Calculator Updated 2026-08-29 Runs in your browser By Ivo Renner

Liquidation price estimator

Put in an entry, a leverage multiple and the maintenance-margin rate from the contract's own parameters panel, and this gives you the price at which an isolated-margin position stops existing. It is an approximation, and the section below the tool explains precisely which parts of reality it ignores.

The formula this uses

The tool applies the standard isolated-margin approximation. Written out in full, with every term as a decimal fraction rather than a percentage:

buffer = (1 ÷ leverage) + (added margin ÷ notional) − maintenance margin rate
long liquidation = entry × (1 − buffer)
short liquidation = entry × (1 + buffer)

Two supporting quantities feed it. Notional is entry price multiplied by quantity. Initial margin is notional divided by leverage. The "added margin ÷ notional" term simply expresses any top-up you have made as a fraction of position size, so it lands in the same units as the leverage term.

The logic is easier to hold in your head than the algebra. At 10× leverage you have posted one tenth of the position's value. A 10% adverse move therefore consumes exactly the margin you put up. But the exchange does not wait for zero — it closes you when equity falls to the maintenance requirement, which is a small percentage of notional. So the trigger sits slightly closer to your entry than the naive 1÷leverage figure, by exactly the maintenance-margin rate.

A worked example you can check by hand

Take the defaults loaded above. A long at an entry of 250 USDT, 10× leverage, 4 units, a maintenance margin rate of 0.5%, no added margin.

• Notional = 250 × 4 = 1,000 USDT.
• Initial margin = 1,000 ÷ 10 = 100 USDT.
• Buffer = 0.10 + 0 − 0.005 = 0.095.
• Liquidation = 250 × (1 − 0.095) = 226.25 USDT.
• Distance from entry = 9.50%.

Flip the direction and the same buffer is added instead of subtracted: a short at the same entry is estimated to liquidate at 250 × 1.095 = 273.75. Add 50 USDT of margin to the long and the buffer becomes 0.10 + 0.05 − 0.005 = 0.145, moving the trigger down to 213.75 — a 14.50% cushion bought with 50 USDT of otherwise idle capital.

Why this is an approximation, not Binance's number

Every item on this list moves the real trigger, and none of them is in the formula above.

Trading fees. The taker fee on the opening order comes out of your margin before the position has moved at all, and the closing fee is reserved against it. Your effective cushion is therefore smaller than the arithmetic suggests. We do not publish fee percentages on this site because the rate depends on your VIP tier and on promotions that come and go — find your own rate and subtract it yourself.

Funding payments. Each payment can reduce the margin backing a position; a receipt can increase it. Frequency is contract-specific, including four-hour as well as eight-hour schedules. This estimator does not project those changes. Use the funding calculator separately.

Leverage tiers. The maintenance margin rate is not one number. Binance operates a ladder: as position notional grows, the contract moves into a higher tier with a higher maintenance requirement and a lower maximum leverage. This tool takes a single rate, so it is accurate only within the tier you are actually in. Doubling your size can raise the maintenance rate and pull the trigger closer even though nothing about the price has changed. That mechanism is the subject of the leverage tiers guide.

Cross margin. The formula assumes isolated margin, where the position's collateral is ring-fenced. In cross margin, everything in the futures wallet backs everything else and a single liquidation price for one position is not a meaningful concept in isolation. See margin modes.

The liquidation process itself. Reaching the trigger price does not hand you a clean exit at that price. Binance's liquidation engine takes over the position and closes it into the live book; the insurance fund absorbs shortfalls where it can. What you get back is what is left after that process, not the number in the box above.

It triggers off the mark price, not the last trade

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding on the product. Liquidation is evaluated against the mark price, which Binance computes rather than observes. During regular US hours it is the median of two index-derived prices and the contract's own price, recalculated every second. A median is deliberately hard to move with one outlier print — which protects you from a wick on thin liquidity, but also means the candle low on your chart is not the number the liquidation engine read.

When the cash market is closed, the equity index can still move using Orderbook EWMA, and the mark uses the standard median calculation in that mode. A stop and liquidation can react to different reference prices. Read the index and mark-price guide; the session clock is only an illustration of a schedule, not a reading of the live mode.

One consequence worth internalising: because the mark price is smoothed and your stop-loss is usually triggered off it too, both your protective stop and your liquidation read from the same slightly-lagging number. That is helpful in a spike and unhelpful in a genuine repricing.

Reading this against your stop

Treat the distance-from-entry percentage as the only output that matters. An absolute price tells you little; "9.50% away" tells you immediately whether the position can survive a normal day in the underlying. A single-name equity that routinely moves 4% on no news does not belong in a 9.5% cushion, and an earnings date inside your holding period makes that cushion decorative.

The right response to a cushion that looks thin is almost never to add margin. Adding margin widens the buffer while leaving the position size — and therefore the loss you take on the way to the trigger — untouched. Reducing size does both. That is what the position size planner is for, and why the pre-trade checklist asks about the stop before it asks about the leverage slider.