Crypto Liquidation Price Calculator

What Is Liquidation in Crypto Trading?

Liquidation is the forced closure of a leveraged position when the trader's margin can no longer cover losses. The exchange's liquidation engine steps in before your balance can go negative, takes over the position, and closes it on the market. The original margin is consumed entirely (isolated mode) or a portion of your wallet is taken (cross mode). Understanding where this price sits before you open a trade is the difference between a controlled loss and a wiped account.

How the Liquidation Price Formula Works

For an isolated position, the simplified formula is:

Example: Long BTC at $67,500 with 10x leverage and 0.5% MMR. Liquidation ≈ $67,500 × (1 − 0.10 + 0.005) = $61,087.50. That's roughly 9.5% below entry — a single bad daily candle in volatile markets.

Isolated vs Cross Margin: Which Should You Use?

Isolated caps your loss at the margin you allocate to a single position. If liquidated, that's all you lose. Cleaner risk management, easier to reason about. Recommended for most retail traders.

Cross uses your entire available wallet balance as buffer. Liquidation price is further from entry, but one bad trade can drain your whole account. Useful when you actively manage risk and use cross balance as a shock absorber for multiple correlated positions.

How Leverage Affects the Liquidation Price

The relationship is inverse and brutal:

• 1× leverage → liquidation requires ~100% drop (effectively never)
• 5× → liquidation at ~20% adverse move
• 10× → ~10% move
• 20× → ~5% move
• 50× → ~2% move
• 100× → ~1% move (one volatile candle away)

Bitcoin routinely moves 3–5% intraday. ETH and altcoins move more. Trading at 50–100× on perpetuals is statistically closer to gambling than to trading because the distribution of normal price action overlaps with your liquidation zone.

5 Rules to Stay Out of the Liquidation Zone

1. Always set a stop loss above your liquidation price. Your SL should trigger first, on your terms, with your fee structure — not the exchange's.
2. Keep distance to liquidation at least 5%. Anything less assumes the market won't breathe. It will.
3. Account for funding rates. Perpetual futures pay/charge funding every 8 hours. Negative funding bleeds your margin and inches your liquidation price closer.
4. Recheck after partial fills. Adding to a position changes both average entry and liquidation. Recalculate every time.
5. Do not average down a losing leveraged position. This is the single most common way retail traders blow up. Use isolated margin so you cannot do this with funds you did not commit.

Exchange-Specific Notes

Different exchanges use slightly different inputs, but the principle is the same:

• Binance: tiered MMR by position notional. Mark price (not last) drives liquidation.
• Bybit: similar tiered MMR, lowest tier around 0.4%. Auto-deleveraging on very rare extreme moves.
• OKX: portfolio margin mode lets correlated positions offset; more conservative liquidation.
• dYdX / Hyperliquid: on-chain orderbook, no traditional MMR — uses index price and a buffer.

Our calculator is built around the standard isolated/cross formula that covers roughly 95% of retail use cases. For institutional positions or unusual exchange modes, always cross-reference with the exchange's native calculator.