Liquidation Price Calculator
Estimate where an isolated-margin position gets closed by the exchange, from entry, leverage and your venue's maintenance margin rate. Includes why the real level is worse.
- Initial margin rate
- 10.00%
- Estimated liquidation price
- 54,300.00
- Distance from entry
- 5,700.00
- Distance as % of entry
- 9.50%
Isolated margin, no added collateral, fees and funding excluded — all of which move the real level against you. Venues compute this with tiered maintenance margin that rises with position size, and some include unrealised PnL from other positions under cross margin. Treat this as an estimate and read the number your venue shows.
How liquidation works
A leveraged position is backed by margin. As price moves against you, that margin is consumed. Liquidation happens not when the margin reaches zero but when it falls to the maintenance margin — the minimum the venue requires you to hold to keep the position open.
initial margin rate = 1 ÷ leverage
long: liquidation ≈ entry × (1 − IMR + MMR)
short: liquidation ≈ entry × (1 + IMR − MMR)Which is why higher leverage moves liquidation closer: a smaller initial margin rate leaves less room before the maintenance threshold is reached.
Why the maintenance rate is an input
Venues publish maintenance margin as a tiered schedule — the rate rises as position size increases, so a large position is liquidated earlier than a small one at the same leverage. Those tiers differ by venue, by instrument, and change over time.
Shipping a table of them in a calculator would produce a page that is quietly wrong within weeks. So the rate is yours to enter; read it from your venue's own tier table for the size you actually intend to hold.
The real level is worse than this
Three things push actual liquidation nearer than the formula suggests:
- Fees. Entry and exit fees come out of the same margin.
- Funding. A perpetual position held across settlement pays or receives funding, and paying reduces your margin continuously. The funding rate calculator shows how much over a holding period.
- Tier escalation. If your position is near a tier boundary, the maintenance rate applied may be higher than the one you looked up.
Treat the output as an optimistic bound and leave room. If your plan depends on the liquidation price being exactly where this says, the plan depends on something it should not.
When the stop stops mattering
The failure worth engineering against is a stop-loss placed beyond the liquidation price. The position is closed by the exchange before the stop is reached, at a worse price, and the stop was decorative from the moment it was set.
This is not a rare configuration — it happens whenever leverage is high enough that the distance to liquidation is smaller than the stop distance the setup requires. The leverage and stop-loss table shows where that crossover sits, and the general answer is to reduce leverage rather than to tighten the stop.
FAQ
Why does this need a maintenance margin rate?
Because liquidation happens when your equity falls to the maintenance requirement, not to zero, and that requirement is set by the venue. It is also tiered — the rate rises as position size increases — so a single number cannot be baked into a calculator. Read the rate for your position size from your venue and enter it.
Why is my exchange showing a different liquidation price?
Several reasons, all of which move the real level against you: fees and funding accrue against your margin, the maintenance rate rises in tiers with position size, and under cross margin the calculation includes your other positions and unrealised PnL. This estimate assumes isolated margin with no fees. Trust the number your venue shows.
What is the difference between isolated and cross margin here?
Isolated margin allocates a fixed amount to the position, so liquidation depends only on that position and the arithmetic here applies. Cross margin backs the position with your whole balance, which pushes the liquidation price further away but couples the position to everything else you hold — one position can now liquidate another.
Can I avoid liquidation by using a stop-loss?
Only if the stop is closer than the liquidation price, which is not automatic at high leverage. If liquidation sits inside your stop distance, the exchange closes the position first and the stop never triggers. The leverage and stop-loss table shows exactly where that crossover happens for your inputs.