⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.
Liquidations and stop-losses on 14 perp DEXs, compared
Every cell restates the venue's own documentation as read on 2026-09-29. "—" means the pages read do not say. This page compares mechanics as documented; it does not rank venues on how reliably they execute, which no venue publishes.
"Which perp DEX has the most reliable stop-loss?" has no measured answer: no venue publishes fill statistics for stops. What the docs do publish is the machinery, and three parts of it decide most bad outcomes. Which price is watched: a stop on the mark price ignores a brief wick on the last trade, while a stop on the last traded price fires on it. What order it becomes: most stops turn into market orders, which fill wherever the book is when they arrive. What happens past your stop: if the position reaches liquidation first, the venue's liquidation rules and fees take over.
Venue by venue
| Venue | Liquidation is checked on | How it closes | Fee or penalty | If losses exceed your collateral | Stop-loss triggers on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperliquiddocs | Mark price | Market orders to the book; above 100k USDC, 20% at a time. Below ⅔ of maintenance margin the HLP liquidator vault takes over | "No clearance fee"; maintenance margin is not returned in a backstop takeover | Auto-deleveraging of the opposite side | Mark price; market TP/SL have a 10% slippage tolerance |
| Asterdocs | Mark price reaching the liquidation price | Open orders cancelled, then one large immediate-or-cancel order | Part of the liquidation fee goes to the insurance fund ("Insurance Clearance Fee"); rate not stated there | Insurance fund, then auto-deleveraging as a last resort | Your choice of mark or last price |
| dYdXdocs | Oracle price against maintenance margin | Protocol liquidation orders at a calculated "Fillable Price" against the book | Up to "the entire remaining value of the account" as a penalty to the insurance fund | Insurance fund; a negative account is deleveraged against "randomly chosen offsetting positions" | Oracle price or last traded price |
| GMXdocs | Remaining collateral against the market’s minimum | Keepers first try your stop-loss, then your limit-increase orders; liquidation only if those fail | 0.20% of position size on standard markets; other rates by market type | Auto-deleveraging of profitable positions when pending PnL crosses the pool threshold | Oracle min or max price, "the same price used for execution" |
| Lighterdocs | Account value against margin requirements | Partial: orders cancelled, then positions closed; below close-out margin the LLP takes positions over | Up to 1% to the LLP (insurance fund) | Auto-deleveraging when the LLP cannot cover | Mark price |
| edgeXdocs | Oracle price | When available balance reaches zero and position margin reaches maintenance level | Liquidation fees go to the eLP vault; rate not stated | Auto-deleveraging ranked by unrealised profit | Last traded price only; executed as market orders |
| Paradexdocs | Margin ratio above 100% at the periodic health check | Partial: every position reduced by the same share until the ratio is below 90% | Penalty = share × liquidation fee × maintenance margin, to the insurance fund | Insurance fund, then socialised losses and a time-based last-resort mechanism | Mark price |
| Extendeddocs | Mark price; margin ratio above 100% | Up to five fill-or-kill orders of 20% each (minimum $1,000) | 1% to the Extended Vault when closed better than bankruptcy price | Vault, capped by market group; RFQ markets go straight to auto-deleveraging | Your choice of mark, index or last price |
| Pacificadocs | Account equity against maintenance margin (half the initial margin) | Three tiers: market liquidation, backstop below ⅔ of maintenance margin (not on a listed set of volatile markets), then auto-deleveraging | max(0.75%, maintenance margin ratio × 0.4) of the value liquidated | Backstop liquidator, then auto-deleveraging of profitable opposing traders | — |
| Jupiter Perpsdocs | Oracle price | The pool (JLP) is the counterparty; closed at the oracle price where collateral meets the minimum margin | "All remaining collateral is forfeited to the JLP" | The JLP pool; no auto-deleveraging on Beta markets | Oracle price, used as the mark for every operation |
| GRVTdocs | Position margin against position maintenance margin | Full liquidation: the insurance fund takes over at the bankruptcy price | — | Insurance fund, then a socialised-loss charge on all withdrawals | Last traded price |
| Variational Omnidocs | A very fast moving average of the mark price; maintenance margin at 100% | Partial, against the single dealer (OLP), at the quote plus the penalty | 0.5% liquidation penalty | The OLP itself can be liquidated, which the docs call the equivalent of auto-deleveraging | Mark price by default, or the quoted price; market orders with no fill guarantee |
| ApeX Omnidocs | Mark price; margin ratio at 100% | The clearing engine closes the riskiest positions first at the best available price | Liquidation fees fund the Protocol Vaults; rate not stated | Auto-deleveraging ranked by leveraged return | Your choice of last, mark or index price; market orders once triggered |
| SoDEXdocs | Mark price | Order book first, large positions in parts; below ⅔ of maintenance margin, backstop liquidation | No extra fee on the order-book step; maintenance margin not returned in a backstop | Auto-deleveraging ranked by unrealised PnL | Mark price |
What the table says about stop-losses
- Mark-price stops (Hyperliquid, Lighter, Paradex, SoDEX, and Variational by default) do not fire on a single off-market trade, but they can fire later than the last price would suggest in a fast move.
- Last-price stops (edgeX, GRVT) fire on the traded price, including a brief spike through thin liquidity.
- You choose on some venues (Aster, Extended, ApeX, and dYdX's oracle or last price). The default is worth checking before you rely on it.
- Oracle-priced venues (GMX, Jupiter) have no order book to wick; the oracle price is both the trigger and the fill.
- Market stops can fill far from the trigger. Hyperliquid caps its market TP/SL at a 10% slippage tolerance; edgeX and ApeX execute stops as market orders; Variational says its stops "do not offer any guarantee of a specific fill price". A limit stop avoids that but may not fill at all.
- GMX is the one venue that tries your stop before liquidating you: keepers execute your stop-loss and limit-increase orders first and skip the liquidation if those close or save the position.
What the table says about losing more than you put in
Every venue here documents a backstop for losses beyond a liquidated trader's collateral: a pool, a vault or an insurance fund, and on most of them auto-deleveraging of profitable traders on the other side when that is not enough. Two designs spread losses differently. Paradex and GRVT describe socialised losses applied as a charge on withdrawals when their insurance fund is short. On Jupiter the pool is your counterparty and keeps all remaining collateral on liquidation, so there is nothing to recover.
For Hyperliquid in depth, see liquidations and ADL and why a TP/SL filled badly. How leverage sets the liquidation price is on leverage and liquidation.