The math on crypto trading fees over a year (and how to cut them in half)

Posted by the operator of RebateMax

I run a fee-rebate service. I earn when people trade on the exchanges I partner with, so a post from me about cutting fees is a post with a stake in it. The disclosure is here so you can read the arithmetic with that in mind. The arithmetic itself does not care who wrote it; every rate below is copied from an exchange's published schedule, and the formula is one line.

Here is the line.

Annual fees = monthly notional volume × your effective fee rate × 12.

That is the whole post. Everything after this is about the two inputs, because both are worse than most traders think.

Volume is notional, and it is bigger than you think

Volume is the dollar value of everything you filled, not the money you put up. A $10,000 position at 10x leverage is $10,000 of volume when you open it and another $10,000 when you close it, on $1,000 of margin. Leverage multiplies your volume without multiplying your fees per dollar, which is a polite way of saying leverage multiplies your fees.

A trader who opens and closes one $10,000 position a day does about $600,000 of volume a month without ever having more than $10,000 on the table. Ask that trader how much they trade and they will say ten thousand dollars.

Fees are charged on every fill, once, at the rate for that fill. The tables below count each fill once. If you prefer to think in round trips, a round trip is two fills, so double the volume, not the rate.

The rate is a blend, and you choose the blend

Exchanges quote two rates for every market. A maker order rests on the book and waits; a taker order fills against something already there. Market orders are always taker. Stops that trigger are taker. A limit order placed through the current price is taker. Takers pay more everywhere, because they consume liquidity and makers supply it.

Your effective rate is the maker rate and the taker rate weighted by how much of your volume is each. On BingX's standard perpetual schedule, 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker:

The gap between the top and bottom rows is a factor of 2.5, and it is entirely inside your control. No tier to reach, no code to enter. It costs patience, and on fast-moving markets it costs missed fills, which is a real cost and the reason nobody sits at all-maker. But most retail traders sit near the top of that table by habit, not by decision.

What a year costs

Three monthly volumes, standard tier, each fill charged once. Spot on BingX is 0.10% either side, so there is no blend to choose.

Annual figures, BingX standard tier as published. Funding, slippage and withdrawals are excluded. The fee calculator runs this formula on your own number.

Two things this table says that people find surprising.

Spot is expensive. At the same volume, spot costs two to five times what perpetuals cost, because spot rates are quoted on the full value of the coin and perpetual rates are quoted on notional that is mostly borrowed. A $200,000-a-month spot trader pays $2,400 a year. The same volume in perpetuals at a 50/50 mix is $840.

The taker habit is a four-figure line item. At $200,000 a month, all-taker costs $1,200 a year and 50/50 costs $840. Moving from 80% taker to 30% taker, which is the difference between chasing price and letting it come to you, is $1,056 against $696 on the same volume. That $360 is larger than the difference between most exchanges at the same tier.

The five things that move the number

In order of how much they are worth to a retail trader.

1. Your maker/taker mix. Covered above. Worth up to 2.5x on perpetuals, worth nothing on BingX spot where both sides are 0.10%.

2. A structural discount on the schedule itself. This is the one I sell, so weigh the next paragraph accordingly. Register on BingX through the RebateMax referral and BingX applies a permanent 50% discount to your trading fees at the exchange level, on every tier, with no claim process. The mechanism, and where the money comes from, is set out in how the referral program works: BingX pays us a commission on your fees and most of it goes back to you. At $200,000 a month, 50/50, that is $420 a year instead of $840. All taker, $600 instead of $1,200. It stacks on top of whatever else you do on this list, because it is a discount on the rate, not a tier.

3. Which exchange. Smaller than people assume at the standard tier. Bybit's VIP 0 perpetual schedule is 0.02% maker and 0.055% taker, against BingX's 0.02% and 0.05%. At $200,000 a month and 50/50 that is $900 a year on Bybit against $840 on BingX; all taker, $1,320 against $1,200. Spot is 0.10% either side on both. The BingX vs Bybit comparison has the full tables. The exception is LBank, where our partner rate reprices perpetuals from the standard 0.02% / 0.06% to 0.0015% / 0.003%. At $200,000 a month all taker that is $72 a year instead of $1,440. It is a different kind of number, and it comes with a thinner altcoin-focused book, which is the trade-off; the comparison page runs all three venues on your volume.

4. VIP tiers. Every exchange discounts for volume, and at the top the discounts are large. BingX's ladder runs to roughly 0.006% maker / 0.03% taker on perpetuals around the $2,000,000-a-month mark; Bybit's VIP 1 needs $100,000 in assets on the platform or $10,000,000 of monthly derivatives volume and gets you 0.018% / 0.04%. If you are at those volumes, the tier is worth more than anything else here except item 2, which stacks on it. If you are not, tiers are a reason to trade more than you meant to, which costs more than the fee you saved. Recalculated on rolling 30-day volume on both venues, so a quiet month drops you back.

5. Exchange-token holdings. Most exchanges shave a further slice off fees for holding their native token. The discount is real and the token is a position you now hold, with its own drawdown. Price that in before counting the fee saving.

The cost this post does not cover, which may be bigger

Funding. If you hold leveraged perpetual positions across funding windows, you pay or receive a funding rate every eight hours, and for anyone holding overnight that line is often larger than the trading fee line. It is not a fee in the schedule sense, it goes to other traders rather than the exchange, and it changes hour to hour, so it is not in the tables. Add it to your own export when you do the check below. Slippage and spread are the other costs that never appear on a fee page and that thin books make expensive.

The check that takes ten minutes

Export your last 30 days of trades from whichever exchange you use. Sum the fee column. Divide by the total notional you filled. That is your effective rate, per fill, as actually charged. Multiply it by your monthly volume and by twelve.

If the number is above 0.04% on perpetuals, you are paying more than the schedule requires, and the two cheapest fixes are the first two items on the list: rest more orders, and get the rate itself cut. If you are on spot at 0.10% both ways, only the second one helps.

The traders I want using RebateMax are the ones who ran that export before reading the next sentence. The referral link halves your BingX bill for the life of the account. The arithmetic above is how you check that it did.