Leverage liquidation calculator
Your liq price isn't what the exchange says — it's what maintenance margin dictates.
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The single most important number in leveraged trading isn't your entry or target — it's your liquidation price. Get that wrong and a brief wick takes your entire margin. This calculator uses standard perp mechanics (initial margin, maintenance margin) to show exactly where your position gets force-closed.
Enter leverage, entry price, and position direction. The output is the liquidation price (before funding adjustments) and the price move required to trigger it.
Exchanges display a liquidation price on your open position screen, but that number updates constantly as funding fees accrue and as you add or reduce margin. The formula is deterministic: liq price for a long = entry × (1 − 1/leverage + maintenance margin rate). On Binance perps with 0.5% maintenance margin, a 10x long on BTC at $65,000 liquidates at $58,825 — a 9.5% drawdown. That same position at 20x liquidates at $62,075, just a 4.5% move away.
Most traders get liquidated not because they picked the wrong direction but because they sized wrong. A $1,000 account running 50x leverage on ETH has a liquidation buffer of 1.5% — a move that happens dozens of times per day during normal volatility. Running the numbers before you open the position takes 30 seconds and prevents the most avoidable loss in trading.
10x long on BTC at $65,000 with $5,000 margin
Position size: $5,000 × 10 = $50,000 notional = 0.769 BTC.
Initial margin: 10% (1/10x).
Maintenance margin on most perps: 0.5%.
Liquidation price ≈ entry × (1 − 1/leverage + MM) = $65,000 × (1 − 0.10 + 0.005) = $58,825.
That's a 9.5% drop — one red weekend for Bitcoin.
Isolated vs cross margin
Isolated margin: your liq risk is capped at the margin allocated to that position. Losing that trade doesn't touch the rest of your account. Cross margin: all account equity backs every position. Cross allows higher effective leverage and survives deeper drawdowns, but one bad trade can cascade — if BTC dumps and your BTC-long liquidates, that equity loss amplifies pressure on your ETH-long too. Pros use cross for hedged books; retail should almost always use isolated.
Funding rates — the silent killer
Perps pay funding between longs and shorts every 8 hours (Binance, Bybit, OKX). When longs are crowded, funding is positive — longs pay shorts. Positive 0.01%/8hr sounds small, but it's 10.95% annualized. Hold a 10x long through 3 months of persistent bullish funding and you paid 2.7% of your margin in funding alone — effectively an extra 27% of position value per year.
Partial liquidation and auto-deleveraging
On Binance, Bybit, and OKX, positions above certain notional thresholds face tiered maintenance margin — larger positions require more margin, so the liq price is actually closer than the simple formula suggests for big trades. A $100K notional BTC position might have 0.65% maintenance margin instead of 0.5%. At 10x, that shifts liq from $58,825 to $59,100 — a $275 difference per contract that matters in volatile conditions.
Auto-deleveraging (ADL) is the next layer most traders miss. When the exchange insurance fund runs out during a cascade liquidation, profitable positions on the opposite side get closed involuntarily to offset the loss. Your winning short can be ADL'd against a losing long without warning. ADL indicators are shown in the Binance and Bybit UI as a ranked bar — if you're in the top tier on both profit and leverage, ADL risk is real. Reduce leverage or take partial profits when ADL indicator is red.
Partial liquidation mechanics also vary by exchange. On some platforms, the exchange closes just enough of your position to bring margin back above maintenance — you lose part of the position but keep the rest open. On others, the entire position is closed at the liq price minus fees. Know which model your exchange uses before sizing. Partial liq is more trader-friendly but means your notional exposure is recalculated mid-trade.
Position sizing from liq price backward
Most traders pick a leverage first, then calculate position size. The better approach is to start from the maximum loss you'll accept and work backward. Decide: 'I'm willing to lose $500 on this trade, and I want my stop-loss at $62,000 if I'm entering at $65,000.' That's a $3,000 per BTC loss from entry to stop. $500 ÷ $3,000 = 0.167 BTC maximum position size. At $65,000/BTC, that's $10,850 notional. If your account is $5,000, that's 2.17x leverage — far lower than most beginners use, and it's sized to your actual risk tolerance rather than a round leverage number.
Liq price should be set so that your stop-loss fires well before liquidation. A 10% buffer between stop and liq is the minimum. If your stop is at $62,000 and your liq is at $61,500, a fast market can gap through your stop and hit liq anyway. Widen the buffer on high-volatility assets (small caps, low liquidity altcoin perps) where slippage on your stop order can easily be 1-3%.
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Liquidation math — frequently asked questions
Does my liq price move over time even if spot stays flat?
Yes — funding fees accrue against your margin, pushing your liq price closer with each 8-hour funding tick. Fee-paid-to-the-account also reduces your effective liq buffer. Re-check liq price after 24+ hours, not just at entry.
What's the difference between exchange-quoted liq price and real liq price?
Exchange-quoted liq includes maintenance margin and can be ~0.5-1% 'looser' than the simple 1/leverage math. But exchanges also auto-deleverage (ADL) during cascade events — your position can be closed before reaching liq if the insurance fund is depleted. Don't assume your liq is safe; size accordingly.
Is cross margin riskier than isolated?
It can be — one losing position drains collateral from others. But cross allows pair-trading, hedged exposure, and surviving deep drawdowns where an isolated position would liquidate. For single directional bets, isolated is safer; for books with offsetting positions, cross is appropriate.
What leverage is safe for BTC or ETH?
'Safe' is relative. 2-3x gives you a ~30-40% buffer before liq — a normal correction range. 5x gives you ~19%, which is one bad news cycle. 10x is ~9.5%, which is a single heavy-volume day. 25x+ is essentially a gamble with defined maximum loss. Professional trend followers rarely run more than 3-5x max.
Can I set a stop-loss to avoid liquidation?
Yes, and you should. Set your stop-loss at 80-90% of the liq price distance — exit with 10-20% margin remaining instead of getting liquidated and paying the close fee plus insurance fund haircut. Stops aren't free (slippage in fast markets) but they're vastly better than liq.
How do exchanges handle liquidations during flash crashes?
During cascade events (like the March 2020 COVID crash or May 2021 altcoin wipeout), order books thin out and liquidation engines sell into a market with no bids. Positions get closed at prices far below the quoted liq price — this is called 'clawback' or 'socialized loss.' BitMEX, in particular, was notorious for this in 2019-2020. Modern exchanges (Binance, Bybit, OKX) have larger insurance funds that absorb most cascade losses, but extreme events can still trigger ADL before insurance is exhausted.
What's the maximum leverage available on major exchanges and should I use it?
Binance offers up to 125x on BTC perps; Bybit and OKX go to 100x. At 125x, liquidation triggers on a 0.8% adverse move — well within a single minute's volatility for BTC. The only use case for triple-digit leverage is very short-duration scalping by professionals with instant exit hotkeys. For any trade held longer than a few minutes, 125x is not a trading strategy, it's a controlled donation to the exchange insurance fund.
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