By Keel Research Team · Updated September 19, 2026
Liquidation on Hyperliquid happens when the mark-to-market loss on a perpetual position exhausts your available margin minus the maintenance-margin reserve. The exchange auto-closes the position. The formula is simple; the practical implications for sizing and stop-loss placement matter more than the math.
A perpetual-futures position on Hyperliquid is held against margin you post upfront. As the mark price moves, your unrealized P&L moves with it. If the mark moves far enough against you, your account equity drops below the maintenance margin, and Hyperliquid's liquidation engine closes the position — first with a market order to the book, and if that fails, through a backstop liquidation to the liquidator vault. For an isolated position the loss is capped at the margin you posted; if a market-order liquidation closes the position, whatever collateral remains is returned to you.
Understanding the exact liquidation price for a given trade is the foundation of capital management on a leveraged venue. Three things determine it: your entry price, the leverage you chose, and the maintenance-margin rate Hyperliquid sets for the asset — which depends on the asset's maximum leverage, not on the leverage you picked. Check any position with the liquidation calculator.
Hyperliquid publishes the rule in its liquidations documentation:
liq_price = price − side × margin_available / position_size / (1 − l × side)
side = +1 for a long, −1 for a short
margin_available = isolated_margin − maintenance_margin_required
l = 1 / (2 × max leverage of the asset)
(half the initial margin at max leverage)For a position opened at your entry price with leverage L, the isolated margin is entry × size / L and the maintenance requirement is l × size × entry. The size cancels, and the formula reduces to:
long : liq = entry × (1 − 1/L) / (1 − l)
short : liq = entry × (1 + 1/L) / (1 + l)Worked example. You open a long BTC perp at $50,000 with 10x leverage on Hyperliquid (isolated, below BTC's first margin-tier break). BTC's max leverage is 40x, so l = 1 / 80 = 1.25 %. The liquidation price is 50,000 × (1 − 0.1) / (1 − 0.0125) = 50,000 × 0.911392 = $45,569.62. The cushion to liquidation is 8.86 % of entry. (The naive 50,000 × (1 − 1/10 + 1/20) = $47,500 you will see on other calculators keys the maintenance margin on your chosen leverage; Hyperliquid does not.)
At 20x leverage the same trade liquidates at $48,101.27 (3.80 % cushion). At 40x — BTC's maximum — it liquidates at $49,367.09 (1.27 % cushion). A BTC short at $50,000 with 10x liquidates at $54,320.99, 8.64 % above entry. And a 1x long has no liquidation price at all: (1 − 1/1) is zero, so the mark would have to reach $0.
The rate is per asset, so the same leverage gives a different cushion on a different market: an ETH long at 10x (max 25x, l = 2 %) liquidates 8.16 % below entry — $45,918.37 on a $50,000 entry — and a HYPE long at 10x (its max, l = 5 %) liquidates just 5.26 % below entry.
The maintenance margin is what you must hold to keep the position open after entry. On Hyperliquid it is half the initial margin at the asset's maximum leverage — so it is a property of the asset, not of your position. Per the margin-tiers documentation, the max leverage steps down once the notional value of a position (measured at the liquidation price) crosses the asset's tier break, which raises the maintenance rate and moves the liquidation price closer to entry. The mainnet tiers:
| Assets | Notional → max leverage | Maintenance rate |
|---|---|---|
| BTC | 0–$150M → 40x · >$150M → 20x | 1.25 % · 2.5 % |
| ETH | 0–$100M → 25x · >$100M → 15x | 2 % · 3.33 % |
| SOL | 0–$70M → 20x · >$70M → 10x | 2.5 % · 5 % |
| XRP | 0–$40M → 20x · >$40M → 10x | 2.5 % · 5 % |
| AAVE, ADA, APT, AVAX, BCH, CRV, DOGE, ENA, FARTCOIN, HYPE, kBONK, kPEPE, LINK, LTC, NEAR, PUMP, SUI, TRUMP, UNI, WLD, ZEC | 0–$20M → 10x · >$20M → 5x | 5 % · 10 % |
| ARB, BNB, DOT, JUP, kSHIB, MKR, ONDO, PAXG, TON, TRX, XPL | 0–$3M → 10x · >$3M → 5x | 5 % · 10 % |
Every other listed perp uses a single tier at its max leverage from HL's meta endpoint; the maintenance rate is 1.25 % for 40x assets up to 16.7 % for 3x assets. The liquidation calculator applies the first-tier rate for the asset you pick and caps leverage at the asset's max. For a position above the tier break, enter the deeper tier's rate in the override field — 2.5 % instead of 1.25 % for a BTC position over $150M.
