Calculator
Liquidation price calculator
Enter the entry, leverage and the maintenance margin rate from your exchange. You get the liquidation price of an isolated position and how far away it is.
- Liquidation price
- $1,809.05
- Distance from entry
- -9.55%
- Your margin, share of position
- 10.00%
Worked example
Take a 10x long on a coin at $2,000 with a maintenance margin rate of 0.5%. Your margin is 10% of the position. The exchange closes you when the loss eats that margin down to the 0.5% it keeps as a buffer.
The price where that happens is $2,000 × (1 − 1/10) ÷ (1 − 0.005) = $2,000 × 0.9 ÷ 0.995 = $1,809.05. That is 9.55% below the entry. A short at the same numbers is liquidated at $2,000 × 1.1 ÷ 1.005 = $2,189.05, 9.45% above.
Go to 25x and the long's liquidation moves to $1,929.65, only 3.5% away. Plenty of ordinary days move a coin that much. We would keep the liquidation price well past the stop loss, so the stop always fires first.
The formula
Long: entry × (1 − 1/leverage) ÷ (1 − maintenance rate). Short: entry × (1 + 1/leverage) ÷ (1 + maintenance rate).
This is the isolated-margin formula exchanges publish for a single position in the first margin tier. Bigger positions sit in higher tiers with higher rates, and exchanges trigger on the mark price, so treat the result as a close estimate. Cross margin uses your whole balance, so its liquidation price sits further away and depends on the rest of your account.
Questions and answers
How is the liquidation price calculated?
For an isolated long it is entry × (1 − 1/leverage) ÷ (1 − maintenance margin rate). For a short it is entry × (1 + 1/leverage) ÷ (1 + maintenance margin rate).
What maintenance margin rate should I enter?
Use the rate from your exchange's margin tier table for that contract and position size. Small positions in large coins often start around 0.4% to 0.5%.
Why does my exchange show a slightly different price?
Exchanges use the mark price, tiered rates and sometimes a tier deduction amount. For a small position in the first tier the difference is usually small.
Can a 1x long be liquidated?
Not in this model. At 1x the margin equals the whole position, so the price would have to reach zero. Fees and funding can still eat into it.
More calculators: position size calculator, funding fee calculator, crypto profit calculator.
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