OKX Account Modes: What Each One Changes

Two settings people treat as one

On OKX, “account mode” and “position mode” sound like two names for the same choice. They are not, and the API documentation keeps them apart: account mode sits above the account and decides how margin is pooled and what counts as collateral, while position mode decides whether a single instrument may hold both directions at once.

The documentation is explicit that the first set of every account mode has to be made on the web platform or in the app, rather than through the API. That is worth knowing before you build anything around switching modes programmatically: the initial selection is a manual step.

The four account modes

OKX’s documentation states that four account modes are supported in the trading account system:

The documentation attaches a set of account-level fields to these modes, and the “applicable to” notes are the clearest statement of the difference. Isolated margin equity, for example, is marked applicable to Futures, Multi-currency margin and Portfolio margin - not to Spot. Adjusted equity is marked applicable to Spot, Multi-currency margin and Portfolio margin, with the note that in multi-currency or portfolio mode “the asset and margin requirement will all be converted to USD value to process the order check or liquidation.”

In other words, moving from Futures mode into either multi-currency mode is not a change of leverage setting. It is a change in what the venue counts when it decides whether your account meets its requirement.

Position mode is a separate choice

Position mode has two options, and the documentation describes them precisely:

• Net mode: “users can only have positions in one direction.”
• Long/short mode: “users can hold positions in long and short directions.”

Which one you may choose depends on the account mode. OKX states that in Futures mode and Multi-currency margin mode, futures and perpetual swaps support both long/short mode and net mode. In Portfolio margin mode, futures and perpetual swaps support net mode only.

That restriction is the practical reason some traders notice options disappearing after switching. It is not a UI fault and it is not a permission problem; the combination the account is asking for is one the documented mode does not offer.

The two numbers that decide a liquidation

Once the mode is set, the account’s survival comes down to two figures, both documented as account-level fields.

Adjusted equity (adjEq). OKX defines it as “totalEq minus haircut discounts applied to non-stablecoin collateral assets,” and describes it as “the operative value used in the margin ratio calculation.”

Maintenance margin requirement (mmr). The documented definition is “the minimum equity required to avoid forced liquidation,” being the sum of the maintenance margins of all open positions and pending orders under cross-margin mode.

The relationship between them is the whole mechanism. OKX documents the account margin ratio as:

Account-level margin ratio = adjEq / mmr. Values at or below 1.0 indicate the account is at or past the liquidation boundary.

and states the trigger directly: “When adjEq ≤ mmr (equivalently, mgnRatio ≤ 1.0), the system begins forced liquidation of positions.”

Three things follow from reading that sentence carefully:

1. The comparison is against adjusted equity, not total equity. The haircut is not a display detail; it is inside the numerator.
2. The trigger is a ratio of 1.0, not zero. Liquidation does not begin when the account runs out of money. It begins when the equity that counts falls to the level the venue requires.
3. It is a boundary the venue states, not a target. A ratio near 1.0 is a position already at the edge.

There is a per-position initial margin figure as well, documented as “position size × markPx × initial margin rate (= 1/lever)”. That is the margin locked when the position is opened. Because it is defined separately from mmr, leverage and the liquidation boundary are not the same dial: changing leverage changes how much equity is locked at entry, while mmr is what has to keep being met.

Why the haircut matters more than the headline equity

Adjusted equity is where a multi-currency account diverges from what a user expects. OKX’s documentation explains the reason in the field note: “Due to the volatility of each currency market, our platform calculates the actual USD value of each currency based on discount rates to balance market risks.”

The consequences are worth stating plainly:

• Posting a volatile asset instead of a stablecoin lowers your usable equity, because a discount is applied to the non-stablecoin part of the collateral. Two accounts with the same total equity can sit at different distances from the liquidation boundary if their collateral is composed differently.
• Total equity and adjusted equity can move apart without any trade being placed, when the collateral asset’s price moves or when the venue’s discount changes.
• Mark price, not last traded price, is used to value positions. OKX documents unrealised profit and loss as calculated from the mark price. That removes some of the effect of a single outlier print, but it also means the number that decides your margin is not the number on the ticker.

The documentation also points to a position-risk-warning WebSocket channel for proactive alerts, which exists precisely because a ratio approaching 1.0 is something the venue expects users to watch rather than discover.

What to check on your own account

The documentation makes this checkable without guessing. Reading the account-level fields tells you which side of the boundary you are on and why:

1. Read the account mode and the position mode first, because they decide which of the other fields apply to you at all.
2. Read totalEq and adjEq together. The gap between them is the haircut, and it is the part of your balance that is not available as margin.
3. Read mgnRatio. Compare it with 1.0, which the documentation names as the boundary.
4. Read mmr and imr separately. imr is what was locked at entry; mmr is the level that must keep being met.
5. Confirm the field is populated at all. Several of these fields are documented as returning an empty string outside the modes they apply to, so an empty value is a statement about your mode rather than missing data.

The position size calculator is a way to work out what a given loss looks like before it shows up in these fields. For what a position costs to open and close in the first place, see how to read an exchange fee schedule, and for why an order may be refused before margin is even considered, see why an exchange rejects your order. The OKX exchange profile collects the venue-level facts, and the Binance vs OKX comparison covers how the two platforms differ in structure.

Risk note. Every figure and formula in this article is reproduced from OKX’s public API documentation as read on 2026-10-15, and the documentation describes a platform that can change its margin rules. Verify the definitions against the current documentation and against your own account fields before relying on them. Leverage magnifies losses as well as exposure, forced liquidation is not a safety net, and nothing here is investment advice.