The Major Currency Pairs, Ranked by Real Trading Share
The major currency pairs are the seven most traded pairs that include the US dollar: EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, USD/CAD and NZD/USD. In the Bank for International Settlements' 2025 survey they made up 59.3% of global foreign exchange trading.
“The majors” is the first list anyone learning forex is handed. The list is a market convention. How much each pair actually trades is a measured fact, and the official figures changed in 2025.
How it works
The seven majors all pair the US dollar with another large, freely traded currency. They are EUR/USD (euro), USD/JPY (Japanese yen), GBP/USD (British pound), USD/CHF (Swiss franc), AUD/USD (Australian dollar), USD/CAD (Canadian dollar) and NZD/USD (New Zealand dollar). Other pairs are usually called crosses, with no dollar in them, or exotics, the dollar against a less widely traded currency.
Which currency is written first is a quoting habit. The first currency in a currency pair is the base: EUR/USD at 1.1000 means one euro costs 1.10 dollars. The euro, pound, Australian dollar and New Zealand dollar are quoted first against the dollar; the yen, franc and Canadian dollar are quoted second.
The ranking comes from central banks, not brokers. Every three years the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) runs the Triennial Central Bank Survey, in which central banks collect trading data from dealers in their countries. The 2025 survey measured April 2025 and found global foreign exchange trading of $9.6 trillion a day (bis.org, Triennial Survey 2025 page, read 25 Sep 2026; BIS release dated 30 Sep 2025).
The dollar is the hub. Every trade has two currencies, so the survey’s currency shares add to 200%. The US dollar was on one side of 89.2% of trades, the euro 28.9%, the yen 16.8% and the pound 10.2%. The Canadian dollar was 5.8% and the New Zealand dollar 1.5%.
Why the majors cost less to trade
Why the majors matter to a trader is cost. A pair that trades in enormous amounts usually has a tighter bid-ask spread, because many dealers compete to quote it. The spread is paid on every trade, so it is the one cost a pair’s popularity directly lowers.
A worked example
Pip value on the most traded pair. On EUR/USD a pip is 0.0001. One standard lot is 100,000 euros, so one pip is 100,000 times 0.0001, which is $10. A 20-pip move on one standard lot is $200.
The same move on a yen pair works differently. On USD/JPY a pip is 0.01, so one pip on 100,000 dollars is 1,000 yen. At a hypothetical rate of 150.00 yen to the dollar, that is 1,000 divided by 150, about $6.67 a pip. The dollar value of a pip moves with the exchange rate itself.
So the same stop in pips is not the same risk. A 20-pip stop is $200 on one standard lot of EUR/USD but about $133 on USD/JPY at 150.00. The lot size has to be worked out per pair, not copied from one to the next.
The original data
The official figures: turnover by currency pair, BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey 2025, April 2025 daily averages across all foreign exchange instruments. The two tables used here are published as a CSV of the BIS pair and currency shares, extracted from the BIS workbook.
EUR/USD was 21.2% of all trading, USD/JPY 14.3%, GBP/USD 7.6%, USD/CAD 5.3%, AUD/USD 4.9%, USD/CHF 4.9% and NZD/USD 1.2%. The seven together came to 59.3% of global turnover, down from 61.5% in the 2022 survey.
The pair climbing the ranking
The pair that moved most is one that is not a major. USD/CNY, the dollar against the Chinese renminbi, rose from 6.6% in 2022 to 8.1% in 2025, and now trades more than GBP/USD, which fell from 9.5% to 7.6%. The list of seven is older than that shift and has not changed with it.
The same survey counts retail trading separately. Trades it labels retail-driven came to about $242 billion a day, 2.5% of the total. The prices individual traders see are set in a market almost entirely made up of banks and other institutions.
The currency ranking below the top four: the Chinese renminbi at 8.5%, the Swiss franc at 6.4%, the Australian dollar at 6.1%, the Canadian dollar at 5.8% and the New Zealand dollar at 1.5%.
In the 24,971-video corpus this site studies, 1,313 titles contain “forex”, and 29 name one of the seven major pairs, at a median of 1,792 views. EUR/USD appears in 14, at a median of 723 views; USD/CAD and USD/CHF appear in none. Gold against the dollar, XAU/USD, appears in 43 at a median of 1,554, more than all seven majors put together. The most traded pair in the world is one of the least discussed in video titles.
When it fails
The first failure is treating “major” as “safe.” High trading volume keeps spreads tight on an ordinary day, but it does not cap how far a pair moves. A surprise central bank decision can move a major further in minutes than on a normal day, and a stop may fill well beyond its level.
The second is assuming liquidity is constant. Spreads on the majors widen outside the busy trading sessions, around major data releases and at the daily rollover. The BIS figures are April averages, not the conditions at 5 p.m. New York time.
A third is holding several majors and calling it diversified. Every one of them has the dollar on one side. A long EUR/USD, a long GBP/USD and a short USD/CHF are three versions of one view: a weaker dollar.
A fourth is reading the list as a ranking. NZD/USD is a major at 1.2% of turnover while USD/CNY, at 8.1%, is not. The seven are a convention built on how freely each currency trades, not the seven biggest pairs in 2025.
And a fifth is ignoring the pip arithmetic. As the worked example shows, the same pip distance costs different amounts on different pairs, and the yen pairs change value with the rate itself.
Related
Currency pair explains base and quote currencies and how any pair is read. Forex covers the market as a whole, including who the dealers in the BIS survey are. And pip explains the unit every stop and target on these pairs is measured in.
Start with a pair that trades in huge amounts, because the spread you pay is set by how much trades. The seven majors are not the only choice, but they are where a new trader’s costs are usually lowest and the price is hardest to push around.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.