Market StructureBid
Bid Price
The price at which the market will buy the base currency from you - the lower of the two quoted prices.
What Bid Price means
Every currency pair is quoted with two prices. The bid is the price a dealer or liquidity provider is willing to pay for the base currency, so it is the price you receive when you sell. It always sits below the ask, and the difference between the two is the spread. On a retail platform the bid is normally the left-hand or lower figure in the quote box, and it is the price used to close an existing long position as well as to open a new short one.
Because the bid is the side you deal on when selling, it also determines how a long position is valued. Most platforms mark open buy positions to the current bid, which is why a freshly opened long shows a small unrealised loss equal to the spread. The bid is not fixed: it moves with the underlying market and with the depth available at that moment, so during thin conditions or news releases the bid can drop away sharply even if the mid-price barely changes.
Worked example
If EUR/USD is quoted 1.08495 / 1.08505, the bid is 1.08495, so selling one standard lot of 100,000 euros returns 108,495 US dollars.
Related terms
- Ask PriceThe price at which the market will sell the base currency to you - the higher of the two quoted prices.
- SpreadThe difference between the bid and the ask price, and the most common way a forex broker is paid.
- Currency PairTwo currencies quoted against each other, expressing how much of the second currency one unit of the first is worth.
- LiquidityThe ease with which an instrument can be traded in size without materially moving its price.
- Base CurrencyThe first currency in a pair - the one being bought or sold, and the unit in which position size is measured.
Frequently asked questions
What does Bid Price mean in forex trading?
The price at which the market will buy the base currency from you - the lower of the two quoted prices.
How does Bid Price work in practice?
Because the bid is the side you deal on when selling, it also determines how a long position is valued. Most platforms mark open buy positions to the current bid, which is why a freshly opened long shows a small unrealised loss equal to the spread. The bid is not fixed: it moves with the underlying market and with the depth available at that moment, so during thin conditions or news releases the bid can drop away sharply even if the mid-price barely changes.
What is an example of Bid Price?
If EUR/USD is quoted 1.08495 / 1.08505, the bid is 1.08495, so selling one standard lot of 100,000 euros returns 108,495 US dollars.
Trade with a regulated broker
Understanding the terminology is the cheap part. The expensive part is choosing a counterparty whose execution, financing and withdrawal behaviour match what the marketing implies. Every broker below has been reviewed with a funded live account, and each review states which legal entity and which regulator applies to the account you would actually open.
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