OKX · Strategy Comparison
How a spot grid and a futures grid behave when the same market ranges, breaks down or breaks out
Picture running two bots over the same stretch of BTC price action: a spot grid and a long futures grid, with the same range and the same number of grids. OKX's official worked examples for the two happen to use exactly that setup: a range of 50,000–100,000 USDT, 50 arithmetic grids, 5,000 USDT invested and a price of 60,100 USDT at creation, with 2x leverage added on the futures side. The orders they place match too: a buy order at each level from 50,000 to 60,000, a sell order at each level from 62,000 to 100,000. While price swings back and forth inside the range, both buy low and sell high. What the spot grid picks up is BTC; what the futures grid picks up is a 2x leveraged long.
Once price leaves the range, they part ways. Below 50,000 the spot grid stops placing orders, and the BTC it holds falls with the market, so the loss is in the coin price. The futures grid stops operating too, but what it holds is a long position, and OKX's risk note warns that the position may sit at a floating loss or even face liquidation. Run it on a perpetual and you also pay or receive funding whenever you hold a position at a settlement time. A spot grid has no leverage, no liquidation and no funding; a futures grid can also run short or neutral.
What each grid ends up holding in three market scenarios
A futures grid comes in three directions. A long grid only opens and closes longs and is meant for a market that ranges upward; a short grid only opens and closes shorts and is meant for a market that ranges downward; a neutral grid opens and closes shorts above the market price at launch and opens and closes longs below it. The table below covers actions and positions only, with no profit or loss figures.
| Scenario | Spot grid | Long grid | Short grid | Neutral grid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ranging inside the band | Buys at lower grid lines and sells at higher ones, swapping between the coin and USDT | Buys to open longs lower down, sells one level up to close them | Sells to open shorts higher up, buys one level down to close them | Places short-grid orders above the launch price and long-grid orders below it |
| Breaks below the lower bound | Stops placing orders; holds the coins it picked up on the way down and falls with the price | Stops operating; holds longs at a floating loss, with liquidation risk | Buys back its shorts level by level on the way down; stops operating below the range | Everything picked up below the launch price is long, so once out of range it is in the same spot as a long grid |
| Breaks above the upper bound | Sells level by level on the way up; stops placing orders above the range | Sells off its longs level by level; stops operating above the range | Stops operating; holds shorts at a floating loss, with liquidation risk | Everything opened above the launch price is short, so once out of range it is in the same spot as a short grid |
Because it shorts above and goes long below, a neutral grid that watches price run straight out the top of its range has opened nothing but shorts along the way; if price runs out the bottom, everything it picked up is long. When the market leaves in one direction and doesn't come back, the side it holds is exactly the losing side.
How it starts out also depends on one option: whether to open a position immediately at launch (the course page calls this a base position). With it ticked, a long grid opens part of its long position at market price when it starts, and a short grid does the same on the short side.
What leverage magnifies, and why two official pages give different caps
A futures grid's size is worked out as total amount = margin invested × leverage. With the official parameters from the opening, that's 5,000 USDT × 2 = 10,000 USDT. A spot grid splits its starting funds evenly across the grids, so 5,000 USDT over 50 grids is about 100 USDT a grid. On the futures side, OKX's strategy trading course explains that leverage puts more money behind every grid trade: the spacing stays the same, the position behind each grid gets bigger, and every grid's gain or loss grows with it.
Once it's running, the number to watch is a different one: actual leverage = value of positions held ÷ strategy account equity. The 2x you choose at creation is a fixed parameter; actual leverage moves with the market. The example below counts floating P&L in equity. Say a long grid at some point holds longs worth 8,000 USDT with strategy account equity of 5,000 USDT: actual leverage is 8,000 ÷ 5,000 = 1.6x. If price falls another 12.5%, those longs are worth 7,000 USDT, a floating loss of 1,000 USDT, which leaves equity at 4,000 USDT and actual leverage at 7,000 ÷ 4,000 = 1.75x. On the way down the grid keeps picking up new longs, so the top of that fraction keeps growing.
