How much collateral the trade locks — before you find out at the order form.
Initial margin opens the position; maintenance margin is the floor below which the exchange force-closes it. The distance between them is your entire cushion — and at high leverage that cushion is a rounding error.
Isolated: only the assigned margin is at stake. Cross uses the whole wallet as cushion, delaying liquidation but risking everything — see the cross-vs-isolated guide on the blog.
Bigger positions hit higher maintenance tiers, open orders reserve margin, and risk engines add fee buffers. This models the standard first tier.
Yes — exchanges raise tiers during extreme volatility, moving liquidation closer without price moving. One more reason the buffer should never be your stop.
Free, no signup, runs entirely in your browser. Educational tool — not financial advice. Practice the setup risk-free on the MarginPad paper-trading terminal before putting real money behind it.