Bybit Liquidation Price Calculator

How Bybit actually calculates liquidation

Liquidation on a Bybit USDT-perpetual happens when the loss on your open position eats through almost all of the margin posted to support it. The exchange does not let you go negative — instead, when your unrealized loss approaches the initial margin you put up, Bybit closes the position automatically at a price they call the liquidation price, charges a liquidation fee, and you walk away with whatever maintenance-margin floor was left. The fee is usually 0.05–0.15% of notional, which sounds small until you realize it stacks on top of a near-total margin loss.

The formula is mechanical and you can compute it in your head once you internalize it. For isolated-margin longs: liquidation price equals entry × (1 − 1/leverage + maintenance-margin-rate). For shorts: entry × (1 + 1/leverage − MMR). At 10× leverage with a 0.5% maintenance-margin rate on BTC, a long entered at $65,000 liquidates at $58,825 — about 9.5% below entry. The calculator above is exactly this formula plus the small but real adjustments for cross-margin mode and tiered maintenance-margin rates.

Isolated vs cross — the part most traders get wrong

Isolated margin is the obvious mode. You allocate a specific amount of margin to a position; if that margin is depleted, only that position liquidates. Cross margin is the dangerous one. In cross mode, your entire wallet equity backs every cross-mode position simultaneously. The leverage knob you set on the order screen becomes essentially cosmetic — it caps how much position size you can open, but it does not control your liquidation distance. The liquidation distance in cross is governed by the ratio of position notional to total wallet equity, not by the leverage you selected.

What this means in practice: you can open a "5× leverage" position in cross mode and still get liquidated faster than a "20× leverage" isolated position, if your position notional is large relative to your remaining wallet balance. Traders who run multiple cross positions sometimes discover this only when a single losing trade triggers a cascade — the loss on position A reduces wallet equity, which reduces the effective liquidation buffer on positions B, C and D simultaneously, and the whole book unwinds. The calculator above models this by computing effective leverage as notional/equity when cross mode is selected, which is the number that actually matters.

Why the "maintenance margin" input matters

Bybit's maintenance-margin rate is tiered by position size and contract. BTC and ETH perpetuals start at 0.4–0.5% for small positions and step up as your notional grows past tier thresholds — into the millions of USDT for top contracts. Mid-cap altcoin perpetuals (SOL, AVAX, MATIC) start around 1.0–1.5%. Lower-cap alts can have maintenance-margin rates of 2.5–5% or higher, which pulls liquidation distance dramatically closer to entry. The default 0.5% in the calculator works for BTC/ETH at retail size; if you are trading anything else, look up the actual tier on Bybit's contract specs page and plug it in. The difference between 0.5% and 2.5% MMR at 10× leverage is 2 full percent of liquidation distance — the difference between surviving a normal pullback and getting wicked out by one.

The wick-out problem nobody talks about

Bybit triggers liquidation based on mark price, not last-traded price. Mark price is computed from an index of major spot exchanges plus a funding-basis correction, and during stressed conditions — funding-rate spikes, exchange-API outages, low-liquidity periods — the mark price can briefly disagree with the chart you are looking at by 0.5–1% on top contracts, more on alts. The result: your chart shows the wick stopping a hair above your liquidation level, but the mark-price feed registered the wick as deeper, and you wake up to a "Position liquidated" notification while the chart looks fine.

The defense is simple: keep your stop-loss distance comfortably inside your liquidation distance — the rule of thumb is at least 2× buffer. If you are planning to stop out at 2% adverse and your liquidation sits at 2.5% adverse, you have effectively no buffer against mark-price wicks. Move your stop tighter, reduce leverage, or accept that you are running a coin-flip on the next volatility event. The Position Size Calculator linked below flags this configuration as a red warning — for any trade you are about to take, the two calculators are paired tools.

Bybit-specific footguns

Three subtleties the formula above does not capture. First: funding payments. If you hold a position through funding intervals (every 8 hours at 00:00, 08:00 and 16:00 UTC), positive funding rates on a long position deduct from your collateral on every interval. Over a multi-day swing, accumulated funding can shave 1–3% off your effective margin, pulling your real-world liquidation closer than the formula suggests. PerpLog tracks funding accrual per position automatically — the linked blog post on funding fees goes deeper. Second: insurance fund auto-deleveraging. On rare extreme moves, Bybit may force-close winning positions to cover bankrupt liquidations elsewhere — your "winning" position can get auto-closed at the mark price even when liquidation is not on your own position. Third: cross-margin contagion. Holding multiple losing cross positions simultaneously means each one's drawdown accelerates the liquidation of the others, which is not a linear effect and is impossible to model without the live wallet snapshot.

Liquidation is mechanical math, but trading through liquidations is a discipline question. The math here gives you the floor — the actionable trader skill is staying so far away from that floor that funding spikes, mark-price wicks, and cross-margin contagion can never reach it. That's what 1-2% per-trade risk and 5-10× leverage buys you, and that's what the calculators on this site are meant to make concrete.

Related

• → Position Size Calculator (Bybit Perpetuals) — given your account and stop, the exact contract size.
• → Risk of Ruin Calculator (Kelly-light) — the right risk percent for your edge.
• → Funding Cost Calculator (over time) — the hold-time carrying cost the formula does not capture.
• → How Funding Fees Destroy Your Crypto Edge — long-form essay on the dynamic.