Every forex price is a comparison between two currencies, written as a pair like EUR/USD. The first currency listed is the base currency; the second is the quote currency (sometimes called the counter currency).

The price tells you how much of the quote currency it takes to buy one unit of the base currency. If EUR/USD is quoted at 1.10, that means 1 euro is worth 1.10 US dollars. If the price rises to 1.12, the euro has strengthened against the dollar — it now buys more dollars than before.

Reading direction correctly

This trips a lot of beginners up: "EUR/USD going up" means the euro is getting stronger relative to the dollar, not the other way around. It's worth pausing on this until it's automatic, because getting the direction backwards is an easy way to misread a chart or a headline.

Majors, minors, and exotics

Pairs are usually grouped by how frequently they trade:

• Majors always include the US dollar paired with another heavily-traded currency — EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, USD/CHF. These tend to have the tightest spreads (the smallest gap between buy and sell price) because so much volume flows through them.
• Minors (or "crosses") pair two major currencies without the US dollar — EUR/GBP, AUD/JPY.
• Exotics pair a major currency with a currency from a smaller or emerging economy — USD/TZS, USD/ZAR. These typically trade less and can have wider spreads and sharper moves.

Why this matters practically

Knowing which currency is "base" and which is "quote" isn't just trivia — it determines what a rising or falling price actually means for your position, and it's the foundation for reading any rate table, chart, or calculator correctly, including the indicative rates in this app's Forex & Crypto section.