Options Profit Calculator – Call & Put Payoff, Breakeven and Max Loss
Build any call or put — long or short — and see exactly what you make or lose at any stock price on expiry day, with the breakeven, the most you can gain, the most you can lose, a payoff chart and a full price table.
Your option position
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Your payoff at expiry
The payoff picture — and every price, priced
The chart is the whole position in one shape: flat where the option expires worthless, sloping once the stock passes the strike. The dashed lines mark your strike and your breakeven, and the dot is the price you picked.
| Stock price at expiry | Option value / share | Profit / share | Total profit / loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| $70 | $0.00 | −$5.00 | −$500 |
| $80 | $0.00 | −$5.00 | −$500 |
| $90 | $0.00 | −$5.00 | −$500 |
| $100 | $0.00 | −$5.00 | −$500 |
| $105 Breakeven | $5.00 | $0.00 | $0 |
| $110 | $10.00 | +$5.00 | +$500 |
| $120 Your price | $20.00 | +$15.00 | +$1,500 |
| $130 | $30.00 | +$25.00 | +$2,500 |
Table rebuilds itself around your strike for any position — the breakeven row and your chosen price are always included and highlighted.
- Call or put, long or short: two toggles select one of the four basic positions, each with its own payoff shape, breakeven and risk.
- Each contract covers 100 shares, so a $5.00 premium is $500 of real money per contract.
- Slide the expiry price to read profit or loss, or scan the chart and table for the whole range of outcomes.
Options do not live alone — run the neighbouring numbers
Premium at risk is still capital. These tools put it next to the rest of your money.
How it works
Four choices in, the full payoff picture out.
Pick the position
Call or put, long or short. Those two toggles select one of the four basic positions — each with its own payoff shape, breakeven and risk.
Enter the trade
Strike, premium per share and contracts. Remember the multiplier: a $5.00 premium is $500 of real money per contract, because each contract covers 100 shares.
Slide the expiry price
Drag the stock price at expiry and read the profit or loss, or scan the chart and table to see the whole range of outcomes at once.
The formulas, with the default worked all the way through
Step 1 — value at expiry. On expiry day an option is worth only its intrinsic value. The default $100 call with the stock at $120 is worth $120 − $100 = $20.00 per share. Below the strike it would be worth exactly $0.
Step 2 — subtract the premium. You paid $5.00 per share for the call, so the profit is $20.00 − $5.00 = +$15.00 per share.
Step 3 — apply the contract multiplier. One contract covers 100 shares, so +$15.00 × 100 = +$1,500. Five contracts would make it +$7,500 — and would have made the worst case −$2,500 instead of −$500.
Breakeven. A call must climb past the strike by the whole premium before it profits: $100 + $5 = $105.00. At exactly $105 the option is worth $5.00 — precisely what you paid — so profit is $0.
All four positions
| Position | Profit per share at expiry | Breakeven | Max profit | Max loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long call | max(S − K, 0) − premium | K + premium | Unlimited | Premium paid |
| Long put | max(K − S, 0) − premium | K − premium | (K − premium) × 100 × contracts | Premium paid |
| Short call | Premium − max(S − K, 0) | K + premium | Premium collected | Unlimited |
| Short put | Premium − max(K − S, 0) | K − premium | Premium collected | (K − premium) × 100 × contracts |
Short positions are the mirror image: whatever the buyer makes, the seller loses. That symmetry is why the seller’s max profit is capped at the premium while a short call’s loss has no ceiling at all.
Before you trade a single contract
The payoff diagram is exact — on expiry day. Everything in this section is about the distance between that clean picture and a real options account.
An option’s market price has two parts: intrinsic value (what this calculator uses) and time value — the extra buyers pay because the stock still has time to move. A call can be “out of the money” and still sell for real money weeks before expiry, and an in-the-money option usually trades for more than its intrinsic value.
Time value melts as expiry approaches (traders call this theta decay), and it swells or shrinks with implied volatility — the market’s guess at how violently the stock will move. Earnings announcements can crush it overnight. So treat this tool as the finish-line photograph: it tells you exactly where you stand if you hold to expiry, and it is the right way to size a position, but your broker’s live quote before expiry will rarely match it.