How high the leverage can go is where two official OKX pages disagree. A Chinese-language OKX Learn quick guide to the futures grid strategy says the highest leverage currently allowed is 50x. Part 7 of OKX's Chinese-language strategy trading course, the lesson on futures grids, says that to keep overall position risk in check, grid strategies are currently capped at 5x. Both pages were last updated in April 2024, and the help page on how to trade with a futures grid, updated in August 2026, doesn't mention a cap. The two numbers are ten times apart; go by the highest value you can currently select in the leverage field on the creation screen.
After price leaves the range: the spot grid stops, the futures grid has liquidation to watch
When a spot grid drops out the bottom of its range, the rule is that it stops placing orders once the market price is below the lowest price. The bot hasn't ended and the coins it bought are still there: you can change the price range, end the bot, or wait for price to come back. If you've set a stop-loss price, the bot stops running when it triggers and sells all of the base asset at market. There's no liquidation anywhere on this path; the worst case is that the coin keeps falling and you keep holding it. For how a grid that has stopped placing orders differs from one that has actually ended, see OKX Grid Bot Stopped? First Work Out Which Kind of Stop It Is.
For a futures grid that leaves its range, the stop-loss risk note on OKX's help page How can I do futures grid trading? reads: “If the market price moves beyond the upper or lower limits of the grid range, the strategy will stop operating. If the price continues to move in one direction without returning to the grid range, open positions may incur floating losses or face liquidation risk.”
At creation the page shows an estimated liquidation price. For longs it assumes every long order in the grid fills and the maximum long position is open; for shorts, that every short order fills. While the bot runs, the order details show a second one based on the position you actually hold. The closer a long grid's lower bound sits to the estimated long liquidation price, the less room you have once price drops out of the range. The course page advises setting the grid to take in recent highs and lows where possible, to lower the odds of price punching through it.
That room also depends on a few settings:
- Automatically reserve margin. By default, the initial build puts all of the funds into opening positions. Turn on “Automatically reserve margin” and the strategy holds part of the funds back to lower liquidation risk; leave it off and set the margin yourself, and liquidation risk goes up.
- Adding funds while at a loss. When the bot is well in the red, extra investment may go toward keeping the current buy and sell quantity.
- Other positions in your trading account. The help page's note: “Funds invested in a futures grid strategy are isolated from your trading account. Please be aware that changes in your trading account assets may still affect overall liquidation risk.” If you have other futures open there, the money that could back their margin is smaller by that amount.
When a futures grid's take-profit or stop-loss price triggers, the bot stops automatically and closes the position at market. To set those prices, go to Trading bots > Futures grid, select the bot and tap More > Take Profit and Stop Loss. The Stop button in the same menu ends the bot manually. With either kind of grid, the bot stops automatically if the coin is suspended or delisted.
How funding works on a perpetual futures grid, and who pays whom
The worked example on the futures grid help page uses the BTCUSDT perpetual. Run a grid on a perpetual and every long and short in the bot is a perpetual position, so the usual funding rules apply to them:
Funding fee = position value × current funding rate
- When the rate is positive, longs pay shorts; when it's negative, shorts pay longs. The platform doesn't take a cut: the money moves between the two sides of open positions.
- It's calculated once every 8 hours and collected at 00:00, 08:00 and 16:00 UTC each day (08:00, 16:00 and midnight HKT). Some contracts settle every 1, 2 or 4 hours; check that contract's page.
- You only pay or receive if you hold a position at the moment it's collected; close before then and it doesn't apply. The amount has nothing to do with the position's profit or loss.
On a grid, that means a long grid holds longs and pays when the rate is positive, while a short grid holds shorts and receives when the rate is positive. A neutral grid depends on which side of the launch price the market is at settlement: above it, the grid holds shorts; below it, longs. Suppose that at one settlement a long grid holds longs worth 10,000 USDT and the rate is +0.01% (an assumed value, used only to show the formula): that settlement costs 10,000 × 0.01% = 1 USDT, and a contract that settles every 8 hours settles 3 times a day. OKX's funding page also warns that when the market swings hard and long and short positions fall out of balance, the funding rate can run high.
