Fees · Reviewed Aug 19, 2026 · 6 min read
Fee Tiers and VIP Levels: Why the Advertised Rate Is Not Your Rate
The lowest fee on the schedule belongs to whales. Here is what the base tier really charges retail.
Reviewed by CryptoExID Editorial · Aug 19, 2026 · Editorial policy · how we make money
How tiered pricing works
Nearly every major exchange prices trading fees on a ladder. Your rolling 30-day volume, sometimes combined with holdings of the exchange token, determines your tier, and each tier up shaves the maker and taker rates. The ladders typically start cutting meaningfully at $1 million or more of monthly volume and bottom out at institutional levels.
The commercial logic is plain: volume is the product, and exchanges pay for it with discounts. Retail traders provide the base-tier revenue that funds the rebates handed to market makers at the top of the ladder.
The marketing trick to watch for
When an exchange advertises fees "from 0.02%", the word from is doing heavy lifting. That rate belongs to the top VIP tier, reached by traders moving hundreds of millions per month. The rate a new retail account actually pays sits at the top of the schedule, often five to ten times the advertised floor.
This is why our comparison tables use base-tier rates only: Binance 0.10%/0.10%, Coinbase 0.40%/0.60%, Kraken 0.16%/0.26%, OKX 0.08%/0.10%, Gemini 0.20%/0.40%, Crypto.com 0.25%/0.50%. Those are the numbers a normal account pays on day one, verified on the dataset date printed on each page.
What it takes to climb
Run the arithmetic before assuming you will graduate from the base tier. A first discount threshold of $1 million in 30-day volume means trading over $33,000 every single day. Someone buying $500 of crypto a month does not move one rung in a lifetime of that behavior. Tier ladders are built for desks and bots, not for savers.
Some venues offer a shortcut: hold the exchange token and get a discount at any volume. Binance's BNB fee discount is the famous example. It works, but you are now holding a volatile asset to save basis points, and a bad week for the token can erase years of fee savings.
Where retail actually saves
The realistic levers are venue choice and order type, not tier climbing. Moving from a 0.60% taker rate to a 0.10% one saves fifty times more than any discount a retail account will ever earn on a ladder. Using limit orders to pay maker rates instead of taker rates helps on venues with a split, like Kraken or Coinbase.
MEXC's base tier of 0.00% maker and 0.05% taker shows how far venue choice alone can go. The trade-off to weigh is never just the rate: book depth, withdrawal costs, and jurisdiction matter too, and a cheap schedule on a thin book can cost more in slippage than it saves in fees.
How we handle tiers in our data
We record the listed base-tier maker/taker schedule for each venue, checked on the dataset date printed on each page. We deliberately exclude VIP tiers, token discounts, and promotional rates from headline comparisons, because they do not describe what a typical new account pays.
If you genuinely trade at tier-qualifying volume, our base-tier table understates your options, and you should model the specific ladders on your shortlisted venues. For everyone else, the base tier is the honest number, and it is the one we print.
FAQ
What volume do I need to leave the base tier?
Typically around $1 million in rolling 30-day volume for the first discount, varying by venue. That is over $33,000 of trading per day, far beyond typical retail activity.
Are exchange token discounts worth it?
Sometimes, if you already want to hold the token. Holding a volatile asset purely to save a few basis points on fees is usually a poor trade; the token's price swings dwarf the savings.
Why do you only show base-tier fees?
Because that is what a normal new account pays. Advertised "from" rates describe whale pricing. We verify base-tier schedules on the dataset date printed on each page and exclude promotions.
Do fee tiers apply to spreads too?
No. Tiers discount explicit maker/taker fees. On quote-driven venues like eToro or Revolut, where the spread is the cost, there is no ladder; roughly 1% and 0.99% respectively apply to everyone.
What is the fastest legitimate way for retail to cut fees?
Choose a cheaper venue and use limit orders. Switching from a 0.60% taker rate to a 0.10% one, and posting maker orders where there is a split, beats anything a tier ladder will ever give a small account.