Liquidation Price Calculator

Liquidation risk map

Key numbers

Liquidation danger level

How leverage changes your liquidation distance

Using your current entry price and maintenance margin rate, here's how far away liquidation sits at different leverage levels — the same trade, sized more or less aggressively.

Maintenance margin rate by exchange (typical)

Approximate maintenance margin rates commonly cited for major-pair, lower-tier positions on large exchanges. These vary by exchange, coin and position size — always check your exchange's exact tier for your specific position before trading.

Understanding liquidation price

Your liquidation price is the exact price at which an exchange force-closes a leveraged position because the margin backing it can no longer absorb further losses. It isn't a penalty and it isn't optional — it's a mechanical safety rule the exchange enforces to stop your losses (and, in cross margin, potentially the exchange's own exposure) from going further than the collateral can cover.

This comes directly from how much room your position has before losses eat into the maintenance margin the exchange requires you to keep. Your initial margin is Position Value ÷ Leverage; the exchange's required maintenance margin is Position Value × Maintenance Margin Rate. Liquidation happens exactly when a price move has consumed the gap between those two numbers — solving that condition for price gives the formula above.

Why higher leverage moves liquidation closer

Leverage controls how much of your own capital backs a given position size. At 5x leverage, you post 20% of the position's value as margin; at 100x, you post just 1%. That smaller cushion means a smaller price move consumes it entirely. Using a $67,500 entry and a 0.4% maintenance margin rate: 5x leverage puts liquidation about 19.6% away, 10x pushes it to 9.6% away, 20x to 4.6%, and 100x to just 0.6% away — a move smaller than many assets make in an hour. The leverage comparison table further down this page recalculates this using your own entry price and maintenance margin rate.

Isolated vs. cross margin liquidation

Isolated margin backs a position with only the margin you've assigned to it — if that runs out, the position is liquidated and the loss is capped there, leaving the rest of your account balance untouched. Cross margin instead lets your entire account balance act as a buffer for every open position, which typically pushes each position's liquidation price further away since there's more collateral behind it — but it also means a single bad trade can draw down your whole balance instead of just one position's margin. Neither mode changes the underlying math of how leverage affects distance to liquidation; it only changes what capital is available to delay it.

Maintenance margin rates differ by exchange and position size

Every exchange sets its own maintenance margin rate, and that rate is virtually never flat — it rises in tiers as your position size grows, because a larger position represents more risk for the exchange's insurance fund to absorb if it can't be closed cleanly. A small BTC position and a very large one on the same exchange, at the same leverage, can have meaningfully different liquidation distances purely because they sit in different maintenance margin tiers. The maintenance margin rate presets on this page are typical figures for major pairs at lower position-size tiers — always check your specific exchange's margin tier table for your exact position size before trading.

Mark price, not last price

Liquidation is almost always triggered off the mark price rather than the last traded price. Mark price is typically calculated from an index of several spot exchanges rather than any single order book, which makes it far harder for a brief, thin-liquidity wick on one venue to trigger a liquidation that wouldn't have happened on the broader market. It's a meaningful protection, but it doesn't eliminate liquidation risk — a genuine, sustained move still reaches the mark price just as it would the last price.

Funding rate can move your liquidation price without the market moving

Perpetual futures periodically exchange a funding payment between longs and shorts to keep the contract price anchored to the spot market. If funding is working against your position and your available balance can't absorb it, the payment is deducted from your position margin instead — which quietly nudges your liquidation price closer to the current price even if the market itself hasn't moved against you. This effect compounds on positions held for a long time, which is worth factoring in separately from the one-time liquidation price this calculator produces.

A worked example

A long entry at $67,500 with 10x leverage and a 0.4% maintenance margin rate gives a liquidation price of $61,020 — about 9.6% away. Add a stop-loss at $65,000 (about 3.7% away) and there's roughly $3,980 of buffer between the planned exit and the forced one, about 5.9% of the entry price, meaning ordinary volatility around the stop shouldn't reach liquidation first. Raise leverage to 20x on the same trade and liquidation moves to $64,395 — the buffer shrinks to about $605, under 1% of the entry price, an uncomfortably thin gap that a brief wick could skip through entirely.

