Crypto exchange fees: how they change the cheapest exchange

Ask which exchange is cheapest and most comparisons, the site's index among them, rank the price. But a trade costs the price and the fee, and fees differ from one exchange to the next, and from one customer to the next on the same exchange. Count them and the cheapest exchange can change. The site's spot scoreboard ranks every exchange both ways: on price alone, and after fees.

What fees does a crypto exchange charge?

• Trading fees. Most exchanges charge a maker fee on orders that wait in the book, and a taker fee on orders that trade straight away against it. A market order pays the taker fee, and so does any order that fills at once.
• Tiers. Both fall as your trading volume over the last 30 days grows, so the fee you pay depends on how much you trade. Some exchanges also lower them for holding their own token, or for a subscription.
• Money in and out. Deposits, withdrawals and a blockchain's own network fees aren't trading fees, and a comparison of trading fees leaves them out.

The spread isn't a fee, but it costs a taker too: buying at the ask, selling at the bid. That's already in the price every comparison on the site uses.

How fees change the cheapest exchange

A taker fee is a share of the trade. When you buy, it's added to what you pay; when you sell, it's taken off what you get. So an exchange's price after fees is its ask plus its fee when buying, and its bid less its fee when selling.

If every exchange charged the same, fees wouldn't change the order. They don't. An exchange with the lowest price and a high fee can end up dearer than one a basis point or two behind it with a low fee:

Example figures, not market data. A's price is the best of the three, but its fee is enough to put it last.

How far the order moves depends on how close the prices are. Where the exchanges sit within a few basis points of each other, a difference in fees of the same size can turn the ranking round; where one exchange is far cheaper, fees rarely change who's first.

How to rank exchanges after fees

1. Open the spot scoreboard, where every exchange with spot markets is on, whichever you've chosen.
2. Choose Buying or Selling, then After fees. This link opens it that way.
3. Read Best price on and Behind the best again: the same books, each exchange's price now with its taker fee counted.
4. Your taker fee shows the fee each exchange's figures take: at the tier you've set in the Trade simulator, or the entry tier if you haven't.

To set your tiers, open the Trade simulator on any coin's page, Bitcoin's for one, and choose your tier on each exchange; After fees follows it. A few markets, such as tokenized stocks on some exchanges, charge fees of their own, and After fees takes theirs.

Your order, after fees

The scoreboard ranks the best price, which is what a small order pays. For your own amount, the Trade simulator on each coin's page walks every book you have on, adds each exchange's fee at your tier, and ranks the exchanges by what the whole order costs. On a big order, depth can matter as much as the fee (what depth means for a big order).

Each exchange's own page, opened from its name on the scoreboard, has its fee schedule as the simulator uses it, tier by tier, with the day it was read from the exchange's published fees.

What After fees leaves out

• Maker fees. It counts the taker fee, as a market order pays. An order that waits in the book pays the maker fee instead, if it fills at all.
• Discounts. Token holdings, subscriptions and promotions that lower a fee aren't counted.
• Money in and out. Deposit, withdrawal and network fees, and the cost of moving money between exchanges.
• Depth. Like the ranking on price alone, it's the best price only.

Not financial advice. Prices and fees change: check each exchange's own schedule before you trade.