Leverage Trading Calculator
Know your liquidation price before you open the trade. Enter your entry, margin and leverage to see position size, profit at your targets, risk/reward and the maximum leverage your stop-loss can safely carry, live as you type.
Your position
Conservative exit
Ambitious exit
Max leverage that keeps liquidation beyond your stop-loss: 18.2x
All exit figures are net of trading fees on both entry and exit. Percentages are returns on your margin, not on the position size.
Price map
What happens if the price moves
Net result of your 10x long position across a range of moves in the underlying price.
| Price move | Price | Net P/L | On margin | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -50.00% | $50.00 | -$1,000.00Liquidated | -100.00% | |
| -25.00% | $75.00 | -$1,000.00Liquidated | -100.00% | |
| -10.00% | $90.00 | -$1,000.00Liquidated | -100.00% | |
| -5.00% | $95.00 | -$509.75 | -50.98% | |
| -2.00% | $98.00 | -$209.90 | -20.99% | |
| +0.00% | $100.00 | -$10.00 | -1.00% | |
| +2.00% | $102.00 | $189.90 | +18.99% | |
| +5.00% | $105.00 | $489.75 | +48.98% | |
| +10.00% | $110.00 | $989.50 | +98.95% | |
| +25.00% | $125.00 | $2,488.75 | +248.88% | |
| +50.00% | $150.00 | $4,987.50 | +498.75% |
Liquidated rows assume your full margin is lost — in practice a small residual may remain after maintenance margin and fees.
For education only, not investment advice. Real liquidation engines also account for funding, fees and mark-price differences, so treat these figures as estimates.
How the leverage calculator works
Leverage lets you control a position several times larger than the capital you post. The exchange holds your margin as collateral and lends you the rest, so both gains and losses are measured against the full position, but absorbed by your small slice of it. The core math is three lines:
Position size = margin × leverage
Quantity = position size ÷ entry price
Net P/L = price change × quantity − fees on entry and exit
Everything else the calculator shows (liquidation price, break-even, returns at your targets) falls out of those three lines plus your exchange's maintenance margin rule.
Worked example (the default values above)
Go long with $1,000 of margin at 10x and a $100 entry: you control a $10,000 position of 100 units. If the price reaches your $110 target, the $1,000 gross gain less about $10.50 in round-trip fees nets you $989.50, a 98.95% return on your margin from a 10% move. But the same multiplication works in reverse: at roughly $90.45 the position is liquidated and the full $1,000 of margin is gone. A 9.5% dip, which is noise for a spot holder, is fatal at 10x.
Liquidation price, explained
When the market moves against you, losses come out of your margin. The exchange does not wait for it to reach zero: once your equity falls to the maintenance margin (a small percentage of the position's value, typically 0.4% to 1% on crypto futures), it force-closes the position at market. That price is your liquidation price:
Long: entry × (1 − 1/leverage) ÷ (1 − maintenance margin)
Short: entry × (1 + 1/leverage) ÷ (1 + maintenance margin)
Most simple calculators drop the maintenance-margin term and use the textbook entry × (1 − 1/leverage). That always makes the trade look safer than it is. At 10x long from $100, the naive formula says $90, while with a 0.5% maintenance margin the real trigger is closer to $90.45. The gap widens with leverage, which is exactly when you can least afford the error. Set the maintenance margin field to your exchange's figure, or to 0 if you want the textbook number.
A useful rule of thumb: the adverse move that liquidates you is roughly 1 ÷ leverage.
| Leverage | Adverse move to liquidation* |
|---|---|
| 2x | ≈ 50% |
| 3x | ≈ 33% |
| 5x | ≈ 20% |
| 10x | ≈ 10% |
| 20x | ≈ 5% |
| 50x | ≈ 2% |
| 100x | ≈ 1% |
*Before maintenance margin, which moves each trigger slightly closer to your entry.
