Liquidation Price Calculator

Watching a margined position get liquidated because you misjudged where the wipeout level was is a uniquely painful way to learn that math.

This calculator takes your entry price, margin multiplier, position size, and maintenance margin requirement, then returns the price at which your collateral is exhausted. It supports both isolated margin (single position) and cross margin (account-wide). Long and short positions liquidate in opposite directions — long at lower prices, short at higher.

The nuance worth knowing: liquidation price isn't fixed. It moves as funding payments accrue, fees deduct, and unrealized PnL on other positions changes available margin in cross mode. Use the calculator as a first-order estimate, then check the actual liquidation price your exchange shows once the position is open.

The core formula for an isolated long: liquidation price = entry price × (1 − initial margin + maintenance margin) / (1 − maintenance margin). For a short, flip the signs. A higher multiplier means smaller margin between entry and liquidation. At 10×, a 9% adverse move wipes the position; at 50×, it's under 2%. The maintenance margin is the buffer — typically 0.5% to 5% depending on the exchange and the position size — that the exchange holds as a cushion before forcing closure.

Worked example: you open a 10× long on BTC at $60,000 with $1,000 collateral. Position size is $10,000 (0.167 BTC). Maintenance margin is 0.5%. Liquidation price works out to about $54,300. The price has to fall 9.5% to hit liquidation, at which point your $1,000 collateral is exhausted. This is why a high multiplier is brutal: a 5% pullback that's barely a wiggle on the daily chart is a 50% loss on a 10× position and full liquidation at 20×.

The pain people learn the hard way: liquidation isn't the floor of your loss. When liquidation triggers, the exchange tries to close your position at market. In thin liquidity or fast-moving markets, the close price can be worse than the liquidation price — meaning you lose more than your initial margin. Insurance funds usually cover the gap, but on smaller exchanges or during cascading liquidations, ADL (auto-deleveraging) kicks in and other traders' winning positions get partially closed to balance the books. Either way, what looked like a defined maximum loss isn't.

Funding rates are the silent killer in perpetual futures. They're not in the basic formula, but every 8 hours (or whatever interval your exchange uses), longs pay shorts (or vice versa) based on the funding rate. In sustained bull markets, longs can pay 0.1% every 8 hours — that's roughly 109% APR if it persists. The calculator gives you a snapshot liquidation price; over time, accumulated funding moves the effective liquidation closer. For positions held longer than a few days, treat the static liquidation price as optimistic.