Crypto Exchange Fees Compared: The Real Cost of Buying $1,000 of BTC

The bill is not the taker line

We keep seeing the same mistake in support tickets and in Reddit threads. Someone compares two maker/taker pairs, picks the 0.10% venue, then pays more than a friend who used a 0.40% venue with a tighter spread and a free ACH deposit.

This study uses the listed retail spot taker fee on our current dataset and applies it to a $1,000 notional. That is the only number we can defend without inventing a live spread. Deposit rails and withdrawal networks are a second bill. We call those out in words, not in a fake all-in column.

What $1,000 of spot BTC costs on the taker fee alone

On the global lowest-fees model, Binance lists 0.10% maker and 0.10% taker. One thousand dollars of taker flow is $1.00 before spread. OKX lists 0.08% maker and 0.10% taker, so the same ticket is also $1.00 on the taker side. MEXC lists 0.00% maker and 0.05% taker, so the taker ticket is $0.50. Kraken lists 0.16% maker and 0.26% taker, so the ticket is $2.60. Coinbase lists 0.40% maker and 0.60% taker, so the ticket is $6.00.

Those five numbers already explain most of the argument in our inbox. Coinbase is not hiding the fee. The published schedule is expensive for small market orders. People stay because the app, the ACH rail and the US licence stack are easier than opening Binance.US and then discovering state gaps.

USA pages use the same math, different names

Open /en-us/rankings/lowest-fees/ and the model is LOW_FEES plus COUNTRY_US. Binance prints as Binance.US. The listed spot pair on our dataset is still 0.10% / 0.10%, not the 0.02% / 0.04% figure that used to sit on an old homepage mock. If you still see 0.02% on a CryptoExID page, that page is stale. The engine and the review schedule are the source.

A $100 ticket on a 0.10% taker is $0.10. A $10,000 ticket is $10.00. The percentage does not care. The spread does. On a thin altcoin the spread can dwarf both tickets. We do not print a spread we did not measure that morning.

Deposits, withdrawals and the quiet third fee

ACH deposits on the large US venues are often free and take one to three business days. Card buys can add a few percent on top of the trading fee. SEPA is usually cheap inside the EEA and slow unless the venue supports SEPA Instant. PIX in Brazil is typically minutes when it works. None of those rails live inside the taker percentage.

Crypto withdrawals are a network fee plus, sometimes, an exchange markup. We do not store a full withdrawal matrix yet. If the cheapest trade fee sits behind a $25 wire or a 3% card, the $1,000 study is the wrong tool. Use the payment page for that rail, then the review for the withdrawal screen we actually clicked.

How we would spend $1,000 today

If the only job is a BTC spot fill and you already have an account at a 0.10% venue that accepts you, that is the cheap ticket on paper. If you are a US beginner funding from a checking account, Coinbase or Kraken can still be the cheaper afternoon once you count time, ACH and the cost of a rejected deposit. We would not route a first $1,000 through a no-KYC venue to save fifty cents.

The lowest-fees ranking is the live table. This article is the method. When a fee schedule moves, the table moves. Come back to the ranking, not to a screenshot of this paragraph.

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