Leverage ↔ liquidation distance table
A rule of thumb you can do in your head: price moving about 1/leverage against you takes your principal close to zero. 10x is about 10%, 20x about 5%, 100x about 1%. The table below lists the common leverage levels so you can see at a glance how much room for error is left once you go in at that multiple. It's an approximation to build intuition — real liquidation triggers earlier.
| Leverage | Approx. liquidation distance (≈ 1/leverage) | Gut sense |
|---|
This table uses only the crudest approximation, distance ≈ 1 ÷ leverage, and leaves out the maintenance margin rate, fees, and funding. Once you fold those in, real liquidation triggers a bit earlier than shown here (meaning price may wipe you out before it has even moved this full percentage against you). Real liquidation is based on the mark price, computed using Gate's maintenance-margin tier at the time, and isolated and cross behave differently too. This page is only for building the intuition that "higher leverage means thinner room for error" — for an exact liquidation price use the liquidation price estimator, and treat Gate's order page as the source of truth. This tool isn't financial advice.