---
title: "Amounts & precision — Money for Laravel | Roundly"
description: "The canonical integer grammar, hard limits, the int64 bridge and how money columns behave on PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite."
url: https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/money-for-laravel/amount-precision
language: en
---

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[Money for Laravel](https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/money-for-laravel.md)

# Amounts & precision

A minor amount is always a canonical integer string: 0, or an optional minus followed by up to 65 significant digits (Money::MAX\_DIGITS) — no plus sign, leading zeros, whitespace, dot or exponent. minor() only ever returns this grammar.

```php
$big = Money::ofMinor('123456789012345678901234567890', 'EUR');

$big->digits();      // 30
$big->fitsInt();     // false
$big->minorInt();    // throws AmountOverflow — no silent (int) path

// Never compare raw minors in PHP: numeric strings go through float above int64
$a->minor() > $b->minor();   // unreliable for large amounts
$a->isGreaterThan($b);       // always exact

Money::ofMinor('007', 'EUR')->minor();   // "7" — normalized on entry
Money::ofMinor('5.0', 'EUR');            // throws InvalidAmount — minors are integers
```

- Never (int)-cast or PHP-compare raw minors — PHP compares numeric strings through floats above int64. Use the Money comparison methods.
- minorInt() is the only int bridge; it throws AmountOverflow outside int64, and fitsInt() tells you in advance.
- JSON carries minor as a string: a JSON number above 2⁵³ is corrupted by JavaScript.
- Integer inputs are normalized on entry ("007" → "7", "-0" → "0"); "+5", " 5", "5.0" and "5e3" throw InvalidAmount.

## Limits

| Bound | Value | Exception |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Minor digits in memory | 65 | `AmountOverflow` |
| Decimal input digits | 90 | `InvalidAmount` |
| Parser input (characters) | 128 | `InvalidAmount` |
| split() parts | 1..10 000 | `InvalidAllocation` |
| Scales (MinorUnits, ofScaled, toScaled) | 0..36 | `InvalidAmount` |
| Custom currency exponent | 0..18 | `InvalidCurrency` |
| Ratio terms after reduction (digits) | 80 | `InvalidRatio` |
| Persisted digits (schema.precision) | 38 | `InvalidMoneyValue` |

## Database columns

$table->money() emits a signed decimal(P, 0) amount column (P = money.schema.precision, default 38) plus a currency column. Decimal gives native numeric ORDER BY, range filters and exact SUM — bigint would bring back the int64 ceiling, and varchar sorts “9” after “10”.

| Engine | Column | PDO returns | Out of range |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| PostgreSQL | `numeric(38,0)` | string "1050" | numeric\_value\_out\_of\_range error |
| MySQL / MariaDB | `decimal(38,0)` | string "1050" | Strict-mode out-of-range error (non-strict MySQL is unsupported) |
| SQLite | `numeric` | int 1050 | Would silently become REAL — so the cast refuses amounts beyond int64 |

SQL Server is not supported: no CI run covers it, and a large rates refresh (the ECB recent and history feeds) binds more parameters per upsert than its 2,100-parameter limit allows.

The scale is always 0 — the exponent lives in the currency registry, so one column holds JPY (0), EUR (2) and ETH (18) rows. Lower money.schema.precision to 19 for int64-sized columns; Currency::maxMajorAmount() reports the largest storable major amount:

```php
Currency::of('EUR')->maxMajorAmount(19);   // "99999999999999999.99"
```

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