How to compare two crypto exchanges, market by market

Kraken or Coinbase? OKX or Binance? Most comparisons of two exchanges list their fees and features and stop there. What a trade costs also depends on the price, market by market, and that changes all day. The site's exchange pages set one exchange against every other on the markets they share, live: how often each has the better price, and by how much.

Why one coin isn't enough

On any one coin, one of two exchanges has the better price, and a minute later it can be the other. One coin is a moment; dozens of coins are a habit. Counting the markets each is better on, and the size of the usual difference, says which exchange you'd usually do better on, and whether the difference is worth caring about.

Head to head on an exchange's page

Every exchange with spot markets has a page of its own, Coinbase's for one, opened from its name on the spot scoreboard, on a coin's page, or in the search. Its card against each exchange lists every other exchange, and for each:

• Shared markets: the markets both have a price for right now, on the side you've chosen.
• Better on: how many of those its price is better on, by more than half a basis point.
• Median difference: how much better or worse its price usually is, in basis points.

Choose Buying, and the better price is the lower ask; choose Selling, and it's the higher bid. The two can tell different stories: an exchange can be a good place to buy and a poorer one to sell.

Example figures, not market data. A usually beats B, by about a basis point, and usually loses to C by a little less. Against D it's level, and on few enough markets that the next minute could say otherwise.

Where it leads, and where it trails

Above that card, two more go coin by coin:

• Best price here lists the markets where the exchange has the best price of every exchange, and how far ahead of the next one it is.
• Better elsewhere lists the ones where it trails the best by most, and who has the best price instead.

Under them, every market it lists, sortable: its price, its rank among every exchange with a price, how far behind the best it is and who has it, its spread, its volume and its share of the market's. Each row leads to the coin's page.

More than price

Across the top of the page are its figures for the whole exchange: on how many of its markets it has the best price now, how far behind the best it usually is, its median spread, its volume and its taker fee. Further down are its fee schedule, as the Trade simulator uses it, and how the site reads the exchange.

A small difference in price can be outweighed by a difference in fees. The spot scoreboard ranks every exchange After fees, with each taker fee counted at the tier you've set in the Trade simulator, and the simulator on each coin's page, Bitcoin's for one, works out what your own order would cost on each.

If you decide you'd like an exchange on the index and the coin pages, Add to your exchanges, at the top of its page, adds it to your choice, and takes it out again.

What the comparison leaves out

• It's now, not always. The figures are for the markets priced right now; the same two exchanges can compare differently tomorrow.
• The best price is a small order's price. A big order goes deeper into each book (what depth means for a big order).
• Everything that isn't price. Who holds your money, getting money in and out, which countries each serves: DEX vs CEX has a list worth reading for any two exchanges.

Not financial advice. Prices move while you read them.