What is maintenance margin?

2026-10-29

Maintenance margin is the minimum equity a leveraged position must retain to stay open. When equity falls to it, the position is liquidated — not when the margin reaches zero.

That gap is why liquidation arrives earlier than most people expect, and the fact that the requirement is tiered by position size is why it arrives earlier still for large positions.

Two margin numbers

Initial margin is what you post to open. It is set by your leverage:

initial margin rate = 1 ÷ leverage

At 10× you post 10% of notional. At 25×, 4%.

Maintenance margin is what you must keep. It is set by the venue, expressed as a percentage of notional, and it is smaller than initial margin — otherwise the position would be liquidatable on entry.

The distance between them is your room to be wrong:

distance to liquidation ≈ initial margin rate − maintenance margin rate

At 10× with a 0.5% maintenance rate: 10% − 0.5% = 9.5%. Price can move about 9.5% against you before liquidation. At 50×: 2% − 0.5% = 1.5%.

The liquidation price calculator turns this into a price, and the leverage and stop-loss table shows it across a range of leverage at once.

The tiering, which is the part people miss

Maintenance margin is not one number. Venues publish it as a tiered schedule where the required rate rises with position size.

The structure looks like this — the actual tiers and rates differ by venue and instrument, and change, so read yours rather than trusting any example:

Position notional	Maintenance margin rate	Max leverage
Small	Lowest	Highest
Medium	Higher	Lower
Large	Higher still	Lower still

Two consequences follow directly.

A larger position liquidates earlier at the same leverage, because its maintenance rate is higher. Doubling your size does not merely double your exposure; it moves your liquidation price closer at the same time.

Maximum available leverage falls as size rises. A venue offering high leverage offers it on small positions. Scaling up can force a reduction whether or not you wanted one.

There is a nastier version: if your position sits near a tier boundary, adding to it can push the whole position into a higher maintenance bracket. The liquidation price moves adversely by more than the addition alone would suggest — which is a specific hazard when averaging down.

Why the estimate is always optimistic

Every calculator, including ours, understates how close liquidation really is, in three consistent ways:

Fees are deducted from margin on entry and exit.
Funding accrues continuously on perpetuals and is deducted from margin. A position held across many settlements is progressively less collateralised — see the funding rate calculator.
Tier escalation, as above, if the applicable rate is higher than the one you looked up.

All three point the same direction. Treat any computed liquidation price as a best case and leave room, and read the live number your venue shows rather than a figure you calculated at entry.

Cross margin changes the question

Under isolated margin the arithmetic above is self-contained: one position, one margin allocation, one liquidation price.

Under cross margin, maintenance is evaluated across the account — the total requirement of all positions against total equity including unrealised PnL. So your liquidation price for any one position depends on every other position you hold and how they are doing.

There is no formula taking four inputs and returning the number, which is itself worth noticing: a risk you cannot compute is a risk you cannot size.

Where this bites in practice

Scaling up without re-checking. A position size that was comfortable at one tier is not automatically comfortable at the next. Re-compute rather than assuming the same leverage means the same room.

Assuming a stop protects you. If liquidation sits inside the stop distance, the exchange closes the position first and your loss is the margin rather than the amount you sized for. Tiering makes this more likely for large positions specifically.

Using one venue’s rate on another. The schedules are not comparable. Neither are the tier boundaries.

FAQ

What is the difference between initial and maintenance margin?

Initial margin is what you post to open the position, determined by your leverage as 1 ÷ leverage. Maintenance margin is the minimum equity the position must retain to stay open, set by the venue and smaller than initial. The gap between them is how far price can move against you before liquidation.

Why is my liquidation price closer than I calculated?

Usually some combination of fees and funding being deducted from margin, and the maintenance rate applied to your size being higher than the one you used. All three errors move liquidation toward your entry, which is why a computed figure should be treated as a best case rather than a level to plan against.

Why does maintenance margin increase with position size?

It is how venues limit their own exposure: a large position is harder to liquidate without moving the market, so it is required to hold more equity and is closed earlier. The practical effect for you is that scaling a position up moves its liquidation price closer even at unchanged leverage.

Can I find my maintenance margin rate from the API?

Most venues expose their tier schedule through an endpoint, and it is worth reading programmatically rather than copying a number from a documentation page — the rates and boundaries change. What you should not do is hardcode a rate into a strategy and leave it there.