> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.magicmarkets.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Prices and ticks

> Decimal prices, cents and implied probability, and the fixed tick schedule that every valid price sits on.

## Reading a price

The app can show prices in six formats: cents, percentage, decimal, US, Hong Kong and Indonesian. Choose one under **Price format** in settings. This page explains cents and decimal.

**Cents.** The default in the app. A price of 40c means the market puts a 40 percent implied chance on the outcome. Buy at 40c and each 40c you put in returns 100c if the outcome wins, which is 60c of profit. A 10 USDT buy at 40c returns 25 USDT.

**Decimal.** The convention on exchanges and the API. A price of 2.50 returns 2.50 USDT for each 1 USDT you put in, including that 1 USDT, when the outcome wins. A 10 USDT buy at 2.50 returns 25 USDT, of which 15 USDT is profit.

The two are the same number written differently:

```
cents = 100 / decimal price
```

So 2.50 is 40c, 1.25 is 80c, and 5.00 is 20c.

## The tick schedule

Prices are not continuous. Every valid price sits on a fixed tick schedule, and the tick widens as the price grows.

| Decimal price | Cents (approximate) | Tick |
| - | - | - |
| 1.01 to 2 | 99c to 50c | 0.01 |
| 2 to 3 | 50c to 33.3c | 0.02 |
| 3 to 4 | 33.3c to 25c | 0.05 |
| 4 to 6 | 25c to 16.7c | 0.10 |
| 6 to 10 | 16.7c to 10c | 0.20 |
| 10 to 20 | 10c to 5c | 0.50 |
| 20 to 30 | 5c to 3.3c | 1 |
| 30 to 50 | 3.3c to 2c | 2 |
| 50 to 100 | 2c to 1c | 5 |
| 100 to 1000 | 1c to 0.1c | 10 |

Band boundaries are exact in decimal price. Match a price to its band by the decimal value, because the cents labels are approximate.

So 2.51 is not a valid price. Between 2 and 3 the tick is 0.02, which makes 2.50 and 2.52 valid and nothing in between.

## Limit prices

Limit prices sit on this tick schedule. In decimal odds, as the API quotes them, higher is better on both sides: a sell price is quoted as odds on the outcome not happening.

Your order never fills at a price worse than the one you named.

Prices delivered from the live feed are already on the schedule, so a price you take straight off the book is valid as it is.

Combo prices are the exception. A combo price is the product of its legs' prices, so it does not sit on the schedule. It can be any value up to 1000.

## Why the schedule exists

Wider ticks at long prices keep the book from fragmenting across meaningless increments. At a price of 500, a 0.01 tick would spread liquidity across thousands of levels nobody can distinguish. At a price of 1.50 that same tick is meaningful.

## Next

* [How the exchange works](/platform/how-the-exchange-works)
* [Prices and ticks for developers](/developers/prices-and-ticks)


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