Probability of Profit (POP) Calculator

Max profit and max loss tell you the best and worst case for an options position, but not how likely either one actually is. Probability of profit (POP) answers that: given the current price, volatility, and time to expiration, what are the odds this specific position finishes profitable at expiration?

This calculator works for any combination of up to 4 option legs. It computes the position's exact breakevens, then sums the probability mass in whichever price zones are actually profitable, under the same risk-neutral lognormal distribution the Black-Scholes model itself is built on.

How does this calculator work?

Enter the current price, an implied volatility assumption, days to expiration, and the risk-free rate. These define the probability distribution for where the price could land at expiration.

Add each leg of your position: long or short, call or put, strike, premium, and contracts.

The calculator finds every breakeven, checks which resulting price zones are profitable, and sums the probability of the price landing in those zones. A simple long call with one breakeven is a single calculation; a position with two breakevens (like a straddle or iron condor) sums two zones.

POP depends heavily on the implied volatility you feed it, since that sets how wide the price is likely to swing. It's most revealing on multi-zone trades like an iron condor or straddle, where a tempting max profit can hide long odds, and it reads naturally alongside the full payoff diagram.

Worked example

An iron condor: sell the $95 put, buy the $90 put, sell the $105 call, buy the $110 call, on a $100 stock at 20% implied volatility with 30 days to expiration.

Net credit

$200

Breakevens

$93.00 and $107.00

Max profit

$200 (if price stays between breakevens)

Max loss

$300

Probability of profit

77.7%

How the numbers work

The position profits as long as the stock finishes between $93 and $107 at expiration. Under a 20% volatility assumption, the calculator finds that a stock starting at $100 has about a 77.7% chance of landing in that range in 30 days.

That's a meaningfully different number from max profit or max loss alone. A trade can have an attractive maximum reward and still have a low probability of actually reaching it, which is exactly what POP is built to surface.

Higher POP trades (like this condor) tend to have smaller max profit relative to max loss, since selling premium closer to the current price raises the odds of success but shrinks the reward. There's no free lunch: a very high POP and a very large max profit rarely coexist on the same trade.