Crypto Liquidation Price Calculator
Calculate the exact price at which a leveraged crypto position gets force-closed. Supports longs and shorts, any leverage, and accumulated funding payments. Isolated-margin model.
Results
Your long position is liquidated if the price moves to $45250.00, which is 9.50% away from your entry — tight — single-day adverse moves of this magnitude are common in crypto, especially on high-vol days. Worst-case loss before liquidation is $950, approximately your full collateral.
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Frequently asked questions
How crypto liquidations work
Crypto exchanges let you trade with leverage — borrow against your collateral to take positions larger than your account. The mechanic that makes this possible is automated liquidation: if the position moves against you far enough that your collateral is insufficient to cover further losses, the exchange force-closes the position to protect itself. You lose most or all of your collateral in the process.
The math behind the price
For an isolated-margin long:
liquidation_price = entry × (1 − 1/leverage + maintenance_margin)For a short, flip the signs:
liquidation_price = entry × (1 + 1/leverage − maintenance_margin)At 10× leverage with 0.5% maintenance margin, an isolated long is liquidated when the price falls 9.5% from entry. At 20×, 4.5%. At 50×, 1.5%. At 100×, half a percent. The relationship between leverage and survivable price movement is starkly nonlinear: doubling leverage roughly halves your buffer.
Why your real liquidation might differ
- Funding payments on perpetual swaps drift your effective collateral up or down. Long the funding-positive side: you pay, and your liquidation creeps closer.
- Tiered maintenance margin. Most exchanges raise the maintenance margin requirement as your position size grows. A position large enough to push you into a higher tier has a closer liquidation than the base-tier formula suggests.
- Cross vs isolated margin. In cross margin, the exchange uses your full account equity, including PnL from other positions, in the liquidation calculation. This gives more buffer per position but exposes the entire account if many positions move together.
- Trading fees. Some exchanges include exit-side fees in the liquidation calculation, which moves the effective liquidation closer.
Practical implications
The lesson the math forces is uncomfortable: high leverage looks profitable in the scenarios where you win, and instantly catastrophic in the scenarios where you lose. A 100× leveraged position that is correct 99% of the time still loses everything in one bad outcome. Most experienced crypto traders cap leverage at 2-5× for positions held more than a few hours, and reserve double-digit leverage for tightly-stop-lossed scalp trades.
Related calculators
Use the position-size calculator to size positions consistently from a stop-loss-based risk rule. Use the Kelly calculator to derive what fraction of your account you should risk per trade given your edge.