The perpetual venues worth comparing in 2026
Verified against Hyperliquid docs: Fees and Lighter docs: fees · by Hyperliquid Academy
One scale, five venues
Fee tables invite you to sort by one column and stop. This table exists so you can see the whole trade-off at once: what you pay, who holds your money, and what you have to prove about yourself to get in.
| Venue | Taker | Maker | Best beginner taker | Max leverage | Custody | Identity check |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lighter Decentralised exchange, zero-knowledge proofs | 0% | 0% | 0% | 50x | Self-custodial | None |
| Aster Decentralised exchange | 0.04% | 0% | 0.04% | 1,001x | Self-custodial | None |
| Hyperliquid Decentralised exchange, own layer-1 | 0.045% | 0.015% | 0.0432% | 40x | Self-custodial | None |
| Binance Centralised exchange | 0.05% | 0.02% | 0.045% | 125x | Custodial | Required |
| Bybit Centralised exchange | 0.055% | 0.02% | 0.055% | 125x | Custodial | Required |
What the table cannot tell you
Depth. The number that actually sets your cost is the spread you cross and how far your order walks the book, and no fee schedule captures it. A zero-fee venue with half the depth can cost more per trade. Check the book for your pair and your size.
Funding. On any position held longer than about a day, funding dominates. It is a payment between traders rather than a fee, so it does not appear in a fee comparison at all. Our funding guide and calculator handle this.
Flat charges. One venue in the table adds a per-action network settlement fee. On small tickets that is proportionally large and invisible in a percentage.
Reading the leverage column carefully
The ceilings in that table span more than an order of magnitude, and the highest numbers are the least useful. Leverage determines your maintenance margin, and maintenance margin determines how small an adverse move closes you out. A three-digit ceiling means a fraction of a percent is fatal.
| Max leverage | Markets | Share | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40x | 1 | 1% | BTC |
| 25x | 1 | 1% | ETH |
| 20x | 2 | 1% | SOL, XRP |
| 10x | 30 | 17% | HYPE, ZEC, PUMP, NEAR, WLD, UNI, … |
| 5x | 56 | 31% | LIT, TAO, XMR, INJ, MON, PENDLE, … |
| 3x | 88 | 49% | PONS, VVV, CASHCAT, SOPH, AERO, CHIP, … |
Hyperliquid’s own ceiling is frequently misreported as 50x. The chart above is read from the exchange’s own metadata: one market reaches the top and most sit far below it. We keep a page of the figures other guides get wrong, and that is one of them.
The honest one-line verdicts
- Lighter if you want the lowest nominal cost and trade major pairs in modest size. Standard accounts pay nothing, which nothing else matches.
- Hyperliquid if you want breadth and depth together: many more markets, spot alongside perpetuals, an ecosystem on the same chain, maker rebates at scale, and documented margin rules you can compute.
- Aster if you are maker-side, want a zero maker fee, or need to trade from a chain the others do not accept.
- Binance if you need to fund from a bank, want the longest asset list, or prefer a custodian to be responsible for your balance.
- Bybit if you want built-in copy trading and a polished retail product, and you accept both custody and identity checks.
The thing worth deciding first
Not which venue is cheapest. Whether you want to hold your own funds.
That single choice removes most of the table. If you want a support desk, password recovery and a company answerable for your balance, you are choosing between the two centralised venues and the fee difference between them is small. If you want sole control, you are choosing among the three self-custodial venues, and then depth and market breadth decide it rather than the fee.
Everything else, including the fee schedules on this page, is a rounding error next to that.
Detailed comparisons
- Hyperliquid vs Binance, on custody and fiat access
- Hyperliquid vs Bybit, where Hyperliquid is cheaper on both sides
- Hyperliquid vs Lighter, whether zero fees are free
- Hyperliquid vs Aster, and what 1001x leverage really means
Frequently asked questions
Which perpetual exchange has the lowest fees?
Lighter, for standard accounts, which pay no maker or taker fee. Among venues that do charge, Hyperliquid's entry rates are lower than Binance's and Bybit's on the maker side, and lower than Bybit's on both.
Which perpetual exchanges require no identity check?
Hyperliquid, Lighter and Aster ask for no identity documents. All three restrict access by region instead, and none is available to US residents.
Does the lowest fee mean the lowest cost?
No. Spread, slippage and funding usually cost more than the trading fee. A zero-fee venue with thin depth can be the more expensive place to trade.
Which has the most markets?
Hyperliquid, which also carries equity, commodity, foreign exchange and event markets through builder-deployed perpetuals.
Are these figures current?
Each venue's rates are taken from its own fee documentation and stamped with the date they were checked. Third-party schedules change often, so verify anything that decides your choice.
Sources
- Hyperliquid docs: Feeshyperliquid.gitbook.io
- Lighter docs: feesdocs.lighter.xyz
- Binance: USDⓈ-M futures fee ratesbinance.com
- Bybit: trading fee structurebybit.com
We link the primary source for every number on this page. If a figure here disagrees with the official documentation, the documentation is right and we want to know.