Look at the short side of the table above. A short put seller collects $400 on the default-style trade and can lose $9,600 if the stock collapses to zero. A short call seller’s loss is not even capped. Sellers accept that shape because most options expire worthless or are closed early — the premium is collected often, and the big loss arrives rarely.
Rarely is not never. Brokers know this, which is why short options require margin — cash locked up as collateral that can grow suddenly when a trade moves against you, forcing a buy-back at the worst moment. If you run the numbers here for a short position, read the max loss tile as money you must genuinely be able to lose, not as a formality.
American-style options can be exercised early. If you are short an in-the-money option, you can be assigned — obliged to deliver or buy the shares at the strike — sometimes overnight, especially around dividends. Long holders usually sell rather than exercise, because exercising throws away any remaining time value.
This calculator also leaves out broker commissions and exercise/assignment fees, bid-ask spreads (often the biggest hidden cost in illiquid options), and taxes. None of those change the payoff shape, but all of them shave the result — a position that shows +$40 here may be a small loss after real-world costs. Trade liquid options, check the spread, and size positions so that the max loss on this page is a loss you can shrug off.
The four basic positions, in one table
Every single-leg options position is one of four shapes. Learn the four, and every payoff diagram becomes readable.
An option is a contract, not a share. A call gives its holder the right to buy the underlying at the strike price, and a put gives the right to sell at the strike. Buying the contract makes you long: you pay the premium and hold the right. Selling, or writing, the contract makes you short: you collect the premium and take on the obligation if the holder exercises. Those two choices, call or put and long or short, produce four positions, each with its own payoff at expiry, its own breakeven, and its own risk shape. The calculator on this page models one leg at a time, so any position you enter is one of these four, and the table below is the complete map.
| Position | Profit per share at expiry | Breakeven | Maximum gain | Maximum loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long call | max(S – K, 0) – premium | K + premium | Unlimited | Premium paid |
| Long put | max(K – S, 0) – premium | K – premium | K – premium | Premium paid |
| Short call | premium – max(S – K, 0) | K + premium | Premium received | Unlimited |
| Short put | premium – max(K – S, 0) | K – premium | Premium received | K – premium |
Read the table with the calculator’s default in mind: a strike of $100 and a premium of $5. A long call breaks even at $105, because the stock must rise past the strike by the premium before the holder is ahead. At $120 the call is worth $20 a share, the profit is $15 a share, and one contract, controlling 100 shares, shows $1,500. A long put on the same strike and premium breaks even at $95, and at $80 it is worth $20 a share for the same $15 profit. The symmetry is exact but mirrored: calls profit from rises, puts from falls, and the premium is the price of admission in both directions.
The short side is the mirror image with the risk reversed. A short call collects the $5 premium and keeps it if the stock stays below $100, but at $120 the writer owes $20 a share against $5 received, a loss of $15 a share, or $1,500 per contract, and the loss grows without limit as the stock rises. A short put collects the same $5 and keeps it if the stock stays above $100, but at $80 the writer owes $20 against $5 received, again $1,500 per contract, with the loss capped at $95 a share if the stock falls to zero. That asymmetry — limited gain, large or unlimited loss — is why selling options is often described as collecting small premiums for large risks, and why margin requirements for short positions are substantial. The calculator shows the expiry payoff only. It does not show margin, and margin is a real cost of holding a short position that the payoff diagram cannot express.
The multiplier is the detail that turns per-share figures into real money. One contract controls 100 shares, so every per-share figure on this page is multiplied by 100 per contract, and by the number of contracts for the whole position. A $5 premium is $500 per contract, a $15 per-share profit is $1,500 per contract, and a ten-contract position multiplies everything by ten again. Forgetting the multiplier is the commonest arithmetic error in options, because the premium is quoted per share while the money leaves the account per contract. Before entering any trade, multiply the premium by 100 and by the contract count, and check that the resulting cash figure is an amount you are prepared to lose in full, because for a long position that is exactly the maximum loss.
Reading the payoff diagram
The chart is the whole position in one shape. Here is how to read every part of it.
Start with the flat section. For a long call, the diagram is flat at a loss equal to the premium for every stock price below the strike, because the option expires worthless there and the premium is gone. That flat section is not a failure of the chart. It is the most important part of it, because it shows the range of outcomes in which the buyer loses everything paid, and that range is wide: every price from zero to the strike, which for the default is every price up to $100. A buyer who only looks at the rising slope is looking at the good outcomes and ignoring the flat ones, and the flat ones are where most expiring options end up.
