What the tool is for. Estimate liquidation distance and see why maintenance margin matters before leverage does. Treat the result as an estimate and your exchange's own position ticket as the answer, because that figure already knows your margin bracket.
The liquidation price you calculate today moves toward you.
Liquidation math should be done before the order is placed. Once volatility opens, the exchange engine will not care about the trader's thesis. The trap is that most people run this calculation once, write the number down, and then treat it as a fixed wall — and it is not fixed.
Three things push it. Unrealised funding is deducted from your margin balance as it accrues, so a long held through an expensive funding stretch drifts closer to liquidation every settlement without price having moved at all. Maintenance margin is usually tiered by position size, so doubling your notional at the same leverage does not simply double the risk — you can land in a bracket with a higher maintenance requirement and a nearer liquidation price. And on cross margin, the number is not a property of this position at all; it depends on every other position and every unrealised loss in the same account, which is why a cross-margin liquidation often surprises people who were watching the wrong trade.
The distinction that matters most is between a stop and a liquidation. A stop is your decision and it can slip. A liquidation is the engine's decision, it happens when maintenance margin is already gone, and it is filled at whatever the book offers. Calculate three distances, not one: entry to stop, entry to liquidation, and the gap between the two. If that last gap is inside a normal day's range for the asset, the position is too large regardless of what the thesis says.
Express the liquidation distance as a percentage of entry, then compare it with the largest single-day move the asset has made in the past month. If the wick alone would have reached it, the leverage is wrong — and note that a wick on a thin book can print through the level even when the candle closes back above it.
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The real liquidation price sits slightly closer than the theoretical one, because of fees.
Move the leverage and watch the distance, not the price
Leverage and the room you have are not related in a straight line. The distance the calculator returns tracks one divided by the leverage, less the maintenance rate and the fees, so stepping from five times to ten halves your room while stepping from twenty to twenty-five barely moves a distance that was already small. That is why the top of the range feels deceptively flat — each extra turn takes less away because there is very little left to take. Judge the setting by the percentage in the second field, not by how large a jump the leverage number looks like.
Cross-check against the exchange's own liquidation price
Treat this output as an estimate and the figure in your exchange's own position ticket as the answer, because that one already knows which maintenance bracket your size landed in and how much funding has been taken out of your margin balance. Then re-check it instead of checking it once: every settlement you pay walks the level toward you without price moving, and adding size can drop you into a higher bracket that moves it again. On cross margin there is nothing to verify at the position level at all — the number belongs to the whole account, so what you watch is total margin against total unrealised loss across every open trade. If your estimate and the ticket disagree by more than a rounding, believe the ticket and work out which of the three you forgot.
Risk note. Crypto assets are volatile and not suitable for every investor. This page is editorial analysis, not financial advice.