Binance Grid Trading: Spot Grid Rules, Settings, a Worked Example and Why Grids Lose
Every input on Binance's spot grid creation page has a rule behind it in the Help Center: the formula that spaces the grid lines, what the bot does once price leaves the range, what happens to your coins when a stop loss fires. The official rules are taken from Binance's Help Center article What Is Spot Grid Trading and How Does It Work?. Field names and per-pair quantity limits go by what you see when you open Binance.
What grid trading is and where the profit comes from
A grid is an automated strategy that repeatedly buys low and sells high for you inside a fixed price range. You frame a price range, slice it into many layers (the "grids"), and the program buys a little each time price drops one grid and sells a little each time it rises one grid. As long as price keeps swinging back and forth within that range, it banks the small buy-low-sell-high spread one grid at a time.
It fits best in a market with no clear direction that just grinds up and down — a sideways, ranging market. Watching that kind of market by hand is exhausting: you have to sit at the screen, dare to buy on dips and let go on rallies, and not get fooled by a couple of head-fakes. A grid hands that routine to a program, which places and fills the orders line by line without anyone watching.
The reverse also holds: once the market stops ranging and goes one way, straight up or straight down, the rule no longer works. What happens on a break above the top and below the bottom is in the section on price leaving the range.
What you fill in to create a Binance spot grid
On the web the entry is [Trade] – [Trading Bots], then Spot Grid; the app has the same bots section under [Trade]. According to the Help Center's description of the creation page, these are the settings:
| Setting | Official rule |
|---|---|
| Mode | Arithmetic or Geometric. Arithmetic grids are spaced by an equal price difference, geometric grids by an equal price ratio. Formulas in the next section |
| Lower Price / Upper Price | The bottom and top of the range; the bot only places orders inside it |
| Number of grids | How many parts the range between the two prices is divided into |
| Investment | The amount you put in. Binance notes that the amount the strategy actually needs depends on the market and may not equal what you typed |
| Trigger Price (optional) | If set, the grid starts only once the last price rises above or falls below this price |
| Stop Trigger (optional) | A stop-loss price and a take-profit price; reaching either one stops the grid |
| Sell All Base Coins on Stop | Whether the base coin you hold is sold at market when the grid stops; on by default for new strategies |
With no trigger price, the grid buys part of the base coin at market the moment it starts and then places its orders. The Help Center also describes an amount that is easy to miss: at launch the strategy sets aside some base coin as a fee reserve, to pay the fees charged in the base coin on later buys. Fees follow the normal spot fee rates.
Arithmetic vs geometric grids: a worked example you can redo
Each mode spaces the grid lines with its own official formula:
- Arithmetic: spread = (Upper Price − Lower Price) / number of grids
- Geometric: ratio = (Upper Price / Lower Price) ^ (1 / number of grids) × 100%
Put one set of numbers through both (they only show the arithmetic and are not market data): lower price 2,000, upper price 3,000, 10 grids.
- Arithmetic: spread = (3,000 − 2,000) ÷ 10 = 100, so the lines are 2,000, 2,100, 2,200 … 3,000. The same 100 is 100 ÷ 2,000 = 5% on the lowest grid and 100 ÷ 2,900 ≈ 3.45% on the highest.
- Geometric: ratio = (3,000 ÷ 2,000)^(1/10) = 1.5^0.1 ≈ 1.04138, so each line is about 4.138% above the one below: 2,000, 2,082.76, 2,168.94 … 3,000. The lowest grid is 82.76 wide and the highest is 3,000 − 3,000 ÷ 1.04138 ≈ 119.21.
Arithmetic grids earn the same amount per grid, which is a larger percentage at low prices than at high ones. Geometric grids earn the same percentage per grid, which is a larger amount at high prices. The further apart the two bounds are, the more the two layouts differ.
Now the net on one grid. In the arithmetic set, buy 0.1 of the coin at 2,400 and sell it at 2,500: the spread is (2,500 − 2,400) × 0.1 = 10. Assume a 0.1% fee on each side (look up your own rate on Binance's fee page): 2,400 × 0.1 × 0.1% = 0.24 on the buy and 2,500 × 0.1 × 0.1% = 0.25 on the sell, leaving 10 − 0.24 − 0.25 = 9.51. This matches how Binance defines Grid Profit: realized profit from matched buy and sell orders with trading fees already deducted.
