GLOSSARY
Bid price
The lower of the two prices your broker shows — the one you sell at.
Updated 2026-09-04 · Educational content · No broker owns this site
Quick answer. The bid price is the price at which the market will buy a currency pair from you, and therefore the price at which you can sell. It is always the lower of the two prices quoted.
Open any trading platform and a pair does not have one price. It has two, shown side by side. The lower number is the bid.
The naming is from the market's point of view, not yours, which is why it feels backwards at first. The market is bidding — offering to buy from you. So the bid is where you sell.
When do you actually trade at the bid?
In two situations, and it is worth seeing that they are the same mechanic:
- Closing a long. You bought earlier at the ask; to get out you sell, so you exit at the bid.
- Opening a short. Going short means selling first, so you enter at the bid.
Worked example. EUR/USD is quoted bid 1.08420 / ask 1.08430. You hold one mini lot — 10,000 euros — and want out. You sell at the bid:
- 10,000 × 1.08420 = $10,842.00
Had you bought that position moments earlier at the ask, you would have paid 10,000 × 1.08430 = $10,843.00. Closing immediately therefore returns $1.00 less than you put in, with the market having done nothing at all.
Why is the bid always lower?
Because whoever stands ready to trade with you at any moment has to be paid for doing so. They buy from you slightly cheaper than they sell to you, and the difference — the spread — is their compensation. A bid above the ask would mean they were paying for the privilege, which is not a business.
The mistake beginners make
Reading a profit target off the wrong side of the quote. If you are long and your target is 1.0900, you will be closed out when the bid reaches 1.0900 — not when the ask does. The ask gets there first. On a wide spread, or on a stop-loss where the same logic runs in reverse and the ask triggers your exit, that difference is the gap between the exit you planned and the exit you got.
Related terms
- Ask Price — the other half of the quote — where you buy
- Spread — the gap between bid and ask
- Exchange Rate — the mid-price these two sit around
- Pip — the unit the gap is measured in
Every term above is part of the same idea: how a forex price is written down and what it costs you to trade on it. Start at currency pair if you are reading these for the first time, or browse the full glossary.