What 20 exchanges actually cost to trade perps (fees are only half the bill)

[feeedge]

Something I keep seeing traders get wrong: they pick an exchange on the headline taker fee and stop there. But your real cost depends on your monthly volume, your maker vs taker split, funding if you trade perps, native token discounts, and withdrawal fees.

Taker fee alone on perps, a few examples:
Bitfinex 0.000%
MEXC 0.020%
Coinbase 0.030%
Binance, Bybit, OKX around 0.050%

At 100k a month that spread is roughly 0 to 55 usd a month in pure trading fees. Real, but not dramatic.

The bigger cost most people ignore is funding. On perps you pay it every 8 hours whether you trade or not, and holding a leveraged position through a few windows can cost more than every trade you placed that month. So the cheapest venue to trade is often not the cheapest venue to hold.

Withdrawals stack on top. Moving usdt on Ethereum can run 6 to 20 usd, while on Solana or Tron it is under a dollar. If you rotate funds often, the network you pick is a recurring tax you never notice.

Net: the venue you trade on out of habit can cost you thousands a year versus an equivalent one, on identical activity, and none of it shows up in the number you compared when you signed up.

Curious what this forum trades on and at what size. Post your monthly volume and whether you are mostly maker or taker and I will work out where it would be cheapest for your profile.

[retaur]

For every x you add leverage wise, you pay an extra 10-40% APR. That's what stacks quickly when you're using high leverage.

Then there's liquidation engines that take a lot of your high margin positions (roughly half gets liquidated).

Defi actually already works out a lot cheaper. Or lending on exchanges. It's possible to use definitely loans to short and long assets like bitcoin and Ethereum too (eg lending used and withdrawing eth to short it).

[Bitcoin_Arena]

Something I keep seeing traders get wrong: they pick an exchange on the headline taker fee and stop there. But your real cost depends on your monthly volume, your maker vs The bigger cost most people ignore is funding. On perps you pay it every 8 hours whether you trade or not, and holding a leveraged position through a few windows can cost more than every trade you placed that month. So the cheapest venue to trade is often not the cheapest venue to hold.

When it comes to funding rates, sometimes you pay, and sometimes you get paid, depending on the market condition, your position, and the contract you traded. This widely varies. Sometimes you come out positive, other times negative.

Besides, short-term strategies scalp trading even takes up a lot in trading fees too

Withdrawals stack on top. Moving usdt on Ethereum can run 6 to 20 usd, while on Solana or Tron it is under a dollar. If you rotate funds often, the network you pick is a recurring tax you never notice.

Withdrawals are actually very cheap if you know the network to use and if you are not just always moving funds in small batches.

Net: the venue you trade on out of habit can cost you thousands a year versus an equivalent one, on identical activity, and none of it shows up in the number you compared when you signed up.

This simulation tool opened my eyes, though it's now offline (https://www.winrate.io). I got to realise how much you can spend in trading fees when you make those short-term trades.