Raise the number of grids from 10 to 100 and the spread drops to 10. The same 0.1, bought at 2,400 and sold at 2,410, makes (2,410 − 2,400) × 0.1 = 1, pays 0.24 + 0.241 = 0.481 in fees and nets 0.519, so nearly half of the spread goes to fees. Do this sum before packing in more grids, or let the Grid Parameter Calculator and the Grid Profit Simulator do it with the fee included.
What the bot does when price leaves the range
In the Help Center's words, once the market price falls below the Lower Price the system "will no longer execute orders", and the same applies above the Upper Price. Its example is a BTC/USDC grid from 40,000 to 60,000 with 5 arithmetic grids, 10,000 USDC invested and a price of 50,100 at creation. The spread is (60,000 − 40,000) ÷ 5 = 4,000 and the lines are 40,000, 44,000, 48,000, 52,000, 56,000 and 60,000. At launch there are sell orders at 56,000 and 60,000, buy orders at 48,000, 44,000 and 40,000, and no order at 52,000, the line nearest the current price. After that, a filled buy places a sell one grid up and a filled sell places a buy one grid down. Above 60,000 or below 40,000 the strategy is suspended, and it resumes when price comes back into the range.
What you are left holding differs by direction. On a break above the top, the coins were sold grid by grid on the way up, the account is mostly in the quote currency, and any further rise has nothing to do with this grid. On a break below the bottom, every buy order has filled, the account is mostly in the base coin and it shows an unrealized loss at the current price. The bot will not sell those coins by itself unless you entered a stop-loss price at creation.
If you do not want the grid to sit idle in a rally, the advanced options include Trailing Up: once price passes the Upper Price plus one spread, the whole range shifts up by one grid. Its order sizing and its stop-loss rule differ from a plain grid; both are covered in Turned On Trailing Up in a Binance Spot Grid? Why the Order Size per Grid Changes.
What happens to your coins on stop loss, take profit or manual stop
The Stop Trigger has two prices. Binance requires the stop loss to be below the lower price, the last price and the trigger price, and the take profit to be above the upper price, the last price and the trigger price. When the market reaches either one, the grid stops.
What happens to the coins then depends on the Sell All Base Coins on Stop switch, whether the stop was a stop loss, a take profit or you ending the grid by hand:
- On: the base coin is sold with a market order when the grid stops and the account is back in the quote currency.
- Off: "all base coins will be kept in your Spot Account", and when to sell is up to you.
There is one exception. If the amount to be sold reaches N times the pair's maximum market order amount (N is currently 0.9 and Binance says it may be adjusted), the system "will refrain from selling your base coin at market price" and the assets return to your Spot Account.
Decide about the stop-loss price before you open the grid. With one, a break below the range ends the position automatically and caps the loss, at the cost of possibly selling near the low just before a rebound. Without one, the base coin stays with you until price returns to the range, which only works if you are willing to hold that coin for a long time and do not need the money soon. Either choice can be defended. Leaving it open until price is already through the bottom is the one that causes trouble.
Spot grid vs futures grid: what is different
A spot grid and a futures grid run on almost the same logic. The difference comes down to one word: liquidation.
| Compared | Spot grid | Futures grid |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Real money buys real coins; you hold the spot | A leveraged futures position; you don't hold spot |
| Leverage | None | Yes (adjustable, amplifies gains and losses) |
| Worst case | Stuck holding; in a deep, sustained fall the position can lose most of its value (not capital-protected) | Price hits the liquidation price, the position is force-closed, and margin can be wiped out |
| Liquidation risk | None | Yes (this is the core difference) |
| Who it's for | Beginners starting out; people happy to hold this coin long-term | People who understand futures and liquidation and can stomach a wipeout |
Put another way: get a spot grid wrong and the worst case is being stuck at some price with the coins still yours. Get a futures grid wrong (leverage too high, range too tight) and when price runs the other way to the liquidation price, the system closes your position and the margin can be lost in full. My advice to beginners is to start with a spot grid and not open a futures grid before you can work out a liquidation price. The futures grid's margin modes, where its liquidation price is shown, what the bot does after a liquidation and why its simulated return looks higher than spot are covered in Can a Binance Futures Grid Get Liquidated?
How to choose the range, grid count and amount
The rules decide how the lines are spaced. Where the range goes, how many grids it has and how much money sits in it are your calls.
1. Range bounds
The range is your judgment of where price will keep swinging, and it matters most of the three. Too narrow, and the market easily runs out of it and the grid stops. Too wide, and price touches few lines, so there are few fills. You can use recent highs and lows as a reference and leave some margin above and below.
