The best crypto exchanges for a new account, shortlisted on what each one publishes

What venues publish for this type

How to build your own shortlist

1. Start from the venues that publish a fee. Nine do. Bitget, OKX, CoinSpot, CoinJar and Swyftx all open at 0.1%; Crypto.com Exchange opens at 0.500% taker, Independent Reserve at 0.5%, BTC Markets at 0.85% and Gemini ActiveTrader at 1.200%.
2. Cut the list by market before you cut it by price. Five of the nine are Australian venues and are priced in that market's conventions; the rest are US or global. A cheap venue you cannot open an account with is not on your shortlist at all.
3. Add the funding rail to each survivor. CoinSpot's card deposit is 1.22%, CoinJar's card purchase 2%, Swyftx's AUD card deposit up to 2.4%, and all three publish free bank rails beside them. The way in can cost more than a year of trading.
4. Decide what an unpublished fee is worth to you. Kraken, Coinbase, Bybit, MEXC and KuCoin all serve no readable rate. That is not a reason to rule them out, but it is a reason to find the number yourself before you fund an account rather than after.

Read at the entry tier, the band a new account starts in, the nine venues that publish a rate run from 0.1% to 1.2% a trade. Bitget's spot table opens at 0.1% maker and 0.1% taker. OKX's Regular user row is 0.0800% maker and 0.1000% taker, the lowest maker figure in this index.

At the other end, Gemini ActiveTrader's floor row is 0.600% maker and 1.200% taker, and BTC Markets charges 0.85% on AUD and USDT pairs under 500 dollars of volume. The median across the nine is 0.1%, which places most of the shelf at one end and a few venues a long way from it.

Four of the five Australian venues here publish a single headline trading fee rather than a maker and taker split, and the headline is usually the order-book rate. CoinSpot charges 0.1% on market orders. Swyftx advertises from 0.1%. CoinJar Exchange is 0.10% both sides in its entry band.

The route most new accounts actually use is priced separately and far higher: CoinSpot's instant buy, sell and swap is 1%, CoinJar's cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency purchase is 1% and its card purchase 2%. A shortlist built on the headline alone compares a route you will not take.

Kraken, Bybit and MEXC each render their tier tables from JavaScript, so a fetch of the page returns headings and no rates. KuCoin's VIP level page served 230 characters. Coinbase's advanced-fees address redirected away and the help page that answered covers processing charges rather than the trading tiers.

None of that makes them bad venues, and two of them are among the largest in the world. It does mean their price is not checkable from the outside, which is a real difference from the nine that publish theirs as text, and it is why this index lists them with the reason rather than a number borrowed from somewhere else.

Fee is one published, checkable number, which is why this index measures it. Liquidity, the assets a venue lists, its funding rails and its registration status in your market all matter, and none of them is settled by a fee table.

Crypto Exchange Compare HQ is paid a share of the trading fees generated by accounts opened through its links, disclosed on every link as rel=sponsored. The ordering here is by published fee and does not move for commission. Trading cryptoassets puts your capital at risk and nothing on this page is advice about whether to trade or what to buy.

Common questions

How many crypto exchanges publish their fees?

Nine of the fourteen read for this index publish an entry-tier rate as readable text on their own page. Five publish nothing readable and are listed with the reason.

Which is the cheapest of the best crypto exchanges?

On the entry-tier taker fee, Bitget, OKX, CoinSpot, CoinJar and Swyftx all start at 0.1%. OKX's maker side is lower still at 0.0800%.

Should I rule out a venue that does not publish its fees?

Not on that basis alone. It does mean you should find the number on the venue itself before funding an account rather than after, because nobody outside can check it for you.

Do you rank by what venues pay you?

No. The ordering is by the fee each venue publishes on its own page, and the five that publish nothing, along with those that pay us nothing, are in the same tables on the same terms.

Other venue types

• Compare Global spot venues on published fees