What "liquidation price" means
A leveraged futures position is backed by a fraction of its full value — the margin. If the market moves against you far enough that your remaining margin can no longer cover the position's losses plus the exchange's maintenance margin requirement, the exchange force-closes the position. The price at which that happens is the liquidation price, and it's fixed the moment you open the position, not something that drifts based on sentiment.
How to calculate liquidation price
For an isolated-margin position, the standard approximation is:
- Long: Liquidation price ≈ Entry price × (1 − 1/Leverage + Maintenance margin rate)
- Short: Liquidation price ≈ Entry price × (1 + 1/Leverage − Maintenance margin rate)
Higher leverage divides your margin thinner, so 1/Leverage shrinks and the liquidation price sits closer to entry. The maintenance margin rate is small on major pairs like BTC and ETH (often 0.4%–0.5% at lower leverage tiers) but climbs on lower-liquidity altcoins and at higher leverage tiers, so it's worth checking your exchange's actual tier table rather than assuming a flat number.
Isolated vs cross margin
Isolated margin caps your risk at the margin assigned to that one position — lose it all, and only that position is liquidated. Cross margin pools your entire futures wallet balance as backing for every open position, which typically pushes each individual liquidation price further away, but it also means a bad move on one position can eat into the margin backing an unrelated position. Cross margin's real liquidation price depends on your total account state at the moment of the move, so treat the cross-margin estimate above as a rough anchor, not an exact number.
Funding rate and fees aren't in this number
This calculator, like most public ones, uses the standard formula above and leaves out two things that move the real number slightly: trading fees (charged on entry and on the forced liquidation itself) and accumulated funding payments on a perpetual contract held across funding periods. Both nudge liquidation price a little closer to entry over time on a losing position. See how funding rate works for why that running cost matters over a multi-day hold.
See estimated liquidation price update live next to your open positions in the terminal →