Futures Calculator
Position & leverage

Liquidation Price Calculator

Find the price that closes your leveraged position — before you open it.

Liquidation price
54,271 $
Distance to liquidation
5,729 $
from entry
Adverse move that liquidates
9.55 %
Initial margin rate
10.00 %

Liquidation distance by leverage

LeverageAdverse move to liquidationLiquidation price
49.75 %30,151 $
33.00 %40,201 $
19.60 %48,241 $
10×9.55 %54,271 $
20×4.52 %57,286 $
25×3.52 %57,889 $
50×1.51 %59,095 $
100×0.50 %59,698 $

How it works

A leveraged position is liquidated when its remaining margin falls to the maintenance requirement. For an isolated linear contract that happens once price has moved against you by the initial margin rate minus the maintenance margin rate — which is why the distance depends on leverage and almost nothing else.

The relationship is brutally non-linear. Going from 5× to 10× halves your buffer from about 19% to 9.5%, and 50× leaves roughly 1.5%. Exchanges also raise the maintenance rate in tiers as the position grows, so a large position liquidates earlier than this simplified formula suggests.

long: liq = entry × (1 − 1/L + mmr)

Liquidation price on a specific exchange

These pages already carry the venue's own maintenance margin ladder, so there is no rate to look up — and each cites the documentation it was built from.

How the Liquidation Price Calculator works

A liquidation price calculator tells you the price at which an exchange force-closes your leveraged position. Knowing it before you open the trade is the difference between a planned stop-loss and an involuntary exit at the worst possible moment.

How liquidation actually works

When you open a leveraged position you post initial margin — 10% of the notional at 10×, 2% at 50×. As price moves against you, that margin erodes. The exchange does not wait for it to reach zero: it closes the position once the remaining margin falls to the maintenance margin requirement, keeping a buffer so the position can be unwound without going negative.

That is why liquidation distance is essentially the initial margin rate minus the maintenance margin rate. At 10× with a 0.5% maintenance rate, you are liquidated after roughly a 9.5% adverse move — not 10%.

The leverage trap

The relationship between leverage and survivable distance is a reciprocal, not a line, and that is what catches people. Going from 2× to 4× costs you 25 percentage points of buffer. Going from 50× to 100× costs less than one. The damage is concentrated at the low end, and by the time you are at high leverage there is almost nothing left to lose.

The practical consequence: above roughly 25× your liquidation sits inside normal intraday noise. You are no longer betting on direction, you are betting that a wick does not print. The comparison table on this page makes the shape of that curve visible at a glance.

Where this simplified formula stops being exact

Exchanges apply maintenance margin in tiers: the larger your position, the higher the maintenance rate, so a big position liquidates earlier than a small one at identical leverage. Cross-margin mode pulls your whole balance in as collateral, pushing liquidation further away but putting everything at risk. Inverse (coin-margined) contracts use a different formula again.

Treat the number here as accurate for isolated linear contracts at moderate size, and always confirm against your exchange before sizing a live position. A better habit is to make it irrelevant: place a stop-loss based on position sizing well before the liquidation price so you are never in the exchange's hands.

FAQ

What maintenance margin rate should I enter?expand_more

For major pairs at modest size, 0.4–0.5% is typical. Exchanges publish a tiered table where the rate rises with position size — check yours if you are trading large, because a higher maintenance rate moves liquidation closer to entry.

Can I be liquidated if my stop-loss is closer than the liquidation price?expand_more

Not under normal conditions — the stop fills first. The exceptions are gaps and extreme volatility where price jumps past your stop, and outages where the order does not execute. Keeping meaningful distance between stop and liquidation is what protects you from those cases.

Does adding margin move the liquidation price?expand_more

Yes. Adding margin to an isolated position lowers its effective leverage and pushes liquidation further away. It also increases the amount you stand to lose. It is a way to buy time, not a way to fix a losing trade.

Why is my exchange's number slightly different?expand_more

Tiered maintenance margin, unrealised funding, fees reserved for closing, and the exact mark-price method all shift the figure a little. The direction of the difference is usually conservative — your real liquidation tends to be marginally closer than the simplified formula suggests.

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