The cheapest crypto exchange: An analysis for spot & futures traders among 15 exchanges
Which Crypto Exchange is the cheapest to trade at? In this article, we are going to have a look at 10 different traders, both spot & futures traders, and see which exchange would be the most fee efficient for them. Is there a specific exchange cheapest for spot & futures? Let’s dive in:
A lot of traders highly underestimate the effect of trading fees on their performance. An active trader needs to make 50, 100, or even 150% of profit each year just to break-even on trading fees. For swing traders this percentage is lower, for daytraders or scalpers it’s very high.
At the end of the article, I am going to showcase how you can easily find your individual cheapest exchange.
We only considered the largest crypto exchanges for this analysis, as many smaller exchanges lack the necessary volume or market depth. Moreover, we only considered exchanges that have already or announced to published their proof-of-reserves.
For each trader, I am going to show you their monthly spot and futures volume, their share of taker trades, so trades executed by market orders, their balance and holding. Holding refers to the native exchange token, such as BNB for Binance.
Spot traders
Let’s have a look at the first 3 traders with spot trading volumes of 10,000, 100,000, and 500,000 USD. While the first trader could trade for zero fees at Bitstamp, the second trader would be best off in terms of trading fees at Crypto.com. The fee saving compared to Kraken is already quite big, being 2,000 USD or roughly 66% less in trading fees. The third trader would be best off at Binance US, only paying one third of the trading fees compared to MEXC.
Futures traders
Our next three traders are futures only traders, trading with leverage and being able to long or short the market. They have monthly trading volumes of 1,4, and 5 million USD. The 1 million volume trader would be best of at Binance, paying half the fees compared to OKX, the 4 million trader has the cheapest fees at Huobi and the 5m trader with a large balance has the cheapest fees at OKX. OKX was the most expensive exchange for the 1m volume trader, however is the cheapest exchange for this trader, paying more than 18,000 USD less compared to at Bitfinex.
These first 6 traders all have rather low trading volumes, actually Binance’s first of 10 tier levels is from 0 to 15million USD futures trading volume, and here we are only at 5 million trading volume. So let’s have a quick look at some larger traders:
Large volume traders
Trader number seven would be best off at ByBit, actually paying only roughly a third of the fees compared to MEXC, more than 70,000 USD less. Trader 8,9, and 10 all have larger future volumes, and their cheapest exchanges would be at KuCoin, Bitfinex, and Kraken. At large futures volumes with maker traders, trader 8 and 9 even have negative fees, earning money from trading fees, while they would pay most at Binance, nearly quarter million US Dollar in case of trader 9.
Before having a look how you can easily find your most fee-efficient exchange, let’s first of all summarize what we have seen based on the analyses of the 10 traders:
3 points are standing out:
First, it is impossible to tell which exchange is the cheapest! Each trader must check their own cheapest exchange based on their trading volumes and trading style.
Second, as we have seen the differences in fees are very big, oftentimes 3 or 4 times more if trading at another exchange. Being the cheapest exchange for one trader, an exchange is the most expensive exchange for another trader. This can well be seen here for Binance, ByBit, Kraken, OKX, and so on.
And third, the absolute fees are high in crypto trading, actually higher compared to Forex trading or other CFD trading. We have written a separate article on how much profit a trader must make just to break-even on trading fees. If you are interested, you can read the Medium article here.
Find your most fee efficient exchange with dr-fee
Be aware that trading fees differ very much among the exchanges and that there is no easy rule which exchange is the cheapest. If you want to find out how much fees you would have paid at all of these exchanges, you can just type in your trading volumes at dr-fee.
Within a few seconds, you will see the result at which exchange you would have paid exactly how much.
If you don’t want to type in your volumes, holding and so on, you can also just connect your trading account with a read-only API and dr-fee automatically analyses your fees based in your historic trades.
Remember to always do your own research, especially also when it comes to trading fees. Many people are not aware of the steep differences and very individual but huge optimization potential, thereby overpaying a lot. I hope this analysis helps you to find the best set-up going forward.
Stay safe!
Note: None of the above should be considered financial advice and the information in this article may be outdated