Hyperliquid has no insurance fund and no liquidation clearance fee. The sequence, from the liquidations documentation:
Liquidations use the mark price — a blend of external CEX prices and Hyperliquid's own book — not the last trade, so during fast markets the mark can sit some distance from the book.
Hyperliquid supports both margin modes. The choice has meaningful risk implications.
For systematic strategies running multiple positions simultaneously, cross-margin lets you scale exposure with less capital. For manual or single-position trades, isolated is cleaner and more honest about risk per trade.
The liquidation calculator computes the isolated number even in cross-margin mode. Use it as the floor — the actual cross-margin liquidation depends on the full account state and can fire earlier if other positions are also drawing down.
Treating the liquidation engine as your stop loss is a costly mistake. A market-order liquidation exits you at the mark with whatever is left; a backstop liquidation keeps your maintenance margin. Three better practices:
Before opening a position, use the liquidation calculator to see exactly where your liquidation sits. Enter asset, side, entry, leverage, and margin mode. It returns the liquidation price plus the cushion-to-liquidation percentage — a single check that catches over-leveraged positions before they cost you.
meta endpoint as of September 19, 2026. Not financial advice.Keel is a Strategy OS for AI-assisted systematic trading on Hyperliquid. Backtest, iterate on, and run live strategies across single-stock perps, indices, and crypto majors — realistic fees, slippage, and funding modeled.
Free to start — connect a Hyperliquid wallet when you’re ready to go live.
Liquidation is the automatic closure of a perpetual-futures position when the trader's collateral can no longer cover potential losses — the exchange forces an exit to prevent your loss from exceeding the margin you posted.
Hyperliquid's rule is liq = price − side × margin_available / position_size / (1 − l × side), where side is +1 for a long and −1 for a short, margin_available is the isolated margin minus the maintenance margin required, and l is the maintenance-margin rate: half the initial margin at the asset's MAXIMUM leverage (1.25 % for BTC at 40x, 2 % for ETH at 25x, 2.5 % for SOL and XRP at 20x, 5 % for 10x assets). For a position opened at entry with leverage L this reduces to long → entry × (1 − 1/L) / (1 − l) and short → entry × (1 + 1/L) / (1 + l). Above the asset's first notional break the max leverage halves and l doubles, which moves the liquidation price closer to entry.
Isolated: each position has its own collateral. Liquidation of one position doesn't touch the rest of your account. Cross: all positions share the account balance as collateral. A loss on one position can liquidate other positions if total equity drops below maintenance. Isolated gives clean per-position risk; cross gives more capital efficiency but couples positions.
Not necessarily. When your equity falls below the maintenance margin, Hyperliquid first sends a market order for the position to the book; if that closes enough of it to meet the maintenance requirement, whatever collateral remains stays with you, and there is no liquidation clearance fee. If equity drops below two-thirds of the maintenance margin before the book can close it, a backstop liquidation transfers the position and its margin to the liquidator vault (part of HLP) — in that case the maintenance margin is not returned. Auto-deleveraging is the final safeguard if a position's value goes negative.
Three things. (1) Use lower leverage — for a BTC long the cushion to liquidation is 18.99 % at 5x, 8.86 % at 10x, 3.80 % at 20x and 1.27 % at 40x; a 1x long cannot be liquidated by price at all. (2) Set explicit stop losses inside the cushion, much tighter than the liquidation price. The liquidation engine should be a last resort, not your stop — and a backstop liquidation keeps your maintenance margin. (3) Monitor margin in volatile regimes — drawdowns on other positions in cross-margin can compound the risk.
Hyperliquid's UI displays the liquidation price for every open position in real time. For pre-trade sizing decisions, use the liquidation calculator — input asset, side, entry, leverage, and margin mode to see the liquidation price and cushion percentage before opening the position.