2. Grid count
The grid count decides how finely you slice the range. More grids mean smaller spacing, more frequent fills, and a thinner spread per fill; fewer grids are the reverse. The 100-grid example above shows how small the spread can get before fees take half of it, so set the count together with the range width and your fee rate. If you'd rather not do the math by hand, the Grid Parameter Calculator takes a range and a budget and gives you a suggested grid count and per-grid capital.
3. Per-grid capital / total capital
Total capital divided by the grid count is roughly the buy amount per grid. How much to put in and which coin to pick should be decided together; the reasons are in case 5 of the losing cases below.
How to tell a ranging market from a trending one
A grid fills its orders when price moves back and forth inside the range. When price leaves in one direction and does not return, you get one of the two outcomes described in the section on price leaving the range. So look at which kind of market you are in before you open one. None of these checks needs an indicator:
- Zoom out and ask whether price is in a box or on a staircase. On the daily chart over the last month or two, moving sideways inside a band points to a range; stepping steadily higher or lower is a trend.
- Look for a top and a bottom that keep repeating. If price turns back from one level and bounces from another several times, you can draw an upper and a lower edge. If it keeps making new highs or new lows and no stable edges appear, it is a trend.
- Stay out around major news and data releases. These are the moments a range turns into a one-way move, and opening a grid then is a bet that it stays sideways.
- Read what price is doing, not what you hope it will do. With a losing position on your hands it is easy to treat "it is due a bounce" as "it is ranging".
The read will sometimes be wrong, so answer one more question first: if it turns and runs one way right now, what do I do? Three things can be prepared in advance. Do not draw the lower price right under the current price; leave room for a fall. Pick your own stop-loss level and enter it as the stop-loss price on the creation page. Start with a small amount. Running a grid along a trend is a different way of using it, with heavier demands on market judgment and risk control, and is outside this page.
Where a grid's profit comes from and what it costs
There's only one source of profit: the spread between a buy and a sell inside the range, times the number of fills. So a grid's return correlates strongly with how frequently the market swings — the more times price shuttles across the range, the more buy-low-sell-high pairings you complete. A flat price produces no fills and a one-way move out of the range produces none either, so neither earns this spread.
The costs are mainly two:
- Fees: every buy and sell pays one, so the more fills, the more they add up. For how it's calculated, see How Grid Trading Fees Are Calculated; to estimate directly, the Profit Simulator folds the fees in for you.
- Opportunity cost / stuck cost: your money is locked in the grid, and if price actually rose a lot over that stretch, you're holding a pile of coins grinding inside a range and may underperform simply holding. This one does not show up in your trade history.
Why a Binance grid loses money: six cases
A grid only buys low and sells high while price stays inside the range and keeps crossing the lines. Of the six cases below, the first four come from the market and the settings, the last two from the money and the person.
1. A one-way breakout of the range (the deadliest)
Price dropping straight through the lower bound is where a grid loses the most. The result is the one described earlier: every buy order filled on the way down, the coins show a loss, and there is no money left to buy lower. A one-way break above the upper bound means missed gains, not a loss.
2. Fees eating the spread
When the spread per grid does not cover the two fees on a buy and a sell, more fills mean a bigger loss. The 100-grid example above shows the sum.
3. Wrong parameters
A misdrawn range (framed where price will never shuttle), a grid count that doesn't match the capital, leverage set too high (futures grid) — these are all parameter errors. A grid is sensitive to its parameters; set one wrong, and no matter how busily it runs afterward, it's running in the wrong direction.
4. Wrong market
Opening a grid in a clear one-way trend applies a rule built for ranging markets to a market that is not ranging. This loss comes before any parameter: the grid should not have been opened in this market in the first place.
5. Money you need soon, or a coin you would not hold
In a fall the grid buys all the way down, and below the lower price you are left with coins waiting for price to come back. If you need that money soon you have to sell low, and the paper loss becomes a real one. If it is a coin you never wanted to hold for long, waiting is not an option either. Set the amount and choose the coin together: money you can leave stuck without it affecting your life, in a coin you would be willing to keep.
6. Opening it and never looking again
The bot automates placing and filling orders. Whether to get out is not its job. When price nears the lower edge or a big event is coming, changing the settings, stopping out or holding on is your decision. Entering a stop-loss price at creation is one way to make that decision ahead of time.