The kink is the strike. At the strike, the option begins to have intrinsic value, and beyond it the diagram slopes at one dollar of profit per one dollar of stock movement, per share. That slope of one is exact for a single option at expiry, because intrinsic value is the distance between the stock price and the strike, dollar for dollar. The breakeven sits one premium beyond the kink, at $105 for the default call, and the distance between the kink and the breakeven is the premium itself: the stock must first recover the strike, then recover the premium, before the position is ahead. Marking both lines, as the calculator does, prevents the commonest misreading, which is to treat the strike as the breakeven and to believe a position is profitable as soon as the stock passes the strike.
Beyond the breakeven, the long call’s slope continues without a cap, which is why its maximum gain is described as unlimited. In practice the gain is limited by how far the stock actually rises before expiry, and by the fact that the position must be held to expiry to realise the diagram’s payoff at all. Before expiry, the option’s market price includes time value on top of intrinsic value, so the live profit or loss will differ from the expiry diagram, usually in the buyer’s favour while time remains, because time value is still present. The diagram is therefore a picture of one day, expiry day, and a position closed early lives on a different picture, one this calculator deliberately does not draw.
For a long put the diagram is the mirror image: flat above the strike, sloping below it, kink at the strike, breakeven one premium below, and a cap on the gain where the stock reaches zero, because a stock cannot fall below zero and the put’s value cannot exceed the strike minus the premium. For short positions the whole diagram flips vertically: the flat section becomes a gain equal to the premium, and the slope becomes a loss. Learning to flip the diagram mentally, rather than memorising four separate pictures, is the skill that makes the table in the previous section usable in real time, when a quote is on screen and a decision is being made.
What expiry payoff leaves out
The diagram is exact on expiry day. Everything below is the distance between that clean picture and a real options account.
Time value is the largest omission. Before expiry, an option’s market price has two parts: intrinsic value, which this calculator uses, and time value, the extra buyers pay for the chance that the stock moves favourably before expiry. Time value is largest when the option is near the strike with plenty of time left, and it decays as expiry approaches, accelerating in the final days. A long option bought for $5 may therefore be worth $3 before expiry even if the stock has not moved, because time has passed and time value has decayed, and it may be worth $7 even if the stock has moved only slightly, because volatility has risen. The expiry diagram shows none of this, which is why a position that looks profitable on the diagram can show a loss in a live account, and vice versa.
Volatility is the second omission, and it is closely tied to the first. Option prices rise when expected volatility rises, because a more volatile stock is more likely to move far enough to make the option valuable, and they fall when volatility falls. A long option holder therefore benefits from rising volatility even if the stock price stands still, and suffers from falling volatility even if the direction is right. This effect has a name, vega, and it is one of several sensitivities, collectively called the Greeks, that describe how an option’s price responds to stock price, time, volatility, and interest rates. The expiry calculator sets all of them aside by design, because at expiry they are all zero except the stock price itself, but a live position lives with all of them every day.
Exercise, assignment, spreads, fees, margin, and taxes complete the gap. Most stock options in the United States are American-style, meaning they can be exercised before expiry, so a short position can be assigned early, particularly for puts and for calls on dividend-paying stocks, and assignment converts an options position into a stock position with its own margin and risk. Bid-ask spreads mean the price you sell at is below the price you buy at, so a round trip costs the spread on both legs. Broker fees, exchange fees, and margin interest are real costs, and tax treatment depends on holding period, exercise, and jurisdiction. None of these appear in an expiry payoff, and all of them reduce a real result below the diagram’s result. A diagram profit of $1,500 that cost $50 in spreads and fees and tied up margin for weeks is a different outcome from a clean $1,500, and the difference should be counted before the trade, not discovered after it.
The right way to use this calculator, given all that, is as a map of the destination, not as a prediction of the journey. Enter the position, find the breakeven, find the maximum loss, and ask whether the destination is worth the premium and the risk. Then, separately, consider the journey: how much time remains, how volatile the stock is, what the spread and fees will cost, and whether a short position’s margin is affordable. A position whose destination is attractive and whose journey is unaffordable is not a good trade, and the expiry diagram alone cannot tell you which kind you are looking at.
