Useful Articles / Trading
What crypto trading actually costs: the fees that matter and the ones that don't
Ask which exchange is cheapest and you will be shown a maker-taker table. It is the least useful number in the comparison, because it is the number every venue optimises for public display. Here is where the money actually goes.
The five costs, roughly in order of how much they matter
1. Spread — usually the biggest and never advertised
The gap between the best bid and the best ask is a cost you pay on entry and again on exit, and it does not appear on any fee page. On a deep major pair it might be a fraction of a basis point. On a thin altcoin it can exceed a week of any other cost combined.
A venue with a 0.02% taker fee and a wide book is more expensive than one at 0.06% with a tight one. The advertised number tells you almost nothing on its own.
2. Currency conversion, if you don't hold euros
If your bank account holds złoty, forint or krona and the venue quotes in euros, someone converts. Retail bank FX spreads routinely exceed everything else on this list put together. For anyone funding regularly from a non-euro account, fixing this is worth more than optimising the trading fee.
3. Funding rates, if you touch leverage
Holding a perpetual position means paying or receiving funding every settlement interval — commonly every eight hours. It is not a fee the exchange takes, but it is money leaving your account, and over a multi-week position it dwarfs the trading fee that got you in.
4. Maker and taker fees
The one everyone compares. Two things worth knowing: maker orders are meaningfully cheaper on most schedules, so a limit order that rests rather than crosses the spread can halve this line; and the tiers matter more than the headline, since the rate you are quoted at zero volume is rarely the rate you end up paying.
5. Deposit and withdrawal
SEPA deposits are usually free or near-free; card deposits routinely cost more than a month of trading. Crypto withdrawals carry a network fee that varies with the chain, not the exchange — choosing the right network for a transfer often saves more than choosing the right venue.
Working out your real number
Take your expected monthly volume and count the round trips, not the trades. A round trip is entry plus exit, so a 0.06% taker fee costs 0.12% of notional each time you go in and out.
A worked example
€10,000 of volume a month, all taker, at 0.06%: that is €6 a month in fees, or €72 a year. Now assume a 0.05% average spread on entry and exit — another €10 a month, €120 a year, invisible on every fee page you looked at.
Fund that account monthly from a non-euro bank at a 1.5% FX spread on €1,000 and you have added €15 a month — €180 a year, more than the trading fees and the spread combined.
The ranking of what to fix, for most people, is therefore: currency conversion first, spread second, order type third, and the fee table last.
What this means for choosing a venue
A venue is cheap for you if it has depth in the pairs you trade, accepts your currency without a conversion step, and offers a fee tier you will actually reach. Those three things are personal, which is why a universal "cheapest exchange" answer does not exist and anyone offering one is guessing.
Among the venues that can serve EU residents, Bybit EU and OKX Europe both compete on price and carry deep books on majors. Outside the EEA, Bybit global runs one of the lower taker schedules on perpetuals. Referral links, no extra cost to you.