Your first perp trade on Hyperliquid

Before you start

This guide assumes you already have an account and USDC on Hyperliquid. If not, do these first:

1. Create an account (a wallet or email login).
2. Set a referral code on the Referrals page before your first trade. It takes a minute and gives 4% off fees on your first $25M of volume. Our code and the exact steps are on the referral code page.
3. Deposit USDC. The minimum USDC deposit is 5 USDC; anything smaller is lost.

A perpetual future (“perp”) is a contract that tracks an asset’s price and never expires. You don’t buy the coin; you post USDC as collateral (called margin) and your profit or loss follows the price. See what perpetual futures are if that’s new.

The honest part first. Perps are leveraged. Leverage multiplies losses as well as gains, and a position that moves far enough against you is liquidated: closed automatically, with the margin on it lost. Start with an amount you can afford to lose entirely.

The worked example

We’ll open a small long on BTC (a bet that the price rises) with $50 of margin at 2x leverage. That’s a $100 position. The numbers are illustrative; the steps are the same for any market.

Step 1: Pick a market

On app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade, use the token selector at the top left to choose a market. Hyperliquid lists 235 perp markets, 179 of them live (Hyperliquid API, 4 Nov 2026). For a first trade, a large market such as BTC or ETH has the deepest order book, which means your order fills closer to the price you see.

Step 2: Choose a margin mode

Next to the order form you’ll see the margin mode. You have two main choices:

• Cross (the default): your positions share one pool of collateral. Profit on one position can support another, but a loss can drain the whole pool.
• Isolated: the margin is ring-fenced to this one position. If it is liquidated, your other positions and the rest of your balance are untouched.

For a first trade, isolated makes the worst case easy to see: the most you can lose is the margin on that position. Our leverage and margin guide explains both in depth.

Step 3: Set leverage

Leverage can be any whole number from 1 up to the market’s maximum. BTC’s maximum is 40x, ETH 25x, SOL 20x and HYPE 10x (Hyperliquid API, 4 Nov 2026). Higher leverage means a smaller price move liquidates you:

Leverage on an isolated BTC long	Price drop that would liquidate it (approx.)
2x	49%
5x	19%
10x	8.9%
20x	3.8%

These figures come from Hyperliquid’s published liquidation formula and ignore fees and funding, which move the real number slightly. Set 2x for this example.

Step 4: Pick long or short and an order type

Choose Long (you expect the price to rise) or Short (you expect it to fall).

Then choose how the order executes:

• Market: fills immediately at the best available price. You pay the taker fee.
• Limit: you set the price; it only fills at that price or better. If it rests on the book first, you pay the lower maker fee.

A market order is simplest for a first trade. A limit order is cheaper and protects you from a bad fill, but may not fill at all. More on this in order types.

Step 5: Enter the size

Use the slider or type a size. Hyperliquid’s docs define it as: position size = leverage × collateral. With $50 of margin at 2x, that’s a $100 position.

The minimum order value is $10. Smaller orders are rejected.

Before you submit, the form shows an estimated liquidation price. Read it. Hyperliquid notes it is an estimate that can shift with order book liquidity; once the position is open, the displayed liquidation price is more accurate.

Step 6: Place and confirm

Click Place Order, then Confirm in the window that appears. You can tick “Don’t show this again” to skip the confirmation later; for your first few trades, leave it on so you see every order twice.

Your position appears in the positions table at the bottom of the page with entry price, size, unrealized profit and loss (PnL), and liquidation price.

Step 7: Add a take profit and a stop loss

A take profit (TP) closes the position when price reaches a target; a stop loss (SL) closes it when price moves against you by an amount you choose. Set them from the position in the positions table. A TP/SL set from the position covers the whole position by default.

Two details from Hyperliquid’s docs that catch people out:

• TP/SL orders trigger on the mark price, not the last trade price. Mark price blends outside exchange prices with Hyperliquid’s own book, so it can differ from the chart during fast moves.
• Market TP/SL orders have a 10% slippage tolerance. In a thin or fast market, the fill can be noticeably worse than the trigger price. You can set a limit price on the TP/SL to cap that, at the risk of not filling.

A stop loss placed above your liquidation price is the main way to avoid losing the maintenance margin in a backstop liquidation (explained in the leverage guide).

Step 8: Close the position

To exit, close the position from the positions table (market or limit), or place an opposite order with Reduce Only ticked so it can only shrink your position, never flip it. Your realized profit or loss is added to your balance.

What this trade cost

Hyperliquid charges perps fees on the notional size (the full position value), not on your margin. At the entry tier (tier 0) the rates are 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker.

Position	Taker fee (0.045%)	With referral discount (4% off)	Maker fee (0.015%)
$100	$0.045	$0.0432	$0.015
$1,000	$0.45	$0.432	$0.15
$10,000	$4.50	$4.32	$1.50

You pay a fee to open and again to close, so a market-in, market-out round trip on $1,000 is about $0.90 before discounts. The referral discount is 4% of the fee, not 4 percentage points. Try your own numbers in the fee calculator.

Two other costs to know:

• Funding. Perps pay or receive a small funding payment every hour, depending on whether the contract trades above or below the underlying price. See funding rates.
• Front-end fees. If you trade through a wallet or third-party app instead of app.hyperliquid.xyz, it may add a builder fee of up to 0.1% on perps. See builder codes.

Common mistakes

• Skipping the referral code. Set it before the first trade; vaults and sub-accounts don’t get the discount.
• Leverage too high. At 20x, a 3.8% move against an isolated BTC long liquidates it. Start at 1x–3x.
• Confusing margin with size. Fees and PnL are on the full position size, not the margin.
• Forgetting cross margin is shared. A losing cross position can absorb a fresh deposit before you can use it elsewhere.
• Turning off confirmations too early. The confirmation window is your last check on side, size and leverage.

If something goes wrong

• “Order must have minimum value of $10.” Increase the size.
• “Action already expired.” Your order didn’t reach the chain within 15 seconds, usually a connection problem. Check your connection and try again. There is a setting to disable this protection, but Hyperliquid warns that it can cause several delayed orders to go through at once.
• My TP closed at a loss. The trigger is the mark price and market TP/SL can slip up to 10%. Use limit TP/SL in thin markets.
• I was liquidated. You’ll see “Market Liquidation” in Trade History. The position fell below its maintenance margin; see why liquidations happen.
• My available balance is lower than my deposit. On cross margin, new deposits first cover open positions with negative unrealized PnL.

Next: learn the order types in full, or work through leverage and margin before you size up.