Pick the stop first, then the leverage
The most common way traders get hurt is choosing leverage by feel and bolting a stop-loss on afterwards, sometimes placing the stop beyond the liquidation price, where it can never fire. The robust order is the reverse: decide the price at which your idea is wrong, then size leverage so liquidation sits comfortably past that stop.
This calculator does that check for you. Enter a stop-loss and it reports the maximum leverage that keeps liquidation beyond your stop. It also warns you, with a one-click fix, if your current setting would get you liquidated before the stop triggers. Pair that with the risk/reward readout: if the gain at your first target is less than about twice the loss at your stop, the trade needs a high win rate just to tread water.
Fees are levered too
Trading fees are charged on the position size, not on your margin, so leverage multiplies them just like it multiplies price moves. A 0.05% taker fee sounds negligible, but on a 20x position the round trip costs about 2% of your margin before the market moves at all. That is why the calculator nets fees out of every exit figure and shows a break-even price slightly past your entry: the position has to travel that far just to pay for itself.
What the calculator can't see
Real liquidation engines use a mark price, not the last traded price, and funding payments on perpetual futures drain or feed your margin over time. Both can move your effective trigger. Thin order books mean liquidations fill worse than the calculated price, and a violent wick can take out a position that “should” have survived. Treat every figure here as an estimate with no safety margin built in, and size positions so that a full liquidation is survivable.
Leverage without a liquidation price: leveraged ETFs
If margin calls, funding rates and liquidation engines feel like a lot of machinery for 2x or 3x exposure, there is a simpler route. Leveraged ETFs build the leverage inside the fund: you buy them like any share, there is no margin account, and the worst case is the amount you invested, with no forced liquidation at a price level.
Browse the full lists of 2x leveraged ETFs and 3x leveraged ETFs, or get short exposure without a margin account through inverse ETFs. Just note that leveraged ETFs reset daily and drift from a clean multiple over longer holds, so they suit shorter-term views.
Frequently asked questions
How is liquidation price calculated?
For an isolated-margin position, liquidation happens at the price where your remaining margin falls to the exchange's maintenance requirement. For a long it is roughly entry price × (1 − 1/leverage) ÷ (1 − maintenance margin); for a short, entry price × (1 + 1/leverage) ÷ (1 + maintenance margin). At 10x long with a 0.5% maintenance margin, a $100 entry liquidates near $90.45, slightly closer than the $90 the simple textbook formula suggests.
What is maintenance margin and why does it matter?
Maintenance margin is the minimum equity an exchange requires you to keep in a position, expressed as a percent of position value, typically 0.4% to 1% on crypto perpetual futures. Because the exchange liquidates you when equity hits that floor rather than zero, your real liquidation price is always a little closer to your entry than the naive 1/leverage rule implies. Many free calculators ignore it and overstate your safety buffer.
How much can I lose trading with leverage?
With isolated margin, your loss is capped at the margin you posted on that position. A liquidation wipes that amount, give or take fees. With cross margin, a losing position can draw on your whole account balance, so losses can spread well beyond the trade's original margin. This calculator models isolated margin, the mode most traders should start with.
What leverage should I use?
Work backwards from your stop-loss, not forwards from your conviction. Decide where the trade is wrong first, then pick a leverage low enough that the liquidation price sits comfortably beyond that stop. The calculator shows you that maximum directly. As a rule of thumb, the distance to liquidation is roughly 1 divided by your leverage: 10x survives about a 10% adverse move, 50x only about 2%.
How do trading fees affect a leveraged position?
Fees are charged on the full position size, not on your margin, and that is exactly what leverage multiplies. A 0.05% taker fee on a 20x position costs about 2% of your margin just to get in and out, before the price moves at all. That is also why your break-even price sits slightly past your entry in the direction of the trade.
Is there a way to get leverage without liquidation risk?
Leveraged ETFs hold leverage inside the fund, so there is no margin account, no maintenance requirement and no liquidation price. The worst case is the amount you invested. They reset daily, which causes compounding drift over longer holds, so they suit short-term positioning, but for 2x or 3x exposure they are a much simpler instrument than a margin or futures position.