Crypto exchange fees compared: what ten major venues actually charge

Fee comparisons usually go wrong in the same two ways. They quote spot fees and let you assume futures work the same, and they quote the entry tier as if nobody ever moves off it. Both distort the picture badly, because most active crypto trading happens on perpetual futures where the rates are a third of spot, and because the tier tables are where the real spread between exchanges opens up.

What follows is the entry tier for both markets across ten venues, then what actually changes underneath.

Futures: the entry tier

These are the standard USDT-perpetual rates at the default tier, before any discount, verified against each exchange's own published fee schedule.

The maker column is nearly flat: eight of the ten charge 0.020%, and the two that go lower do so at 0.010%. If you trade with limit orders that rest on the book, the venue you pick barely matters on fees alone.

The taker column is where the spread lives. Between MEXC at 0.040% and WEEX at 0.080% there is a factor of two. On 5,000,000 USDT of monthly volume that is the difference between 24,000 and 48,000 USDT of fees a year.

Read that gap carefully before acting on it. A venue with a low headline taker rate but thin books can cost you more in slippage on a single bad fill than the fee difference saves you in a month. Fees are the part that is easy to measure, which is exactly why they get over-weighted.

Spot: the entry tier

Spot fees are roughly double futures across the board, and far more uniform.

Seven of the ten sit at a flat 0.100% on both sides. MEXC is the genuine outlier with a zero maker fee on spot, which matters if you accumulate with limit orders. Spot versus futures fees covers why the two markets are priced so differently.

What the VIP tables actually change

Every exchange publishes a tier ladder that lowers your rate as your 30-day volume climbs. Two things about these ladders are worth internalising.

The first rung is high. Binance wants roughly 15,000,000 USDT of monthly futures volume for its first tier. Bybit asks for 10,000,000. Phemex and Bitunix start meaningfully lower, at around 8,000,000 and 1,000,000 respectively. If you are trading 300,000 USDT a month, none of these tables apply to you and you should read only the entry-tier row.

The ladder compresses the taker side, not the maker side. Going from Bybit VIP 0 to VIP 5 moves the maker rate from 0.020% to 0.010% — halved, but from a number that was already small. The taker rate moves from 0.055% to about 0.032%. In absolute terms the taker saving is four times larger, which is another way of saying the tiers reward market takers.

Most exchanges offer a second route up the ladder: an asset balance instead of volume. Bybit, Phemex, Bitunix, BloFin and WEEX all publish a balance threshold alongside the volume one, and you qualify on whichever you hit first. If you hold a meaningful balance on the venue anyway, check that column before assuming you are on the entry tier.

The discounts that sit outside the table

Three reductions never appear in the headline comparison and together they matter more than the venue choice for most traders.

• Token fee payment. Binance, MEXC and Bybit all knock a percentage off if you pay fees in their own token. The saving is real; the exposure to that token is a position you did not intend to take.
• Maker versus taker discipline. Switching a meaningful share of your entries from market to limit orders cuts your blended rate by more than any tier promotion will.
• Fee cashback. A share of every fee returned in USDT, which applies on top of the tier rate and the token discount both. This is the only one of the three that requires no behaviour change at all.

Current cashback rates per exchange are on the exchanges page, because they are negotiated per venue and change more often than published fee schedules do.

So which one is cheapest?

For a market-order futures trader below the first VIP rung: MEXC on raw rates, with Binance and OKX close behind. For a limit-order spot accumulator: MEXC again, on the strength of the zero maker fee. For someone who will genuinely reach 100,000,000 USDT a month: the answer is whichever venue's upper tiers you will actually reach, and the tables diverge enough there that it is worth checking your own numbers rather than taking a summary.

For most people reading this, the honest answer is that the venue matters less than three things you control: whether you take or make, whether you are on the tier you qualify for, and whether the affiliate commission on your fees goes to a stranger or comes back to you.