Liquidation happens when your position moves against you and your available margin is no longer enough to cover the losses. At that point, the platform automatically closes your position.
Cross Margin Liquidation
In Cross Margin, your entire available balance is used to support your open positions. This gives you more flexibility and delays liquidation, but if the market keeps moving against you, you may lose your entire account balance.
However, please note, that liquidation occurs when:
Equity – Estimated Closing Fees = Maintenance Margin
This means that liquidation is triggered once your account equity, after subtracting expected fees to close the position, drops to the required maintenance margin level.
On CF, Maintenance Margin = 50% of the used margin
Open orders also reserve part of your margin and reduce available equity
Example:
Account balance: 400 USDT
Position size: 2 BTC/USDT
Used margin: 100 USDT
Maintenance margin: 50% of 100 USDT = 50 USDT
Leverage: 200x (automatically calculated)
If the market moves against your position and your equity (balance + unrealized PnL) drops to around 50 USDT (maintenance), liquidation will be triggered.
So effectively, if your losses reach around 350 USDT, your position may be liquidated.
Cross margin gives you more room before liquidation, but puts your full balance at risk.
Important to remember: your new orders affect available margin as well, so you should be careful when making orders.
Isolated Margin Liquidation
In Isolated Margin, only the specific amount of margin you assign to a position is at risk. Your remaining account balance is not used to support the position.
This makes it easier to control your losses, but also means there’s less buffer before liquidation.
Maintenance Margin = 50% of the used margin
Any losses or fees are deducted only from the isolated margin, not your full balance
Example:
Total account balance: 400 USDT
Used margin (isolated): 100 USDT
Leverage: 50x
Position size: 5,000 USDT (e.g. 0.1 BTC at $50,000)
Maintenance margin: 50% of 100 = 50 USDT
Your position will be liquidated if your isolated margin falls to 50 USDT.
So, if your position loses 50 USDT or more, you will be liquidated.
Your remaining 300 USDT in the account stays untouched and safe.
Isolated margin limits your risk to a specific amount and protects the rest of your funds.