Mark price vs oracle price: which price does what

A perpetual market runs on several prices at once: the last trade on the order book, an oracle or index price built from spot markets, and a mark price that blends the two. Liquidations, trigger orders and unrealised PnL follow the mark price, funding follows the gap between the perpetual and the oracle, and the last trade is only what the order book printed a moment ago.

This guide explains each price, shows how Hyperliquid builds them from its official documentation, and explains why the price on the chart is not always the price that liquidates a position.

The four prices in one table

"Index" and "oracle" are two names for the same idea. Centralised exchanges usually publish it as an index price; Hyperliquid names it the oracle price, because validators publish it on chain. The exact recipe differs from venue to venue, so an index on one exchange is not the same number as the index on another.

How Hyperliquid builds the oracle price

On Hyperliquid, every validator computes a spot oracle price for each perpetual asset and publishes it about every three seconds. Each validator takes a weighted median of the spot mid prices on several large exchanges and Hyperliquid's own spot market. The final oracle price the clearinghouse uses is a weighted median of all validators' submissions, weighted by stake.¹

Two details matter:

• Where spot liquidity lives. Assets whose main spot market is on Hyperliquid (HYPE is the example the docs give) do not include external sources until there is enough liquidity elsewhere. Assets whose main spot market is outside Hyperliquid (such as BTC) do not include Hyperliquid's spot price.¹
• No perpetual data. The oracle price does not depend on Hyperliquid's perpetual order book at all. That is what makes it a good reference for funding: traders on the perpetual cannot move it by trading the perpetual.²

How Hyperliquid builds the mark price

The mark price is the median of three inputs:²

1. The oracle price plus a 150-second moving average of the gap between Hyperliquid's mid price and the oracle price.
2. The median of the best bid, the best ask and the last trade on Hyperliquid.
3. A weighted median of the perpetual mid prices on several large centralised exchanges.

If only two of the three inputs exist, a 30-second moving average of the second input is added as a third value. The mark price updates whenever validators publish new oracle prices, so mark and oracle both move about every three seconds.²

Taking a median of three independent inputs is the point. One input can be wrong for a moment (a thin book, a single large trade, a stale feed on another exchange) without moving the median much. A single trade that prints far away from the rest changes the last price at once, but it changes only one of the three mark inputs.

Which price drives what

Hyperliquid's documentation is explicit about the jobs:

• Mark price: margining, liquidations, firing trigger orders, and unrealised PnL.²
• Oracle price: the funding rate. The premium in the funding formula is measured against the oracle price, and the funding payment converts the position size to a notional with the oracle price, not the mark price.³
• Last price: the trades themselves. Your fill price is whatever the order book gives you; the last price is what the book printed most recently.

That split has a practical consequence. A position is liquidated when its account equity, valued at the mark price, falls below the maintenance margin.⁴ A brief wick in the last price that the mark price does not follow does not by itself liquidate a position. The other way round, during fast moves or on highly leveraged positions, the mark price can sit far from the book price, and Hyperliquid's docs warn that it may differ significantly from the price on the book.⁴

Mark vs oracle: the premium

The difference between the perpetual and the oracle is the premium (often called basis). When the perpetual trades above the oracle, the premium is positive and longs pay funding to shorts; when it trades below, shorts pay longs.³ We define the measure and how we compute it for each venue on the premium and basis page.

A persistent gap between mark and oracle is therefore not a glitch. It is the market paying to hold one side, and funding is the mechanism that pulls the two prices back together over time. How funding is paid and annualised is covered in funding rates explained.

Reading these prices on our pages

• The funding page shows funding per venue and a premium view, which is the mark versus the index or oracle price of each coin.
• A liquidation heatmap draws the price as candles by default or as a light line; the distance of each level is measured from the mark price, because that is the price liquidations follow.
• Distances to liquidation in our tables are measured from the latest mark sample, not from the last trade.

Limits

• Recipes differ by venue. Binance and Bybit publish their own mark and index prices with their own inputs and weights. A premium on one venue is not directly comparable with a premium on another.
• Docs change. The weights, inputs and update intervals above are taken from Hyperliquid's documentation as read on the access date in the sources. Venues adjust them from time to time.
• Snapshots are seconds old. Our market samples are read on a schedule, so a premium or a mark price on our pages can be a few seconds behind the venue itself.