Calculator
Polymarket liquidation calculator
Most liquidation calculators run a Binance formula and hand you a number kinder than the truth. This one runs Polymarket’s.
Short answer
Your liquidation price is the mark price at which your equity falls to maintenance margin. Maintenance margin on Polymarket is a flat rate per market, 2.5% of notional on a 20x market and 5.0% on a 10x one, and it does not change with the leverage you selected. Set the market, side, entry, size and leverage below and the calculator solves for that price directly.
It is an estimate. It ignores accrued fees and unsettled funding, both of which reduce equity, so your real liquidation price sits closer than this — never further away.
The calculator
Liquidation calculator
BTC-USD · max 20x · MMR 2.50%
If BTC moves — your long at 10x
| Move | Price | Your PnL | On margin | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +10% | $110,000.0 | +$1,000.00 | +100% | open |
| +5% | $105,000.0 | +$500 | +50% | open |
| +2% | $102,000.0 | +$200 | +20% | open |
| +1% | $101,000.0 | +$100 | +10% | open |
| 0% | $100,000.0 | $0 | 0% | open |
| -1% | $99,000.0 | −$100 | -10% | open |
| -2% | $98,000.0 | −$200 | -20% | open |
| -5% | $95,000.0 | −$500 | -50% | open |
| -10% | $90,000.0 | −$1,000 | -100% | liquidated |
An estimate from Polymarket’s margin formulas. It ignores accrued fees and funding, which move the real liquidation price closer than this. Being liquidated costs a further 0.50% on every fill.
The formulas it uses
Everything starts with two definitions Polymarket publishes. Equity is your collateral plus unrealised profit and loss marked to the mark price, less anything owed. Maintenance margin is notional multiplied by a flat rate. You are liquidated the moment the first falls below the second.source
Equity = Collateral + UnrealizedPnL(Mark) − FeesDue − FundingDue
MM = Notional × MMR where MMR = 0.5 / MaxLeverage
Liquidation when Equity < MMWrite equity and maintenance margin as functions of the unknown price P, set them equal, and rearrange. B is the collateral backing the position net of anything owed, S is the position size in base units and E is the entry price.
long: B + S·(P − E) = S·P·mmr
B + S·P − S·E = S·P·mmr
S·P·(1 − mmr) = S·E − B
P = (S·E − B) / (S·(1 − mmr))
short: B + S·(E − P) = S·P·mmr
B + S·E − S·P = S·P·mmr
S·P·(1 + mmr) = S·E + B
P = (S·E + B) / (S·(1 + mmr))A short whose backing exceeds its notional has no positive solution — there is no price that liquidates it, because the collateral covers an unbounded move. The calculator says so.
Why it disagrees with other calculators
Three things separate Polymarket’s margin model from the generic exchange model most calculator pages implement, and each one moves the answer in the direction that flatters you.
- Maintenance margin is flat, not tiered by your leverage. It is 0.5 / max_leverage for the market and nothing else. Post more margin, choose less leverage, and the threshold does not move with you — you simply start further above it.source
- It is charged on notional at the mark, not at entry. As the price falls against a long, the maintenance requirement falls too, but not fast enough to save you. The two curves meet slightly earlier than the flat-requirement version predicts.
- Leverage caps apply to your whole position. Each market has a risk-tier ladder that lowers the maximum leverage as notional grows, and the lower cap applies to the entire position rather than to the slice above the threshold. The calculator applies the cap for you, which is why the slider sometimes refuses to give you what you asked for.source
Copy a formula from another venue’s help centre and you get the first two wrong, always in the same direction: it tells somebody they have more room than they do. The full arithmetic at every leverage setting is on its own page, and isolated versus cross backing is explained here.
Why the answer is worse than 1/leverage
The intuitive version goes: at 20x I post 5% of notional, the floor is 2.5% of notional, so I have 2.5% of room. That is nearly right and reliably optimistic.
| Leverage | Margin posted | Naive room | Actual room |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20x | 5.0% | 2.5% | 2.56% |
| 10x | 10.0% | 7.5% | 7.69% |
| 5x | 20.0% | 17.5% | 17.95% |
| 2x | 50.0% | 47.5% | 48.72% |
The gap is a few hundredths of a percentage point. It is also, at 20x, the difference between a stop that survives a wick and one that does not.