Position sizing from the premium
The premium is not just a price. For a buyer, it is the maximum loss, and it is the right unit for sizing the trade.
For a long position, the worst case at expiry is losing the entire premium, and that worst case is common: options bought out of the money expire worthless more often than not, and the premium is the price of the chance, not a deposit on a likely gain. Sizing therefore starts from the premium times 100 times the contract count, and the question is whether that total is an amount whose complete loss would leave the rest of the plan intact. The default position on this page risks $500 for one contract, which is a useful scale: a position risking $500 behaves very differently from one risking $5,000, even though the per-share maths is identical, because the second can damage a portfolio that the first merely dents.
For a short position, sizing starts from the other side. The premium received is the maximum gain, and it is small compared with the potential loss, so the relevant question is not what you collect but what you could owe, and whether margin is available to carry the position through an adverse move without forced closure. A short call on the default terms collects $500 and can lose multiples of that if the stock rises sharply, so the margin requirement, not the premium, is the binding constraint. Any short position entered without checking the margin requirement and the loss at a large adverse move is sized by hope rather than by arithmetic, and hope is not a risk control.
A practical habit ties the two sides together. Before entering a position, write down three numbers: the premium at risk or received, the breakeven, and the loss at a stock move twice as large as you expect. If the third number is uncomfortable, reduce the contract count until it is not, because contract count is the only sizing lever that scales every outcome proportionally. Halving the contracts halves the gain, halves the loss, and halves the margin, without changing the breakeven or the shape of the diagram. That proportionality is the reason position sizing, not prediction, is the most reliable tool an options trader has: you cannot control where the stock goes, but you can control exactly how much its movement is worth to you.
None of this is financial advice, and this page does not recommend any position. Options are leveraged instruments, most buyers lose the premium they pay, and sellers can lose far more than they collect. The calculator’s job is to make the arithmetic transparent before money is committed, so that the decision, whatever it is, is made with the breakeven, the maximum loss, and the real cash amounts in plain sight.
The Greeks in one paragraph each
Delta measures how much an option price moves for a $1 move in the underlying: a delta of 0.5 means roughly $0.50 per $1. Gamma measures how fast delta itself changes. Theta measures daily time decay: a theta of −0.05 means the option loses about $0.05 of value per day from time passing alone. Vega measures sensitivity to volatility: higher implied volatility raises option prices, all else equal. Rho measures sensitivity to interest rates, usually the smallest effect for short-dated options.
A beginner does not need to trade on Greeks, but knowing theta exists explains the commonest beginner loss: an option that was right about direction but held too long, decaying faster than the underlying moved. Time is a cost of holding options, and theta prices it.
Implied volatility: the price of uncertainty
Implied volatility is the volatility figure that makes a pricing model match the market option price. High implied volatility means options are expensive relative to history, usually because a big move is expected, such as earnings or an announcement. Buying options into high implied volatility pays a premium for that expected move, and if the move is smaller than expected, volatility collapses after the event and the option can lose value even if the direction was right. This volatility crush is the second commonest beginner loss after time decay.
Selling options into high implied volatility collects that premium, but carries the short-option risks described in the guide. Either way, check implied volatility against historical volatility before trading: an option that looks cheap on premium alone may be expensive on volatility, and vice versa.
Assignment and early exercise: the fine print
American-style options, the usual equity option style, can be exercised at any time before expiry, not only at expiry. A short option can therefore be assigned early, obliging the seller to buy or sell the underlying at the strike before expiry, which matters most for in-the-money options around dividends and for short calls on stocks going ex-dividend. European-style options, used for many index options, can only be exercised at expiry.
Assignment risk is why short spreads need margin and attention even when the expiry payoff looks safe: the expiry payoff is not the whole story if assignment arrives early. Check the option style and the dividend calendar before opening any short position.
Options profit questions, answered
The ideas behind the numbers, in plain language.
How is options profit calculated?
At expiry, an option is worth its intrinsic value: for a call, the stock price minus the strike (never below zero); for a put, the strike minus the stock price (never below zero). A buyer’s profit per share is that value minus the premium paid; a seller’s profit is the mirror image. Multiply by 100 shares per contract and by the number of contracts — a $100 call bought for $5.00 with the stock at $120 makes ($20 − $5) × 100 = $1,500 per contract.
