F&O Lot Size: Current List for Indices & Stocks

A lot is just a wholesale-pack size

Think of eggs. You don't go to a kirana store and ask for 1 egg — you buy a tray of 30, or at minimum a packet of 6. The shop has decided that's the smallest unit it'll sell.

You can buy 1 tray, 2 trays, 5 trays. Not 1.5 trays. The pack is the pack.

Futures and options work the same way. NSE has decided the smallest tradable unit for each underlying. That unit is called the lot, and the number of shares inside it is the lot size.

This is true for indices too. The Nifty 50 lot is 65 today. That means one Nifty futures contract gives you exposure to 65 units of Nifty. One Nifty call option, one Nifty put option, 24,000 strike, 26,000 strike, this week's expiry, next quarter's expiry — all 65.

Why does this matter? Because your profit and your loss are both calculated on that full quantity. If Nifty moves 100 points in your favour on one futures lot, you make ₹6,500 (100 × 65). If it moves 100 points against you, you lose ₹6,500. A small move on the screen becomes a meaningful number in your account — and that's the whole reason F&O is a leveraged game.

Index lot sizes in F&O

Indices are where retail F&O volume actually lives. Nifty and Bank Nifty options alone account for the bulk of daily turnover on Indian exchanges. So this table is the one most readers actually need.

These lot sizes apply to the relevant weekly, monthly, quarterly, and longer-dated contracts wherever those contracts are available on the exchange. Since 2024, SEBI has restricted weekly index derivatives to one benchmark per exchange — Nifty on NSE, Sensex on BSE — so not every index in this list has weekly expiries.

The four highlighted rows — Nifty, Bank Nifty, Fin Nifty, MidCap Nifty — were all reduced from earlier numbers in the January 2026 expiry cycle. The strike-through old numbers are there because you'll still see them quoted in older articles, YouTube videos, and broker tutorials made in 2025. Ignore those; the current contract is what trades today.

The reductions weren't random. NSE rebases lot sizes when the underlying index moves enough that the contract value drifts away from where SEBI wants it to sit. More on the why in the timeline below.

Stock F&O lot sizes

NSE allows F&O trading on more than 200 individual stocks, and the list of lot sizes changes every quarter. A static list of all 200 would be wrong inside a few weeks. So instead of trying to be comprehensive, here are a handful of names that show how wildly the numbers vary — and where to look up the live ones.

Notice how wildly the numbers vary. MRF — one share costs over a lakh — trades in lots of 10. Tata Steel — a two-hundred-rupee stock — trades in lots of 2,750.

The pattern is simple. NSE picks the lot size so that one contract is worth roughly the same notional amount across stocks. A ₹200 stock × 2,750 ≈ ₹5.5 lakh contract. A ₹1,30,000 stock × 10 = ₹13 lakh contract. Both land in roughly the same neighbourhood.

For the live, exchange-published file with every stock currently in F&O, NSE updates a CSV at nseindia.com under "Equity Derivatives → Individual Securities". Your broker's trade screen also pre-fills the right lot size automatically — you don't have to memorise anything.

How to calculate contract value

The lot size by itself doesn't tell you what one contract costs. For that you need one more number: the current price of the underlying. The formula is just multiplication:

This is the number that actually matters for two reasons. First, your margin requirement is calculated as a percentage of contract value, not as a flat fee. Second, your profit and loss moves rupee-for-rupee against this exposure, not against the option premium you paid.

Plug in your own numbers below.

Push that Reliance preset and you'll see a single lot is worth around ₹7.25 lakh. The Bajaj Finance one is just under ₹7 lakh. The MRF one is over ₹13 lakh. The number on the screen is what your bet is actually sized at — not what you paid in margin, not what's in your account.

This is also why option premiums get confusing for beginners. You buy a Nifty 25,000 call for ₹150. Feels small. But because the lot is 65, you've actually paid 65 × 150 = ₹9,750 to take a position worth ₹16.25 lakh.

Every ₹1 move in the premium is ₹65 in your P&L. Every 1-point move in Nifty is ₹65. Lot size is the multiplier that connects what looks like a small number on the screen to a real-money outcome.

Why lot sizes change — and how often

Lot sizes aren't fixed for life. NSE revises them periodically so the notional contract value stays inside a workable band — neither so small that the contract isn't worth trading, nor so large that it locks out retail traders.

SEBI's framework, last updated in late 2024, says the minimum contract value for index derivatives should sit between roughly ₹15 lakh and ₹20 lakh. For stock derivatives, the floor is ₹5 lakh at the time the stock is first introduced. Whenever an underlying moves enough that the contract drifts outside this band, the exchange rebases.

The last two years have been unusually busy on this front. Here's what happened:

Two things to take from this. One, the current numbers in this article are the current numbers, but they're not permanent — expect another rebase whenever the indices move significantly. Two, when a change happens, your broker handles all the mechanics. Existing positions on the old lot size keep trading at the old lot until they expire; new contracts get the new lot size automatically.

You don't need to do anything except notice that the order screen shows a different default quantity than it did last quarter.

One special case is worth knowing about: corporate actions. When a company you hold F&O on issues a bonus, splits, or restructures, NSE adjusts the lot size and the strike prices of all open options on the same day. The Reliance 1:1 bonus in October 2024 is a clean example — the lot went from 250 to 500 overnight, and every existing option's strike was halved. Nothing was lost; the same notional exposure was just redistributed across more units at lower strikes.

What lot size really means for your trading

Now the part nobody on YouTube wants to talk about. Lot size isn't a piece of trivia. It's the number that determines whether F&O is appropriate for your account or whether it's about to wipe you out.

Take the Nifty contract value of ₹16.25 lakh. The margin you need to put up — depending on the broker, the strategy, and SEBI's prevailing rules — is roughly 12 to 15% of that, so somewhere between ₹2 lakh and ₹2.5 lakh per lot. Bank Nifty is similar. A two-leg spread on either reduces that meaningfully, but you're still talking about a position that's leveraged five-to-seven times over the cash you've parked.

Here's what that means in practice. A 2% move in Nifty against your Nifty futures lot is a ₹32,500 loss. That's not a rare event — Nifty moves 2% intraday two or three times a quarter.

If you took the trade on ₹1 lakh of capital, you're down 32%. If you took it on a ₹5 lakh trading account, you're down 6.5% — uncomfortable, but survivable.

This is what we mean when we say F&O is "leveraged." Lot size is the leverage. The 65 multiplier on every Nifty point is what makes futures profitable in 20-point moves and dangerous in 200-point moves.

The fix isn't complicated, but it's strict. Never let a single lot's contract value be more than around four to five times your account size. With ₹5 lakh of capital, one Nifty lot at ₹16 lakh of exposure is right at the edge. One Bank Nifty lot at ₹16.5 lakh is the same. Two lots of either is too much.

This is also why most retail traders are better off learning F&O on a simulator before they go live. The numbers don't feel real until they actually are — and the first time you feel them is not the time to learn the lesson.