Funding rates, side by side

A perpetual never expires, so something has to keep its price near the coin's spot price. That's funding: a payment between the holders of long and short positions, made every hour or every few hours. When the perpetual trades above spot, longs pay shorts; below it, shorts pay longs. Hold a position for weeks, and funding is its running cost, or its running income.

Same rate, different schedules

Each exchange publishes a rate for its own period. Kraken, Coinbase, Hyperliquid and Lighter pay every hour; OKX, Binance, Bybit, Bitget, Gate and Aster every 8 hours; Deribit by Coinbase continuously, which the site shows as the rate over the last 8 hours.

So the rates on their own don't compare. 0.01% every 8 hours and 0.00125% every hour are the same: three payments a day against twenty-four, both 0.03% a day, about 11% a year. That's why the site shows every rate as a yearly one, each payment's rate times the payments in a year, with the exchange's own rate and schedule beside it.

Bitcoin on eleven exchanges

At 13:48 UTC on 2 October, Bitcoin's perpetual was paying from 12.72% a year on Deribit by Coinbase, where longs paid shorts, to −8.93% on OKX, where shorts were paying longs.

Bitcoin perpetuals: funding a year on eleven exchanges

• Deribit by Coinbase0.012% over 8h, continuous+12.72%
• Hyperliquid0.00125% per 1h+10.95%
• Bitget0.00980% per 8h+10.73%
• Lighter0.00120% per 1h+10.51%
• Binance0.00843% per 8h+9.24%
• Bybit0.00708% per 8h+7.75%
• Coinbase0.00060% per 1h+5.26%
• Aster0.00456% per 8h+4.99%
• Kraken0.00048% per 1h+4.20%
• Gate0.00040% per 8h+0.44%
• OKX−0.00815% per 8h−8.93%

Positive: longs pay shorts; negative: shorts pay longs. Under each name, the exchange's own rate and how often it's paid. 13:48 UTC, 2 October 2026.

That's 21.65 points a year between the two ends. On a $10,000 long, held for a year at those rates, it's the difference between paying about $1,272 on Deribit by Coinbase and being paid about $893 on OKX. They won't hold for a year, but the gap shows what choosing the exchange is worth.

Why the rates differ

Each rate comes from that exchange's own traders. When longs crowd one exchange, its perpetual trades further above spot and its funding rises; where shorts crowd, it falls, and it can turn negative, as OKX's had. The rates reset at every settlement, so a gap between two exchanges can open and close within the hour.

Reading it on the site

• On the perpetuals index, each exchange's column is its funding a year. Positive means longs pay shorts; negative, shorts pay longs.
• Long or Short, at the top, says which end is best: the lowest rate is the cheapest to hold a long, the highest pays a short the most. "best" marks it.
• Spread is the highest rate minus the lowest, in points a year: what choosing the exchange is worth on a position held for a year. 10 points is $1,000 a year on $10,000.
• On a coin's perpetuals page, Open interest & funding has each exchange's rate a year, its own rate, who pays whom and the time to the next settlement.

When the two ends are far apart, there's a trade in the gap itself: long where funding is lowest, short where it's highest. Each coin's perpetuals page works that out live.