Liquidation Calculator
Calculate your exact liquidation price for leveraged Long and Short positions.
Enter your entry price and leverage to calculate your liquidation zone.
Liquidation is the moment the exchange closes your position and keeps your margin. It is not a warning or a margin call — it is the end of the trade, decided automatically. Knowing exactly where that line sits, before you enter, is the single most important number in leveraged trading.
How liquidation actually works
When you open a leveraged position, you put up margin as collateral. The exchange lends you the rest. As long as your losses stay small enough that your margin still covers them, the position stays open. The moment your losses eat into that margin past a threshold — the maintenance margin — the exchange force-closes your position to protect itself. You lose your entire margin. Not part of it. All of it. The brutal arithmetic: at 10× leverage, a 10% move against you wipes out 100% of your margin. At 50×, it takes a 2% move. At 100×, just 1%. Bitcoin routinely moves 2% in an hour. This is why high leverage is not aggressive trading — it is a countdown.
The formula
Long: Liq Price = Entry × (1 − 1/Leverage) ÷ (1 − MMR)
Short: Liq Price = Entry × (1 + 1/Leverage) ÷ (1 + MMR)
Bankruptcy Price = Entry × (1 ∓ 1/Leverage)
Example: Long BTC at $60,000, 10×, MMR 0.5%
Liq = 60,000 × (1 − 0.1) ÷ 0.995 = $54,271This is the isolated margin formula. Liquidation happens slightly before bankruptcy — the gap is the maintenance margin, which the exchange keeps as a buffer to close your position without going negative.
Staying alive with leverage
- 1Set a stop-loss well above your liquidation price, always. If your stop is at liquidation, you have no stop — you have a hope. A stop closes the trade with margin remaining; liquidation takes everything.
- 2Leverage should be a function of your stop distance, not your confidence. If your setup needs a 5% stop, then 10× leverage means a 50% margin loss when it hits. Size the position around the stop, not the other way round.
- 3Isolated margin caps your loss at that position's margin. Cross margin puts your entire account balance behind every trade — one bad position can take everything. Use isolated unless you fully understand why you would not.
- 4Adding margin moves your liquidation price further away. It does not reduce your risk — it increases the capital you can lose. Cutting the position size is the only real reduction.
- 5Funding rates bleed you in the meantime. A position held for weeks at 0.01% every 8 hours costs roughly 1% a month. On leverage, that is a headwind before the price does anything.
Frequently asked questions
What is MMR and what should I use?
Maintenance Margin Rate — the minimum equity the exchange requires before it force-closes you. Binance uses roughly 0.4–0.5% for major pairs at moderate size, rising in tiers as your position grows. Check your exchange's tier table; a large position has a much higher MMR than a small one.
Can I lose more than my margin?
On isolated margin with a reputable exchange, normally no — the insurance fund covers the gap. But in violent moves where liquidations cascade and there is no liquidity, some exchanges apply auto-deleveraging or socialised losses. Rare, but it happens.
What is the bankruptcy price?
The price where your margin hits exactly zero. Liquidation triggers before it, at the maintenance margin level, so the exchange can close the position while it still has value. The gap between the two is the exchange's safety buffer, not yours.
Does this work for both Binance and Bybit?
The isolated margin formula is standard across major exchanges. What differs is the MMR tier table and how each handles funding. Use your exchange's actual MMR for your position size and this will be close. Always confirm against the exchange's own displayed liquidation price before entering.
Why do I get liquidated before my calculated price?
Usually one of three things. Funding payments slowly reduce your margin. Fees on entry come out of it too. And your position may be in a higher MMR tier than you assumed — MMR rises with position size on most exchanges.