Trading Fees Comparisons

Fees are the cost most traders underestimate and the one most likely to explain why an otherwise sensible approach lost money. This section compares what venues actually charge, including the parts that are not in the advertised rate.

A headline maker-taker fee is only the beginning. The spread you cross is a cost. Slippage on anything but the deepest pairs is a cost, and on a thin token it can dwarf the commission. Withdrawal fees, network fees, currency conversion, and funding on leveraged positions are all costs. We try to present the total rather than the flattering fraction of it.

The arithmetic that matters: because you pay a fee entering and exiting, the price has to move in your favour before you are level. Our profit calculator computes that break-even for you — and the correct formula is not "buy price plus twice the fee", which is the approximation most people use. At 0.1% per side the gap is small; at 0.5% a side, or on a wide spread, it is not, and traders taking many small positions frequently find fees rather than direction decided their result.

Fee schedules change and tier structures are designed to look better than they are, so we date every comparison and link the source. Where a venue's real cost depends on volume tiers or holding its own token — as with BNB — we say so.

Related: exchange reviews. Nothing here is financial advice.

One structure to watch specifically: fee discounts that require holding the venue's own token. That converts a trading cost into a position in a volatile asset whose value is tied to the exchange's fortunes — which may be worthwhile, but it is a different decision from choosing a cheaper venue, and it should be made deliberately rather than as a side effect of chasing a lower rate.