Liquidation Price Calculator

What a liquidation price is

Your liquidation price is the level at which the exchange force-closes a leveraged position because the loss has eaten through the margin backing it. Trade with leverage and you post only a fraction of the position's value as collateral; once price moves far enough against you that what is left can no longer cover the exchange's maintenance requirement, the position is closed for you, at market, with a fee. It is the single most important number to know before you open a leveraged trade, because it tells you exactly how much room the trade has before that decision is taken out of your hands. Enter the side, entry, leverage and maintenance rate and this returns the price and how far it sits from entry, for a long or a short, isolated or cross.

The formula

long: P_liq = P_entry × (1 − 1/L − c) ÷ (1 − m)
short: P_liq = P_entry × (1 + 1/L + c) ÷ (1 + m)
L = leverage, m = maintenance margin rate, c = extra cushion ÷ notional

Liquidation occurs if the amount of money available to cover the margin (the funds you have deposited) are less than the amount needed to meet the maintenance requirements. If you are trading long, for example, the margin posted will be the entry price divided by leverage or units traded, and the margin losses will increase with each falling price. Once the remaining margin is equal to the maintenance margin on the position's present value, the exchange will close your account. The equality can be solved using the equation provided above. When trading in an Isolated Mode, the amount of extra cash, c, available in case of liquidation will be 0; however, in Cross Mode, there will be additional funds from a second wallet used to provide some extra time before liquidation takes place.

A worked example

You have longed 1 Bitcoin at $65,000 using 10 times leverage, with an initial maintenance rate of .50%. The total margin posted was $6,500. This means that the price needs to fall to 65,000 * (1 – .10)/(1–.005) = $58,793 or approximately 9.5% less than when the position was opened for liquidation. Please note that this is not a true 10% loss as the maintenance charge has consumed some portion of the margin cushion, therefore, you will be forced to close slightly prior to losing all of your margin.

Now raise leverage to 25x. Margin drops to $2,600, but liquidation climbs to roughly $62,713, just 3.5% below entry. Bitcoin moves 3.5% in an ordinary session. That is the real trade-off leverage presents: it does not change your risk per trade if your position size is unchanged, it changes how much room the position has before the exchange takes the decision away from you.

Works on any perp exchange, and why the number differs

The maths is the same on every venue, so this covers Binance, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, MEXC, Hyperliquid and the rest; only the maintenance-margin schedule changes. Your exchange's own figure will usually sit a little closer than a flat calculation, for three reasons. Maintenance margin is tiered: it rises with position size, so a large position liquidates sooner than the default rate here. Exchanges also subtract estimated closing fees and any accrued funding from your collateral, which drags the level in. And most liquidate against a mark price, an index built from several exchanges, rather than the last traded price, so a single-venue wick may not trigger it. Set the maintenance rate to match your tier and this lands within a hair of the exchange estimate; treat the venue's own number as the authority.

Keep your stop inside your liquidation

The practical rule this calculator supports: your stop loss should always trigger comfortably before liquidation. If your planned stop is further from entry than the liquidation price, the stop is decorative, the exchange will close you first, at a worse price and with a fee. Size the trade with the position size calculator, check the margin tied up with the margin calculator, and if you trade perpetuals, watch what funding is costing you to hold via the funding dashboard, since accrued funding erodes margin and drags liquidation closer over time.

Perp liquidation is not DeFi lending liquidation

A leveraged perp or futures position, which is what this tool models, is liquidated differently from a loan on a DeFi lending protocol like Aave or Compound. On a lending protocol, liquidation is driven by your health factor, the ratio of collateral value to borrowed value measured against a liquidation threshold (loan-to-value), and it triggers when your collateral falls or your debt grows past that line, not from a leverage multiple. If you are checking a lending position rather than a leveraged trade, read your protocol's health-factor figure instead; this calculator is built for perpetual and futures positions.