Keeping distance between your stop-loss and your liquidation price

A stop-loss only protects you if it actually executes before liquidation does. If the two sit close together, a fast move or a thin-liquidity wick can blow through the stop and trigger liquidation directly, which is typically worse — liquidation often carries its own fee and, depending on the exchange and margin mode, can close the position at a less favorable price than a stop order would. The "Max Safe Leverage" tab on this page solves for the leverage level that keeps a genuine buffer between the two, instead of leaving it to chance.

Glossary of terms

Liquidation price

The price at which an exchange force-closes a leveraged position because remaining margin can no longer cover further losses.

Maintenance margin

The minimum equity an exchange requires you to keep in a position to avoid liquidation — calculated as position value multiplied by the maintenance margin rate.

Maintenance margin rate (MMR)

The percentage set by an exchange, usually rising in tiers with position size, used to calculate the maintenance margin requirement.

Initial margin

The margin required to open a position, equal to position value divided by leverage.

Isolated margin

A margin mode where only the capital allocated to one position backs it; losses are capped at that position's margin.

Cross margin

A margin mode where the entire account balance backs every open position, extending the liquidation buffer at the cost of exposing the whole balance.

Mark price

An index-based reference price, typically averaged across several venues, that most exchanges use to trigger liquidations instead of the last traded price.

Bankruptcy price

The price at which a position's losses would exceed its entire margin, reaching zero equity — liquidation is designed to close the position before this point is reached.

Insurance fund

A pool maintained by the exchange to absorb the gap when a position is closed at a worse price than its calculated liquidation price, generally preventing users from owing a negative balance.

Effective leverage

The real ratio of position value to the equity actually backing it — for cross margin, this can differ from the leverage multiplier selected when opening the trade.

How to use this calculator

Common mistakes & tips for managing liquidation risk

• Placing a stop-loss right next to the liquidation price. Leave real distance — a thin buffer can be skipped by a brief wick, liquidating you instead of your stop saving you.
• Assuming leverage doesn't matter if you "plan to close early." Liquidation doesn't wait for your plan — a fast move can reach it before you're able to react.
• Using cross margin without realizing the whole balance is exposed. Cross margin pushes liquidation further away, but a bad trade can draw down funds you meant to keep for other positions.
• Ignoring maintenance margin tiers on large positions. A big position can sit in a higher-MMR tier than a small one on the same exchange, moving liquidation closer than expected.
• Forgetting funding rate accrual on long-held perpetual positions. Sustained negative funding slowly erodes margin and nudges liquidation closer, independent of price movement.
• Adding margin to "rescue" a bad trade. Adding margin only buys time — it doesn't fix a setup that's already invalidated; treat it as a deliberate risk decision, not a reflex.

Example setups

A few realistic entry, leverage and maintenance margin rate combinations — click one to load it into the Liquidation Price tab above.

Your saved setups

Click "💾 Save setup" above to keep the trade you're currently checking — it's stored privately in this browser, not sent anywhere, so it'll be here next time you visit on this device.

Isolated vs. cross margin — a side-by-side example

Same trade — a $6,750 position (0.1 BTC) at $67,500 entry, 10x leverage, 0.4% maintenance margin rate — checked under both margin modes.

With isolated margin, only the $675 assigned to the position is at risk, and liquidation sits 9.6% away. Switching to cross margin with a $3,000 account balance backing the same position pushes liquidation to 44% away — a much bigger buffer — but now the full $3,000 is exposed to this one trade instead of just $675. Neither answer is "correct"; it's a trade-off between how much capital you're willing to put behind one position and how much breathing room you want it to have.

Frequently asked questions

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