Crypto Leverage & Liquidation Calculator

How it's calculated

For a long, liquidation price ≈ entry × (1 − 1/leverage + maintenance margin rate). For a short it sits on the opposite side: entry × (1 + 1/leverage − MMR). PnL at a target price is positionSize × (target − entry) ÷ entry for longs (sign flipped for shorts). ROE is that PnL divided by the margin you posted, which is positionSize ÷ leverage. Maintenance margin rates vary by exchange and position size tier — Binance ranges from ~0.4% to ~12.5% depending on notional bracket; Bitget is similar.

Isolated margin only risks the funds you assigned to that one position; cross margin uses your entire wallet as collateral, which pushes liquidation further away but puts the full balance at risk. The formula above is the isolated case; cross liquidation depends on your unrelated balances too.

Worked example

Long BTC at $50,000 with 10× leverage on a $50,000 position size (so $5,000 of margin) and a 0.5% maintenance margin rate. Liquidation price ≈ $50,000 × (1 − 0.1 + 0.005) = $45,250, so you have about 9.5% of room before liquidation. A move up to $55,000 is +10% on the underlying, which is +100% ROE on your margin (+$5,000) — gross before funding and fees.

100× example for contrast: same $50,000 position size at 100× leverage means only $500 of margin. Liquidation sits at $50,000 × (1 − 0.01 + 0.005) ≈ $49,750 — just 0.5% of room. A funding wick or a fast-moving 30-second candle eats the whole position. This is why most exchanges restrict 100× tiers to small notional caps and conservative pros use 3–10× for sustained holds.

Liquidation Calculator — the number that actually matters

The single number that decides whether a leveraged trade survives the day is the liquidation price. Everything else — entry, exit target, PnL at TP, ROE projection — is conditional on still being in the position. A long at $50,000 with 25× leverage on isolated margin liquidates around $48,000 (give or take MMR tier); a long at the same entry with 10× liquidates around $45,250; same entry at 5× liquidates around $40,500. That's a $7,500 difference in price-of-no-return for the exact same trade idea. The calculator lets you flex leverage interactively so you can pick the setup with enough room for your stop or your typical wick tolerance, not the one that maximises ROE on the screenshot.

Futures Calculator: PnL and ROE at any target

Set a target price in the Target field to see PnL and ROE at that exit. PnL is the dollar gain/loss on the full position size; ROE is the percentage gain/loss on the margin you actually committed. ROE is the headline metric in screenshots because it's the bigger number — a 5% underlying move at 10× leverage is +50% ROE. The trick is that the same 5% move in the wrong direction is −50% ROE, and the same 10× leverage that lets you book +50% lets you blow up in five minutes during a high-funding hour. Use the futures calculator to map a few target prices on either side of entry before you size — model the upside AND the downside, not just the upside.

100x Calculator: when extreme leverage actually makes sense

100× crypto trades are mostly a meme; the math says they almost never make sense outside very specific use cases. With 100× you have 0.5–1.0% of room before liquidation at typical maintenance-margin rates, which means a single 30-second wick on a normal trading day closes you out. The exceptions are tight-range scalp setups (entry → 0.3% target → out, dozens of times per day) or hedging an existing spot position where you're using leverage to size a small notional that offsets a much larger book. For directional swing trades, 3–10× gives you 10–30% of room — enough to survive funding mean-reversion and overnight chop — which is why every serious crypto futures trader gravitates there.

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