Are pips counted the same even if the number is 5 places past the decimal point? the difference between 1.0000 and 1.0003 is 3 pips… but what if it is 1.00000 and 1.00030? is that 3 or 30 pips? I use ONANDA and EUR/USD uses 5 places…
The 5th decimal is called a pipette, and it is not the same at a pip.
The difference between 1.00000 and 1.00030 is 3 pips, and the difference between 1.00000 and 1.00005 is half a pip.
So basically that 5th place after the decimal point is a value of 1/10th a pip right?
That’s right. 
These are also known as [B]fractional pips[/B].
Some brokers offer prices in tenths of a pip to provide lower spreads for popular currency pairs.
Fractional pip pricing should reduce bid/ask spreads providing you with very smaller transaction costs.
That’s something I don’t understand. why do fractional pips allow for lower spreads?
If you don’t use fraction pips the spreads have to be whole numbers… 1 pip, 2 pips, etc.
But if the broker is using fractional pips you can have spreads like 1.5 pips and .9 pips.
Some brokers aren’t willing to drop a whole pip off the spread, but might be willing to drop .5 pips or so…
When I started trading I played the futures market coming to forex was a hassle. Just remember anything with JPY the second digit after the decimal is the pip and everything else is the forth digit.
What sucks is that my charting has an extra digit on some of the pairs which made it a pain when learning. Overtime I simply got use to the extra digit and adjust accordingly.
Just imagine going to the store and something costs 50 cents. You give them a dollar, a fractional pip is like the change. The fractional pip allows the cost to have ten additional places instead of jumping from $1 to $2. So you end up with $1.10, $1.20, $1.30, $1.40, etc… Hopefully that helps.