Polymarket Perps Margin and Leverage

Leverage and initial margin

Leverage tells you how much position you control for each unit of margin. The exchange sets your initial margin as Notional / Leverage. A higher leverage means less margin for the same position, and also less room before the position is closed.

Leverage and margin mode are settings that you choose per market. Polymarket's documentation says to set them after the market is listed and before your first order. The exchange resolves each setting in this order: your own setting for that market, then the default of your account group (capped at the market's maximum), then the market's maximum leverage and isolated margin. Because the last fallback is the market's maximum leverage, a position opened without a setting of your own can run at the thinnest margin that market permits.

Leverage tiers: bigger positions get less leverage

Most markets have a ladder of tiers. The more position value you hold, the lower the maximum leverage you may use. A few markets have only one tier, so their cap does not move with size; the Perps in numbers post names them. This is the ladder for BTC-USD on Oct 19, 2026:

BTC-USD leverage tiers by position value. Source: api.perpetuals.polymarket.com/v1/info/instruments, checked Oct 19, 2026.

Two details matter. First, the cap is checked against your worst-case position value, which includes resting orders on the heavier side. Second, your leverage setting applies to your entire position value, not bracket by bracket. If an order would push you into a tier whose cap is below your setting, it is rejected with invalid_leverage, and you have to lower your leverage first.

Maintenance margin: a flat rate per market

Maintenance margin is the least collateral that keeps a position open. It is the position value times 0.5 / MaxLeverage, where MaxLeverage is the market's own maximum. On a market whose maximum is 20x, that is 2.5%. The rate does not depend on the size of your position, on its tier or on the leverage you picked.

That has a useful consequence. A position opened at the maximum leverage is liquidated only after it has lost roughly half of its posted margin. At a lower leverage you post more margin but the maintenance margin stays the same, so the buffer between opening the position and being liquidated grows.

The last column is this site's estimate, derived from the rules above, because Polymarket does not publish a liquidation price formula. It ignores fees and funding and assumes isolated margin. Use the liquidation calculator for your own numbers.

Margin states

Your account is always in one of three states, and the state decides what happens next.

In a margin call the account is reduce-only, and a deposit can restore healthy status at once. What happens in the last state is described in the liquidation guide.

Isolated and cross margin

• Isolated margin backs one position with its own allocation. If that position is liquidated, only that position is closed. The cost is that the position cannot draw on the rest of your balance unless you add margin to it.
• Cross margin backs positions with the shared balance of the account. Gains on one position can offset losses on another, but a liquidation can unwind the whole cross account.

Each market in the instrument list carries an isolated_only flag: when it is false, both cross and isolated margin modes are supported. The Perps FAQ says that some markets are isolated-only, but on Oct 19, 2026 none of the 89 markets in the list had the flag set, so both modes were supported everywhere. The live list is current data, so this guide follows it, and the flag of your market is worth reading before you plan around cross margin. To change the mode of a market you must close the position and cancel all orders in that market, and the market has to support the mode you ask for.

For cross positions the liquidation price is not fixed: it depends on the rest of the cross account, so a move in another position can shift it.

Adding and removing isolated margin

You can move collateral into an isolated position or take it out. A change is accepted only if the position's equity stays at or above the required initial margin. Changes are blocked while the account is in cross liquidation or that position is in isolated liquidation; an isolated liquidation on a different market does not block them. Taking margin out of a position moves it back to your free balance, and getting it out of the account is a separate step with its own limits.

Withdrawing while you hold positions

You can withdraw only what is not needed to back your positions, and the exchange also keeps a floor: you must leave at least 10% of the total notional value of all open positions. The floor applies to withdrawals only. It does not change the margin needed to open a position or the maintenance margin that triggers liquidation.

Why an order can be rejected when your balance looks fine

Before an order is accepted, the exchange prices the worst case instead of your current position alone. For the size it takes max(|Position + OpenBuys|, |Position - OpenSells|), so resting orders on one side add to the margin you need. When your equity cannot cover the initial margin for that size, the order is refused, however comfortable the balance looks. An order that would take your position through zero is margined for its closing leg at the worst price it could fill at, a change announced on Sep 21, 2026, so some reversals that used to pass now fail with insufficient_margin.

What this means in practice

Leverage turns into a distance between your entry price and your liquidation price, and funding (see the funding rate guide) changes your equity while you hold: it lowers it when you pay and raises it when you receive. The table below shows how far a long position can fall from its entry before it is liquidated, for a few leverage settings, on markets with different maximums. It is arithmetic, not advice, and it is this site's estimate rather than a Polymarket figure: fees, the price you are actually closed at and any funding you pay make the real distance shorter.

PolyTerminal is an independent interface for Polymarket and is not operated or endorsed by Polymarket. Orders placed through PolyTerminal carry PolyTerminal’s Polymarket builder code, and PolyTerminal may charge a builder fee on top of Polymarket’s own fees. This page is educational and is not investment advice. Rules were compared with the official documentation on Oct 19, 2026; check the source before you act on a number.