To check the current rate in the app, open futures trading, pick a perpetual pair, tap the candlestick chart icon and look for the funding rate in the contract overview. It shows the rate, its cap and floor, the countdown and the settlement interval.
Which one to pick
| Compared | Spot grid | Futures grid |
|---|---|---|
| What you hold | The coin and USDT | Longs or shorts |
| Direction | Buys low and sells high inside the range | Pick one: long, short or neutral |
| Leverage | None | Total amount = margin invested × leverage; the two official pages put the cap at 50x and 5x |
| Out of range | Stops placing orders; holdings stay put | Stops operating; positions may sit at a floating loss |
| Liquidation | None | Yes; the creation page shows estimated long and short liquidation prices |
| Funding | None | Perpetual positions pay or receive at each collection time |
| Take-profit / stop-loss triggered | Stops running and sells all of the base asset at market | Stops and closes the position at market |
| Where it is in the app | From the trading page: Trade → Spot grid | Trade → Trading bots → Futures grid |
When OKX's course gets to futures grids, it opens by pointing out where the spot grid falls short: a spot grid only suits ranging markets, or more precisely markets that range upward, and has no answer to a fairly clear ranging decline. If you expect the market to lean toward a ranging decline and want to short inside the range, only a futures grid set to short can do that; a spot grid can't. If you can't tell the direction and price seems to be circling a midpoint, both the neutral grid and the spot grid can work: the neutral grid carries liquidation risk at both ends, while the spot grid's weak spot is a one-way decline.
A spot grid is the better fit in these situations:
- You can't watch the market often, and you couldn't live with opening the app one day to find the position liquidated;
- You have other futures open in your trading account and don't want the funds the bot moves out to eat into their margin;
- You don't want to pay funding on what you hold.
If you go with a futures grid, find three numbers before you open it: how far the lower bound (the upper bound for a short grid) sits from the estimated liquidation price, where outside the range your stop-loss goes, and roughly how big a position you'll hold at settlement and how much funding one settlement costs at the current rate. If you can't pin down any one of them, a spot grid is the steadier place to start.
On the website, the spot grid lives under Trade → Trading bots → Strategy Square in the top bar. Both kinds of grid can use parameters recommended from backtests (for the futures grid this is “Intelligent creation”, where you only enter the investment amount and the long or short direction). Those numbers come from past price action, so before you use them as they are, read How to Use the OKX Strategy Square: Understand This Before You Copy Parameters.
A few places where creation gets stuck: the investment amount can't exceed what's currently transferable of that coin in your trading account; and if the current price or indicator has already hit a stop condition you set, the bot won't be created, so you'll have to change the settings and create it again. A price-based condition can still be edited before it triggers; an RSI-based one can't, so you have to stop the bot and create a new one.
Before you open a futures grid
Can an OKX futures grid get liquidated?
Yes. The risk comes after price leaves the range in one direction: the bot stops operating, and if price doesn't come back into the range, open positions may carry floating losses or face liquidation. Turning on “Automatically reserve margin” lowers the liquidation risk; turning it off and setting the margin yourself raises it. Set a stop-loss price at a sensible level outside the range; when it triggers, the bot stops and closes the position at market.
What's the maximum leverage on an OKX futures grid?
OKX's own pages disagree. A Chinese-language OKX Learn quick guide to the futures grid strategy says up to 50x, while Part 7 of its Chinese-language strategy trading course, the lesson on futures grids, says grid strategies are capped at 5x. The real cap is the highest value you can currently select in the leverage field on the creation screen; don't plan around either page's number.
If my futures grid is in profit, will adding more funds make it earn more?
Existing profits aren't affected. After you add funds, each grid trades a larger position, so later gains and losses both grow. It works the other way when the bot is well in the red: the extra money may first go toward keeping the current buy and sell quantity, so the per-grid quantity won't necessarily increase. Both cases are covered in the FAQ on OKX's help page How can I do futures grid trading?
For how to set a spot grid's range, number of grids and per-grid amount, see How to Set Up an OKX Grid Bot: Parameters, Range, and a One-Week Worked Example.