How do I find the breakeven price of a call or a put?
For any call, long or short, the breakeven is the strike plus the premium: the stock must finish above the strike by at least the premium before the buyer profits. For any put it is the strike minus the premium. A $100 call bought for $5.00 breaks even at $105.00; a $100 put bought for $4.00 breaks even at $96.00.
What is the most I can lose on a long call?
Exactly the premium you paid — no more, ever. If the stock finishes at or below the strike, the call expires worthless and the whole premium is gone: a $5.00 premium on one contract is a $500 maximum loss, whether the stock dips $1 below the strike or collapses. That capped, prepaid risk is the main reason buyers accept paying premium in the first place.
Why does one contract control 100 shares?
Standard equity option contracts are written on 100 shares — a market convention that keeps contract sizes meaningful and quotes simple. It means every per-share number in an option quote is really 100 times bigger in your account: a premium quoted at $5.00 costs $500, and a $0.50 move in the option’s price is $50 per contract. Always run the multiplier before judging whether a trade is small.
What is the risk of selling (writing) options?
The seller’s profit is capped at the premium collected, while the loss can be far larger: a short put can lose up to (strike − premium) × 100 per contract if the stock goes to zero, and a short call’s loss is unlimited because a stock can rise without bound. Sellers also face early assignment and must post margin that can increase sharply. Selling options is a professional strategy that demands collateral and active management — never judge it by the premium alone.
What is the difference between the payoff at expiry and selling the option early?
The payoff at expiry is pure intrinsic value — the only thing this calculator shows. Before expiry, the option also has time value, which reflects the chance the stock moves further in your favour; it decays as expiry nears and jumps with volatility. Selling early lets you capture whatever time value remains, so an option can often be sold for more than its expiry value at the same stock price — or lose value fast if volatility collapses, even when the stock moves your way.
Why is the breakeven not the same as the strike?
Because the premium has to be recovered first. The strike is where the option starts to have value, but the buyer has already paid the premium, so the position is only ahead once the stock has moved past the strike by the full premium. For a long call with a $100 strike and a $5 premium, the breakeven is $105. For a long put on the same terms it is $95. Treating the strike as the breakeven is the commonest misreading of a payoff diagram, and it makes every position look profitable sooner than it really is.
Can I lose more than I paid for an option?
As a buyer, no. The most a long call or long put can lose at expiry is the premium paid, because the option can only expire worthless, never negative. As a seller, yes, and by a large amount. A short call’s loss is unlimited as the stock rises, and a short put’s loss can reach the strike minus the premium if the stock falls to zero. That asymmetry is the central risk fact in options: buyers risk a known, limited amount for an uncertain gain, while sellers collect a known, limited gain for an uncertain and potentially large loss.
What happens if I close the option before expiry?
The result follows the market price at that moment, not the expiry diagram. Before expiry the price includes time value as well as intrinsic value, so it responds to the stock price, to time passing, and to volatility, and it will generally differ from the expiry payoff for the same stock price. A position closed early can therefore profit while the expiry diagram still shows a loss, or lose while the diagram shows a profit, depending on how time value has moved. This calculator prices expiry only, so treat any early close as a separate calculation, using the live market price, not this diagram.
How many shares does one contract control?
One hundred, for standard US stock options. That is why a $5 premium is $500 per contract, and why a $15 per-share profit is $1,500 per contract. The multiplier applies to every figure: premium, profit, loss, and breakeven distance, though the breakeven price itself is per share. Always multiply by 100 and by the number of contracts before judging a trade in cash terms, because a per-share figure that looks small can be a large cash amount once the multiplier is applied.
What is theta in options?
Daily time decay: how much value an option loses per day from time passing alone. A theta of −0.05 means about $0.05 a day.
What is volatility crush?
The fall in implied volatility after an expected event, such as earnings, which can make a long option lose value even if the direction was right, because the premium paid for expected movement evaporates.
Can a short option be exercised before expiry?
Yes for American-style options, which can be exercised any time. Early assignment is most likely for in-the-money options around dividends. European-style index options can only be exercised at expiry.
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