04 — Perpetuals
Trading perps
Orders go to Hyperliquid's own exchange, signed by your venue account. Which means Hyperliquid's own rules about size, price and leverage are the rules here too.
Market and limit orders #
Two order types, long or short. A limit order rests on the book at the price you name. A market order is an immediate-or-cancel limit priced a little past the mark — which is how Hyperliquid itself fills at market — so you get a fill now, or nothing, rather than a resting order you did not ask for.
- Limit
- Good-till-cancelled by default. Immediate-or-cancel and post-only are also available; a post-only order can only ever be a maker.
- Market
- Filled immediately within a slippage allowance past the mark — 3% by default, and never more than 10%.
- Minimum notional
- $10. An order worth less is refused by the venue, so the app refuses it first.
- Reduce-only
- An order that can only shrink a position. The $10 floor is not applied to it, so you are never stuck unable to close.
- Closing a position
- Closes at market, reduce-only, for whatever it is worth at that moment.
Resting orders can be cancelled one at a time, or all of them at once across every market.
Leverage #
Leverage is set per market, and the ceiling is the market's own: it runs from 1× up to whatever that market caps it at, and the highest cap available is 40×. The app shows the cap for the market you are looking at and will not let you ask for more.
- Hyperliquid stores leverage against the market, not the order — so a change applies to your next position rather than retroactively to an open one.
- Cross margin is the default, except on markets that only support isolated margin.
- More leverage means a smaller move against you wipes out the position. The risk rises with the number.
Sizes and prices #
Every market has its own size precision, and Hyperliquid refuses anything finer than it. So the app rounds your numbers to what the venue will accept before signing — and rounds size down, never up, so an order is never larger than the collateral behind it.
The price rule
Two limits at once, whichever bites first
- At most 5 significant figures.
-
At most 6 − szDecimals decimal places, where
szDecimalsis that market's size precision. - A whole number is always allowed, however many digits it has.
Significant figures are counted from the first digit that is not a leading zero, so a sub-cent market keeps its precision instead of being flattened to four decimal places.
Liquidation estimates #
The trade panel shows an estimated liquidation price before you open a position, and it is labelled an estimate because that is what it is. It is worked out from your entry, your leverage and the market's cap — not quoted by the venue — and the real figure moves with your margin, your other positions and the mark price.
Once a position is open, the liquidation price shown on it is the one Hyperliquid reports for that position, which can also move as your account changes.