Max Leverage Is a Marketing Number: Maintenance Margin Tiers Compared
"Up to 150x" is the headline. What actually governs your liquidation price is the maintenance margin rate (MMR) — the minimum equity you must keep as a fraction of position value — and it is not one number. It rises in steps as your position grows, which means the advertised max leverage only exists for small positions. We pulled the real tier tables from each venue's own public API.
Tier 1 (smallest positions): the numbers that back the headline
| BTC-USDT perp | Tier-1 maint. margin | Tier-1 size cap | Headline max leverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitget | 0.40% | $200k | 150x |
| OKX | 0.40% | 1,000 contracts (10 BTC) | 100x |
| Bybit | 0.50% | $2.0M | 100x |
| Binance | see note | — | 125x (published) |
Source: Bybit /v5/market/risk-limit, OKX /public/position-tiers,
Bitget /mix/market/query-position-lever, retrieved July 18, 2026. Units differ by design:
Bybit and Bitget cap tiers in USDT notional, OKX in number of contracts (BTC-USDT = 0.01 BTC each).
Binance does not expose its leverage-bracket table without an authenticated call, so we do not
publish tier figures for it here; its 125x BTC headline is from its own docs.
The cap collapses with size
Maximum leverage is inversely tied to MMR, and MMR climbs each tier. Bitget's BTC ladder from its API:
| Bitget BTC tier | Position up to | Maint. margin | Max leverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $200k | 0.40% | 150x |
| 2 | $1M | 0.50% | 100x |
| 3 | $5M | 0.70% | 75x |
| 4 | $15M | 1.00% | 50x |
| 5 | $50M | 2.00% | 25x |
So the "150x" is real only for the first $200k. A $2M BTC position sits in tier 3 at best — 75x — regardless of the headline. OKX's BTC ladder is steeper still: MMR runs 0.40% → 0.50% → 0.75% → 1.25% → 1.75% across its first five tiers, so a large position's maintenance requirement is multiples of the tier-1 rate.
Altcoins get a fraction of the room
The advertised leverage on majors almost never applies to alts, because the tier-1 size caps are tiny. On SOL:
| SOL-USDT perp | Tier-1 maint. margin | Tier-1 size cap | Max leverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bybit | 0.50% | $50k | 100x |
| Bitget | 0.50% | $50k | 100x |
| OKX | 0.40% | 5,000 contracts (5,000 SOL) | 100x |
On Bybit and Bitget, 100x SOL exists only up to a $50k position — a fortieth of Bybit's $2M BTC cap. Size up and you drop tiers fast: Bitget's SOL MMR jumps 0.50% → 0.80% → 1.00% → 2.00% by tier 4, capping leverage at 25x for a $5M position.
What it means at 20x
Suppose you open BTC at 20x (5% initial margin). You get liquidated roughly when adverse price
movement eats your margin down to the maintenance requirement — approximately a
(1/leverage − MMR) move against you, before fees and funding. At 20x:
- MMR 0.40% (Bitget/OKX tier 1) → liquidation at roughly a 4.6% adverse move.
- MMR 0.50% (Bybit tier 1) → roughly 4.5%.
The 0.1-point MMR gap is small at 20x — a few basis points of liquidation distance. It matters far more at the extreme leverage the headlines push, and it compounds with the tier you land in: a large position at MMR 1.0–2.0% has dramatically less room than the tier-1 number implies. The practical rule: your liquidation price is set by the tier your size puts you in, not by the number on the leverage slider.
Takeaways
- Advertised max leverage is a tier-1, small-position number. Above the first tier's cap ($200k–$2M on BTC depending on venue; ~$50k on SOL), your real cap is lower.
- Tier-1 MMR on BTC is 0.40% on Bitget and OKX, 0.50% on Bybit — close, so at moderate leverage the venues liquidate at similar distances.
- The bigger cross-venue difference is how quickly the ladder tightens: check the tier your actual position size lands in, not the headline.
- Maintenance margin is only half of holding risk — funding drains margin continuously while you hold, moving your liquidation price closer every settlement.