Margin & Leverage Calculator
Find the required margin and liquidation price for any futures position — or work backwards from your stop loss to the safest leverage. Isolated-margin formula. No signup.
Position Margin Calculator
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At 1× leverage there is no liquidation — the position can only be closed manually or by the stop loss.
Safe Leverage Finder
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How margin works
Your required margin is the position's notional value divided by leverage — it's the collateral the exchange locks while the trade is open. The liquidation price is where your remaining margin can no longer cover further loss; for isolated margin it sits roughly 1/leverage away from entry. The optional buffer moves the liquidation line closer to entry to approximate the exchange's maintenance margin requirement, so what you see here is conservative.
Cross-margin liquidation differs (it uses your full account equity as collateral). This calculator assumes the more common, more predictable isolated margin mode.
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Use the Position Size Calculator to size the trade from your risk %, entry and stop.
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Open →Frequently Asked Questions
What is margin trading?
Margin trading lets you control a position larger than your account balance by borrowing the difference from the exchange. You post collateral (initial margin) and the exchange tracks a maintenance margin level — if your equity falls below it, the position is force-closed (liquidated). Leverage is the ratio of position size to margin.
How do I calculate the liquidation price?
For an isolated-margin position, liquidation moves roughly 1/leverage away from your entry. A 10× long is liquidated when the price drops about 10% from entry; a 10× short when it rises about 10%. Maintenance margin and funding/fees move the line a little closer to entry in practice, which is what the optional liquidation buffer in this calculator models.
What is the difference between cross and isolated margin?
Isolated margin caps the loss on a single position to the margin you assigned to it — the rest of your account is safe. Cross margin shares the whole account balance as collateral across positions, which postpones liquidation but means a single bad trade can drain everything. This calculator uses the isolated-margin formula.
How much leverage is safe?
There is no universally safe leverage — what matters is the distance from your entry to your stop loss versus the distance to liquidation. As a rule of thumb, keep leverage under 5× for swing trades and never set it so high that the stop loss is further from entry than the liquidation price. The Leverage Finder tab computes the leverage at which those two lines coincide.