A stock options calculator for positions with more than one leg. Buy or sell calls and puts, add the shares underneath if you hold them, and read max profit, max loss, every breakeven, and the payoff diagram at expiration. Start from a strategy or build your own. Free, in the browser, no account.
This position has no floor. A leg you sold is not covered by anything you own, so the loss keeps growing as the stock moves against you. There is no worst case to put a number on, and a broker will hold margin against it rather than a fixed amount of cash.
Profit and loss at expiration for short 1 $48.00 put, long 1 $45.00 put. Breakeven at $47.35. Maximum profit $65.00, maximum loss $235.00.
For education only. This page runs on your inputs, not live market data, and every result is the payoff at expiration. This is a calculator, not an options screener: there are no quotes here.
The line is your profit or loss at every price the stock could finish at on expiration day. Where it crosses zero is a breakeven. Where it flattens out is a leg that has stopped mattering, because it has finished so far in or out of the money that nothing more changes.
If a chart is the wrong shape for a decision, here are the same numbers as a table. It is the honest version of a payoff diagram: no curve to read, just what the position is worth at each price on the day the contracts expire.
| Stock at expiration | Move from today | Profit or loss | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| $37.50 | −25.0% | −$235 | · |
| $40.63 | −18.7% | −$235 | · |
| $43.75 | −12.5% | −$235 | · |
| $46.88 | −6.2% | −$47 | · |
| $47.35 | −5.3% | +$0 | Breakeven |
| $50.00 | 0.0% | +$65 | Now |
| $53.13 | 6.3% | +$65 | · |
| $56.25 | 12.5% | +$65 | · |
| $59.38 | 18.8% | +$65 | · |
| $62.50 | 25.0% | +$65 | · |
Every number on this page comes from one idea: settle each leg on its own at expiration, then add them together. Here is each formula, written out, with the result from the position currently loaded above.
What lands in or leaves your account the moment you open the position.
sum of premiums sold − sum of premiums bought, × 100 per contract Loaded position: +$65
A position that pays you to open is a credit; one you pay for is a debit. It is not profit yet. On a credit spread it is the most you can make, and on a bought call it is the most you can lose.
What each leg is worth when there is no time left.
call = max(stock − strike, 0) · put = max(strike − stock, 0) At expiration an option has no time value, only intrinsic value, so this is exact rather than modelled. Multiply by 100 per contract, flip the sign on the legs you sold, subtract the premiums you paid, add the premiums you collected.
The stock prices where the position finishes exactly flat.
every price where total payoff = 0 Loaded position: $47.35
A single bought call has one breakeven, the strike plus what you paid. Add legs and the line can cross zero more than once: an iron condor breaks even on both sides of its profit zone. This calculator finds every crossing instead of assuming one, because a position with two breakevens and only one reported is a position you do not understand.
The best the position can do, and where.
highest payoff across every price Loaded position: +$65
For anything built only from sold premium, the credit is the ceiling: nothing you can do makes more than what you were paid. A bought call has no ceiling at all, which is what people are buying when they buy one.
The worst the position can do, and where.
lowest payoff across every price, including the stock at zero Loaded position: −$235
Buying a far leg turns an open-ended risk into a fixed one, which is the difference between a credit spread and a naked short. A sold call with no shares behind it has no worst case that this or any calculator can put a number on, so the page says "unlimited" rather than inventing a figure.
The best case measured against the worst case.
max profit ÷ the size of max loss Loaded position: 27.66%
This page does not annualize that number, and the omission is deliberate. The other calculators annualize premium you have already banked, which is a real rate. Here the numerator is the best case, so annualizing it would assume you repeat the position all year and win every time, and the whole reason the market pays you a credit is that you will not. Return on risk is also not return on capital: a broker securing a naked short put holds the full strike in cash, which is what the cash secured put calculator uses.
The part a payoff diagram cannot show you.
any short leg in the money can be assigned early The chart assumes you hold every leg to expiration. In practice the legs you sold can be assigned before then, and when one leg of a spread goes early you are left holding the other one plus a stock position you did not plan for. That is a different trade from the one drawn above. It is also why a short put inside a spread is not the same obligation as a cash secured put, where assignment is the plan rather than a surprise.
An iron condor on a $50 stock, sixty days out. It is two credit spreads at once, one below the stock and one above, and it is the clearest way to see why a multi-leg position has two breakevens instead of one.
| Leg | Action | Contract | Premium | Cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Buy | $44.00 put | $0.45 | −$45 |
| 2 | Sell | $47.00 put | $1.05 | +$105 |
| 3 | Sell | $53.00 call | $1.00 | +$100 |
| 4 | Buy | $56.00 call | $0.40 | −$40 |
| Net credit collected | +$120 | |||
The credit is $120 and the widest either spread can go against you is $3.00, so the worst case is $300 minus the credit: $180. Both wings are the same width, which is why both ends risk the same amount. The profit zone is $47.00 to $53.00 and the breakevens sit $1.20 outside the short strikes on each side, exactly the credit per share.
One illustrative position, not typical results, and the shape of the numbers is doing something worth naming. Risking $180 to make $120 looks generous only while the stock stays inside a $6.00 band for two months. It is the same trade-off every premium seller makes: a high hit rate against a loss that is larger than the win when it comes. A payoff diagram shows you the sizes. It cannot tell you the odds, and neither can this page.
Settle every leg on its own at expiration, then add them up. A call is worth the stock price minus its strike, or nothing if that is negative; a put is worth its strike minus the stock price, or nothing. Multiply by 100 per contract, subtract what you paid for the legs you bought, add what you collected on the legs you sold, and add any profit or loss on shares you hold. The total across all four legs is the position profit at that stock price. Doing that at every price is the payoff diagram.
Because the payoff line crosses zero twice. A single long call crosses once, on the way up. An iron condor or a straddle has profit in the middle and loss on both sides, so there is a crossing on each side. The example on this page breaks even at $45.80 and $54.20: anywhere between those two prices the position finishes ahead, and outside them it finishes behind. This calculator finds every crossing rather than assuming there is one.
The distance between the two strikes, times 100 per contract, minus the credit you collected. Sell the $48 put for $1.20 and buy the $45 put for $0.55 and you have collected $65 against a $3.00 wide spread, so the worst case is $300 minus $65, which is $235. That number is fixed the moment you open the trade, which is the whole reason traders buy the far leg: an uncovered short put has no floor until the stock reaches zero.
No. It runs entirely on the numbers you type, in your browser, with no market data feed and no account. That is deliberate: you enter what the contracts are actually quoted at, and the calculator does the arithmetic on those. It also means every result is the payoff at expiration, which is exact, rather than an estimate of what the position is worth today.
Not correctly, and it is worth saying why. A poor man's covered call is a diagonal spread: the long call and the short call expire on different dates. When the short leg expires, the long leg is still alive and still carries time value, and pricing that leftover value needs an options pricing model rather than the exact expiration arithmetic this page uses. Every strategy offered here shares one expiration, so the payoff drawn for it is exact rather than approximate.
Not quite, and the gap matters most on short puts. Return on risk divides the best case by the worst case, so a spread risking $235 to make $65 shows 27.66%. Return on capital divides by the cash actually tied up, and a broker securing a naked short put holds the full strike, not the theoretical loss. For that specific trade the cash secured put calculator uses the collateral figure, which is the number your account balance will agree with.
The platform does it across every real position in your broker account: wheel cycles detected automatically, cost basis reconciled through assignments, and the contracts you bought valued from the price they actually trade at.