1 leg |
| Spot, IV, DTE | Used to seed and price the preset's legs. | 100 / 30% / 30 |
| View | Payoff diagram or P&L heatmap. | Payoff |
Reading the result
- Break-even, per structure rather than per leg.
- Max profit and max loss — null when genuinely unlimited, because a long call's upside and a short call's risk are unbounded and printing a large number instead would be a lie.
- The payoff diagram across the underlying's range, and a heatmap view that varies both the underlying and the days remaining.
Worked example
One long 105 call bought for $3.00, contract size 100.
- Break-even at expiry: 108 (strike plus premium)
- At 120: (15 - 3) x 100 = +$1,200
- At 100, expiring worthless: -$300
- Max loss $300; max profit unlimited
What trips people up
- Everything here is at expiry. No time value and no greeks, so a position can be far from these numbers the day before expiry.
- The contract size is 100 shares. Quantity is in contracts, not shares.
- The heatmap varies the underlying and the days remaining, but it is still an expiry-anchored model rather than a live pricing engine.
Questions
- Does it price the position before expiry?
- No. Every figure is the payoff at expiry. That is a deliberate limit: an expiry payoff is exact arithmetic, while a pre-expiry value depends on a volatility model whose assumptions would not be visible on the chart.
- How many legs can I model?
- Eight, which covers condors, butterflies, collars, calendars and most of what is built from them. Stock legs count towards the eight, so a covered call is two.
Related calculators
These are the same calculators built into Ledger of Alpha, where they read your own trade history instead of numbers you re-type. See the full product
Keep the record these numbers come from
A free account logs the trades you size here, so the win rate and averages you type into these calculators come from your own history rather than a guess.