Hyperliquid account modes: unified, portfolio margin and standard

Why this setting matters more than it sounds

Almost every “where did my money go” question on this exchange traces back to one thing: which balance is holding it, and whether that balance can margin a position.

Your account mode decides that. It is a single setting and it changes the answer to questions that otherwise look like bugs.

Unified account

The documented recommendation, and the right default for almost everyone.

You get a single balance for each asset. That balance collateralises all your cross margin positions in that asset, and it is unified with your spot balance in the same asset.

What that fixes, concretely: the situation where you deposited, the money is definitely on the exchange, and the order ticket insists you have no collateral because it is sitting in the other pool. In unified mode there is no other pool to be sitting in.

The cost is a cap of 50000 user actions per day. For anyone trading by hand that is not a limit in any meaningful sense; for a quoting strategy it might be.

Portfolio margin

The most capital-efficient option: a single portfolio unifying all eligible assets, currently HYPE, BTC, USDC and USDT.

Instead of each asset’s balance backing its own positions, the whole portfolio backs everything. Capital that would sit idle behind one position is available to another.

It carries the same 50000 daily action cap.

Manual, or standard

Separate perp and spot balances, and separate balances per builder market. Cross margin applies to each market separately rather than across them.

More work to manage, and there are three reasons to want it.

No daily action limit. The reason market makers are pointed here.

Isolation between venues. A position on a builder-deployed market cannot draw on collateral backing your core positions.

Builder fees. Builder code addresses must be in standard mode to accrue them, so this is not optional if that is what you are doing.

What this changes elsewhere on the site

A lot of Hyperliquid guidance — ours included — says that USDC in Spot and USDC in Perps are separate pools, and that moving between them is an instant, free in-app transfer.

That is exactly right in standard mode. In unified account mode there is nothing to move, because the balance in an asset already covers both.

So when a guide tells you to check whether a deposit landed in Spot rather than Perps, read it as: in standard mode this is the fix; in unified mode this cannot be the problem. Knowing which mode you are in turns a confusing instruction into a two-second check.

Discontinued: DEX abstraction

There was a fourth mode where USDC defaulted to the perps balance and every other asset to spot. It is discontinued, because the resulting cross margin behaviour was — in the documentation’s own assessment — unintuitive.

If you are reading an older guide that describes it, that guide predates the change.

Choosing

Trading by hand, any size. Unified account. One balance per asset, no pool confusion, a cap you will never approach.

Running a hedged book across HYPE, BTC, USDC and USDT. Portfolio margin, provided you can articulate how the positions offset. If you cannot, the efficiency is just correlation risk with a nicer name.

Market making, high frequency, or accruing builder fees. Standard. The action cap is the deciding factor, and the separation is a feature.

Unsure. Unified account, and revisit only when a specific limitation of it is what is stopping you.

Where to go next

Cross versus isolated margin, which is the next decision down and the one that actually sets your liquidation price, and how liquidation works once collateral is shared.