Which markets suit a grid and which do not
By market type, roughly:
| Market | Suits a grid? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Range-bound (grinding up and down) | Yes | The more price moves back and forth, the more buy-sell pairs complete |
| Slow climb with repeated pullbacks | Fairly good | There's both chop and an upward drift; a spot grid can catch plenty |
| Sharp one-way rally | Marginal / left behind | Easily breaks the upper bound; the grid sells out early and underperforms holding |
| Sharp one-way drop | Stay away | Breaks below the lower bound and leaves you holding coins at a loss, the worst case for a grid |
| Before major news / extreme volatility | Stay away | Price easily blows straight through any range |
A grid is a tool for harvesting chop, not for betting on direction. When you're unsure whether it's ranging, prefer not opening one, or test with very little money and a very wide range, rather than betting big.
Can you use the AI parameters as they are?
The creation page has an AI option. The Help Center says it generates the parameters automatically from technical analysis of the pair's price over the time period you select, and that Sell All Base Coins on Stop is on by default when you use it.
Two things follow from that description. The parameters are computed from the stretch of price history you picked, so once the market moves outside that history they have lost their basis. And the option knows nothing about how much unrealized loss you can sit through or whether you need the money soon. Use it as a starting point: look at the lower price it proposes and ask whether you could take a break below it; take its grid count and run the sum above to see what one grid nets after fees. To build your own version for comparison, use the Grid Parameter Calculator and the Grid Profit Simulator.
Grid vs recurring buys in the same market
The grid here is a spot grid. Recurring buys means buying a fixed amount at a fixed interval and never selling. The market types are assumptions; real price action does not stay in one of them from start to finish.
| Market | Spot grid | Recurring buys |
|---|---|---|
| Ranging | Price keeps crossing the grid lines and the bot buys low and sells high over and over; each completed pair books one spread, net of two fees | Each period buys a fixed amount, more coins when price is low and fewer when it is high; the average cost sits inside the range and the paper result moves with price |
| One-way rise | One lot is sold at each grid on the way up; above the upper price the coins are gone and the rest of the rally passes it by | Each buy is dearer than the last and the average cost creeps up; it shows a gain while price stays above the average cost |
| One-way fall | One lot is bought at each grid on the way down; below the lower price the money is used up and the coins show a loss at the current price | The average cost falls with price but stays above the latest price, so the position is in loss all the way down |
The average cost of recurring buys can be recomputed like this (the numbers only show the method): 100 per period at prices of 10, 8 and 5 buys 10, 12.5 and 20 coins, 42.5 coins for 300 in total, so the average cost is 300 ÷ 42.5 ≈ 7.06. With the last price at 5 the holding is worth 42.5 × 5 = 212.5, an unrealized loss of 300 − 212.5 = 87.5. Over the same fall, a grid whose lower price is above 5 has already spent its money on the way down and also ends up holding coins at a loss. The two only separate in ranging and rising markets.
Binance's recurring buys and its Spot DCA bot are two different products; their settings and rules are in Binance Recurring Buys vs the Spot DCA Bot. For the full list of bot types, see Binance Trading Bots: The 8 Types.
Binance spot grid FAQ
What are the minimum and maximum number of grids on a Binance spot grid?
The Help Center gives a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 500. Above 170 grids the system switches on the Dynamic Order Mechanism: it no longer places every grid order at once and keeps at most 170 orders around the current price. Trailing Up is not available in that mode, so a grid that uses Trailing Up is capped at 170.
Why does the grid buy some coins the moment it starts, and what is the reserved fee?
With no trigger price set, the grid buys part of the base coin at market as soon as it starts, so it has something to place sell orders with above the current price. It also buys a small amount of the base coin as a fee reserve, used to pay the fees charged in the base coin on later buys. The reserve is topped up when it falls below half, and whatever is left is returned when the grid stops.
Why are Grid Profit and Total Profit different on the bot page?
Binance defines Total Profit as Grid Profit plus unrealized P&L. Grid Profit is the realized profit from matched buy and sell orders, with trading fees already deducted. Unrealized P&L compares the current price with the average buy price of the base coin you still hold. With price in the lower half of the range, Grid Profit can be positive while Total Profit is negative.
The grid stopped. Why were my base coins not sold at market?
There are two cases. Either Sell All Base Coins on Stop was off when you created the grid, so the coins stay in your Spot Account. Or it was on, but the amount to sell reached N times the pair's maximum market order amount (N is currently 0.9 and Binance says it may change); then the system does not sell at market and the assets go back to your Spot Account for you to sell in parts.
If I set a trigger price, when does the grid start?
With a trigger price, the grid orders are only triggered once the last price rises above or falls below the price you entered. Without one, the grid buys part of the base coin at market and places its orders straight after creation. The stop loss has to sit below the trigger price and the take profit above it.