The first currency is the base and the second is the quote: EUR/USD 1.1208 means one euro costs 1.1208 US dollars. If the number rises, the base currency has strengthened. Dealers show two prices, a lower bid and a higher ask; reference rates show one.
Base and quote
A currency pair is written as two three-letter codes separated by a slash: EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD. The codes come from the international standard ISO 4217 — EUR for the euro, USD for the US dollar, JPY for the yen, GBP for sterling, CHF for the Swiss franc.
The first code is the base currency: the thing being priced. The second is the quote currency: what it is priced in. So
EUR/USD 1.1208 means 1 euro = 1.1208 US dollars.
That was the European Central Bank’s reference rate for EUR/USD on 15 October 2026. The same fixing gives USD/JPY 157.976 — one dollar costs about 158 yen — and GBP/USD 1.32467 — one pound costs about 1.32 dollars.
Up means the first currency strengthened
When the number rises, the base currency buys more of the quote currency. If EUR/USD moves from 1.10 to 1.12, the euro has strengthened and the dollar has weakened. If USD/JPY falls from 160 to 150, the dollar buys fewer yen, so the yen has strengthened.
This is why the colour and arrow on this site’s currency board always refer to the pair as written. A green ▲ on USD/JPY is a stronger dollar and weaker yen; it says nothing about whether that is good or bad.
Quote direction
Read the displayed base and quote rather than assuming a universal order. This site writes EUR/USD as dollars per euro and USD/JPY as yen per dollar. The ECB source itself quotes every currency per one euro.
Direct and indirect quotes
Seen from a particular country, a quote is direct when the foreign currency is the base (in the US, EUR/USD 1.1208 tells an American what one euro costs in dollars) and indirect when the home currency is the base (USD/EUR 0.8922 tells the same person how many euros a dollar buys). They contain the same information: one is the reciprocal of the other, 1 ÷ 1.1208 = 0.8922. Every pair page on this site shows both directions.
Pips and decimals
Traders count small moves in pips. For most pairs a pip is the fourth decimal place, 0.0001; for pairs quoted in yen it is the second, 0.01, under the convention described by OANDA. Fractional pips (pipettes) are one tenth of a pip, so a platform can display finer increments. EUR/USD moving from 1.1208 to 1.1218 is a 10-pip rise; USD/JPY moving from 157.97 to 158.47 is 50 pips.
Pips are a dealing convention. For comparing moves across pairs, percentages are clearer: 10 pips is about 0.09% of EUR/USD, while 50 pips of USD/JPY is about 0.32%. That is why the boards on this site show changes in percent.
Bid, ask and spread
A dealer quotes two prices. The bid is what the dealer pays for the base currency; the ask (or offer) is what the dealer charges. In an ordinary two-way quote the ask exceeds the bid; the difference is the spread. Compare the actual quote and any separate fees rather than assuming a fixed spread.
A reference rate is a single number with no spread. It is useful as a neutral middle point for comparing quotes, but you cannot deal at it. See ECB reference rates explained.
Which pairs matter most
The Bank for International Settlements surveys global currency trading every three years. Its 2022 survey put average turnover at 7.5 trillion US dollars a day in April 2022 and found the dollar on one side of 88% of all trades and the euro, the second most traded currency, on one side of about 31%. That dominance is why many people think about exchange rates against the dollar, even when the ECB publishes everything against the euro.
Reading a historical quote
Old quotes need a date and a source to be meaningful. “EUR/USD was 0.9565” is ambiguous; “the ECB reference rate for EUR/USD was 0.9565 on 28 September 2022” is a checkable fact, and one of the lowest fixings in this site’s record since 2016. Each pair page lists the yearly highs and lows with their dates so you can cite them precisely.
Saved numerical source
Historical numbers above refer to the saved ECB-derived snapshot, retrieved 2026-10-16T00:01:08.026Z. The JSON retains the provider request or workbook URL and observation dates. It is the saved normalized dataset, not a claim of a fresh download or the provider’s original response bytes.
Questions readers ask
- If EUR/USD goes up, is the dollar weaker?
- Yes. A higher EUR/USD means each euro buys more dollars, so the euro has strengthened against the dollar and the dollar has weakened against the euro.
- What is a pip?
- A pip is a conventional price-movement unit, not necessarily the smallest displayed increment: 0.0001 for most pairs and 0.01 for pairs quoted in yen. A move in EUR/USD from 1.1208 to 1.1218 is 10 pips.
- Why does my bank show two different rates?
- The lower one (bid) is what it pays when it buys the base currency from you; the higher one (ask) is what it charges when it sells it to you. The difference is the spread.