Options Payoff Diagram
Combine any legs — long or short calls, puts and stock — and see the payoff at expiration: breakeven points, max profit and max loss, drawn to scale.
Also available as a desktop app for Windows.
About this tool
Every option strategy sounds simple when a broker describes it: a covered call "generates income", an iron condor "profits from low volatility". What those sentences hide is the shape — where the strategy makes money, where it loses, how much, and at exactly which price the trade stops being profitable. That shape is a picture, and this tool draws it.
Add legs one at a time: buy or sell, call, put, or the underlying stock itself, with a strike, a premium, and a quantity. The chart shows the combined profit and loss at expiration across every price of the underlying. Above the dashed zero line you keep money; below it you do not. Breakeven points are marked where the payoff crosses zero, and the summary reports the maximum profit, the maximum loss, and whether either is unbounded — which is precisely the question a naked short call never answers until it is too late.
The math is exact, not sampled: option payoffs are piecewise linear, and every kink (each strike and the stock basis) is evaluated directly, so the breakeven points and extremes are true values rather than grid approximations. Presets for the common structures — covered call, protective put, vertical spreads, straddle, iron condor, collar — are one click away as starting points.
Everything runs locally in your browser. No position you enter is sent anywhere, and nothing is logged.
Frequently asked questions
- Are quantities in shares or contracts?
- Both, depending on what you type. The math is per-share: one option contract covers 100 shares in the US market, so either enter quantities of 100 and 1, or enter 1 and 0.01 — the shape of the payoff is identical, only the numbers scale. If all your legs are option contracts, quantities of 1 and 2 etc. are usually the most convenient.
- Why does the chart ignore time value?
- The line shown is the payoff at expiration, when options are worth exactly their intrinsic value and nothing more. Before expiration the value of a position sits above this line by whatever time value remains. Payoff diagrams at expiry are the standard way to compare strategies because they show the structure that time value only blurs.
- What does "unbounded" mean in the summary?
- When the payoff keeps rising past the right edge of the chart, the summary says so instead of silently reporting the largest value in view. A short call, for example, loses more the higher the underlying climbs — with no floor. Bounded strategies (spreads, condors, anything with a protective leg) never show this note.
- What is the stock leg for?
- It lets you model positions that mix options with the underlying: a covered call is long stock plus a short call, a collar is long stock plus a protective put and a short call, and a protective put is long stock plus a long put. For the stock leg the "strike" column is your purchase price (basis) and the premium is always zero.
- Does it include commissions, dividends and early assignment?
- No. The diagram is the textbook payoff: strikes, premiums and quantities, nothing else. Commissions shift every line down by a fixed amount, dividends affect the stock leg only, and early assignment is a risk-management question rather than a payoff question — all three are better handled in your broker’s margin calculator once the shape looks right here.
- Is my position data sent to a server?
- No. The whole calculation is arithmetic that runs in your browser, and the page keeps working with no connection at all.