What it ignores
Equity is not just collateral plus profit and loss. Polymarket’s own definition subtracts fees due and funding due, and this calculator sets both to zero.source
Funding settles every hour and does not pause when the underlying market is closed, so a position held overnight accrues carry whether or not anything happened.source Entry fees are charged the moment you fill. Both come straight out of equity, and every dollar out of equity pulls the liquidation price nearer.
Treat the number as the optimistic bound. The real one is closer, never further.
There is a second cost the calculator flags but does not model: while an account is flagged for liquidation, every fill carries an extra 0.5% of notional on top of the normal maker or taker rate.source Against an entry-tier taker rate of 0.0400% that is 12.5 times the usual cost of a fill, on a position that is by definition already in trouble. The fee page has the whole schedule.
Liquidation orders are reduce-only, immediate-or-cancel and market-priced, with no protective spread — they sweep whatever is resting on the book when they land. So the price you are actually filled at is not the liquidation price this calculator prints; that price is where the process starts.source
It triggers on mark, not the chart
Every number here is a mark price. Polymarket runs three prices per market and only one of them margins you: mark is the median of three independently built candidates, and it is what drives unrealised profit and loss, margin checks, liquidation triggers and stop-loss fills. The last trade price — the line on the chart — margins nothing at all.source
Which means the output above is a mark level, and comparing it against a candlestick chart of last trades will occasionally look wrong in both directions. How mark is built, and why it resists being pushed around is worth reading before you place a stop.
And if the figure on your position screen keeps moving while you sit still, that has an explanation and it is usually cross margin doing exactly what cross margin does.
Questions people ask
How do you calculate a liquidation price on Polymarket?
Solve for the mark price at which equity equals maintenance margin. For a long that is P = (S·E − B) / (S·(1 − mmr)), and for a short P = (S·E + B) / (S·(1 + mmr)), where S is position size in base units, E is entry, B is the collateral backing the position and mmr is the market's flat maintenance margin rate. The mmr term sits on the right because maintenance margin is charged on notional at the liquidation price, not at entry.
What is the maintenance margin rate on Polymarket Perps?
A flat rate per market, equal to 0.5 divided by that market's maximum leverage. On a 20x market it is 2.5% of notional; on a 10x market it is 5%. It does not change with the leverage you selected, so opening at 2x on a 20x market still leaves the floor at 2.5% of notional.
How far can a 20x long fall before liquidation on Polymarket?
About 2.56% against you, not 2.5%. You post 5% of notional at 20x and the floor is 2.5% of notional, but that 2.5% is measured on notional at the liquidation price rather than at entry, so the two sides meet slightly earlier than the naive subtraction suggests.
Is this liquidation calculator exact?
No. It is an estimate built from Polymarket's published margin formulas, and it ignores accrued fees and unsettled funding. Both reduce equity, so your real liquidation price is closer than the figure shown here. Treat the output as the optimistic bound and use Polymarket's own position screen for the number that will actually be enforced.
Does being liquidated cost extra on Polymarket?
Yes. While an account is flagged for liquidation, every fill carries a liquidation fee on top of the normal maker or taker rate — 0.5% of notional on every listed market. That is twelve and a half times the entry-tier taker fee, charged on the way out, on a position that is already losing.
Why does my liquidation price move when I have not touched the position?
Because you are in cross margin. A cross position is backed by the account's whole available equity, so anything that changes that equity — a fill elsewhere, funding settling, a withdrawal, another position moving — shifts this position's liquidation price. Isolated positions are backed by their own allocation and do not drift this way.
Does the chart price liquidate me?
No. Liquidation triggers on mark price, which is the median of three independently built candidates, not on the last trade price you see printed on the chart. A thin print can move the chart without moving mark, and mark can move without a single trade happening on the local book.