how to avoid liquidation
at 25x on binance btc perps, a $10,000 long has 3.60% of room before its liquidation price — computed from binance's own margin bracket, not a rule of thumb. you avoid liquidation by keeping that room wider than a bad wick and getting told before price arrives. the table shows the room each leverage leaves; the calculator does yours.
first, what this page cannot do
we can't prevent liquidation. we scream before the wick, so you decide — close, add margin, or get rekt knowingly.
nothing on this site keeps an exchange from taking your position. the liquidation price is set by your entry, your leverage and the venue's maintenance-margin bracket; the venue's engine reads its own mark — an index of spot venues, not the last trade on the perp book — and it does not check this page before it acts. an alert does not close a position and does not move a liquidation. it is noise, sent early, while closing is still your decision.
what follows is the honest answer: distance is arithmetic, computed below from the venues' own brackets, and the only thing that helps mid-trade is being told early. two liq-distance alerts are free with no signup; unlimited is $9/mo.
why 25x dies: the room each leverage leaves
distance to liquidation for a long ≈ 1/leverage − maintenance margin. the second term is the venue's, read from its published bracket at $10,000 of btc: 0.33% on bybit to 1.25% on hyperliquid. the first term dominates, so the table reads almost like the reciprocal of leverage — and "almost" is where the accounts go, because the bracket is subtracted from your side of the room. shorts carry the same distance on the other side of entry.
| leverage | binance | bybit | okx | hyperliquid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2x | 49.60% | 49.67% | 49.60% | 48.75% |
| 5x | 19.60% | 19.67% | 19.60% | 18.75% |
| 10x | 9.60% | 9.67% | 9.60% | 8.75% |
| 20x | 4.60% | 4.67% | 4.60% | 3.75% |
| 25x | 3.60% | 3.67% | 3.60% | 2.75% |
| 50x | 1.60% | 1.67% | 1.60% | not offered |
| 75x | 0.93% | 1.00% | 0.93% | not offered |
| 100x | 0.60% | 0.67% | 0.60% | not offered |
every figure models usdt-m isolated margin: fixed margin in, fixed liquidation price out, no funding, no fees. cross margin shares one wallet across positions, so its liquidation line floats with your balance and your other trades — the isolated number is the early bound, the place the engine reaches you first. estimate — exchanges compute exact liq from live margin; always double-check on your venue. and the bracket ladder matters: bigger notionals pay higher maintenance rates, only the first five tiers per coin are listed here, and the venues can move the table whenever they like.
the bracket term is nearly constant at this size — 0.33% to 1.25% across the four venues — so the slider does almost all of the damage. at 25x, the most room any venue in the table offers is 3.67% (bybit); at 2x, even the worst venue leaves 48.75%. that is the whole answer to "what leverage should i use": the row you can afford to be wrong about.
isolated or cross — the honest difference
isolated is the version with an answer from outside: the position's own margin is the whole buffer, so the liq price is fixed the moment you open it — entry, leverage, bracket, done. every number on this page is that case, and it is the case this site's calculators model.
cross has no answer from outside. the wallet backs the position, so the line floats with your balance, with every other position's unrealised pnl, and with anything you deposit while it's open. no public page can compute it, because computing it needs your account. what the isolated number gives a cross trader is the early bound: where the engine could reach you if the rest of the wallet were empty.
the other difference is what gets taken. isolated liquidation costs the position's margin; cross liquidation walks through the wallet, including the positions you were right about. if you run cross, run the room check on the isolated number and keep more space than it asks for.
how to avoid liquidation, in order
1 — set the stop before the size. a position sized from a stop loses what you decided it could lose; a position sized from the leverage slider loses what the market decides. the calculator's position-size mode works backwards from a stop price.
2 — know the liquidation price before the entry. for a long it is entry × (1 − 1/leverage + mmr), and mmr is the venue's bracket at your notional, not a flat rate. if you can't say the number, you haven't opened a trade — you've pulled a lever.
3 — pick the margin mode on purpose. isolated caps the loss at the position and fixes the liq price at entry. cross borrows against the whole wallet: it delays liquidations by pulling from your balance, and it makes the ones that happen bigger. cross is cheaper until it isn't.
4 — leave room for the wick. the level only has to be touched once, on the venue's mark — an index of spot venues — so a perp wick that never moved the index leaves you alone, and an index drag takes you out on a quiet book. the table above puts numbers on it: at 20x the room any venue in it leaves runs from 3.75% to 4.67%. that is a level, and a cascade can cross a level in a minute.
5 — get told before price gets there. distance only helps if somebody is watching it at 3am. that is the product: an alarm when your liquidation stops being theoretical.
the three moments this page sits inside
pre-trade — this moment. you're picking leverage and want the answer before the market asks. it is the only moment search can reach, so this page and the calculator live here.
in-trade — the panic moment. two percent from liquidation, nobody opens a search engine: they watch the chart and beg strangers on exchange forums. the question "should i close my position" is never googled — it's lived. that moment belongs to push, not pages, and this page makes no claim on it. the alarm exists for exactly that moment.
post-mortem — after the fill. "why did i get liquidated" is a mechanics question — mark price, the index, the bracket ladder — and it is answered in this site's guides under /guides/, where one canonical answer lives instead of three. this page links there rather than re-answering it.
run your own numbers
your liquidation price, computed from binance's own brackets · what liquidation did today · whether the cluster calls land, misses included · the mechanics — mark price, brackets, post-mortems
faq
can a tool guarantee i won't get liquidated?
no — and treat any tool that answers yes as marketing. liquidation is the exchange closing your position when its equity drops under maintenance margin: the trigger is the venue's, the mark is the venue's, and no third party can intervene in either. a tool can only tell you early that the room is running out, while closing, adding margin or hedging is still your decision. that is the entire product here.
what leverage avoids liquidation?
none of them — leverage isn't the risk, the distance it leaves is, and every distance above zero eventually meets a wick big enough. the table above computes that distance per venue from the published maintenance-margin brackets at a set notional, and the spread between the rows is an order of magnitude. size from a stop instead: decide the loss first, let the position size follow, and the leverage lands wherever it lands.
is isolated or cross margin safer?
isolated, mostly because it is the only case with an honest number in it. isolated margin caps the loss at the position's own margin and fixes the liquidation price at entry — entry, leverage, bracket, done. cross borrows against the whole wallet, so it delays liquidations by pulling from your balance and your other positions, and it makes the ones that happen bigger. this site's calculators model isolated everywhere; a public page cannot compute a cross liquidation, because computing one needs your account.
why did i get liquidated when price never hit my liquidation price?
because the venue liquidates on the mark price, not on the last trade printed on the perp chart. the mark is an index of spot venues, so the chart can sit above your liquidation price while the index is already through it. the full mechanics — the index, the bracket ladder, what the fill actually costs — are a post-mortem, and they live in this site's guides under /guides/. this page links there instead of duplicating them.
where can i check my liquidation price before opening a trade?
the liquidation-price calculator: pick your coin, venue, entry and size, and it computes the liq price from that venue's own maintenance-margin brackets — the same table this page's figures come from, with the estimate disclosure on every number: exchanges compute exact liq from live margin; always double-check on your venue.