Crypto Exchange Fees: Measure the Spread You Pay

A crypto trade can cost you in up to five layers, and the commission on the fee page is only one of them. Kraken Pro's lowest tier charges 0.40 percent to make and 0.80 percent to take, while Robinhood's default US routing shows no commission at all and puts its charge inside the price, in an example it publishes as a 0.96 percent buy spread. The only way to know what your own app costs is to measure the gap between its buy and sell quotes against a public order book, which takes about two minutes and is explained below.

The five places a trade can cost you money

Two exchanges with the same headline fee can differ a lot in the other layers.

Our guides on slippage and order types cover the third layer in depth. This page is about the other four and about how to add them up for your own account. Why the same coin shows a different price on each venue is a separate question, covered in why crypto prices differ across exchanges.

What published schedules say, with dates

Fee schedules change, so each row carries the date it was read. These are examples of structures, not a ranking of cost, and the table is partial by necessity.

Coinbase's fee tiers and Wealthsimple's fee page could not be retrieved for this guide because both sites block automated reading, so no rate is quoted for either. Both say their fees appear on an order preview before you confirm, which is where to read them. A comparison that leaves out two of the venues many readers use is incomplete, and this page does not pretend otherwise.

Two patterns show even in a partial table. Maker and taker rates differ by roughly a factor of two at low volume, because a maker order rests on the book and adds liquidity while a taker order removes it. And the lowest rates belong to the highest tiers, which are set by monthly volume, so a small account pays the top of the range. Kraken's page also says instant-buy volume does not count toward the tiers, and Robinhood says its Exchange Routing applies to orders placed through certain advanced tools regardless of your default setting, so the fee you pay can depend on which screen you used.

Measuring the spread your own app charges

You can do this without trading anything, because apps show a quote before you confirm.

A worked example with invented numbers. The app shows a buy price of $82,600 and a sell price of $81,000, and the public mid is $81,800. The round-trip spread is (82,600 minus 81,000) divided by 81,800, or 1.96 percent. The buy side is 0.98 percent above the mid, which is about $9.78 on a $1,000 purchase, and the sell side is 0.98 percent below. If the app also shows a separate commission, add it on top.

Quotes move between screens, so repeat the measurement a few times at different hours and keep the log. Some apps show a price that already includes the fee. If the order preview shows a total cost, compare that total to the mid-price value of the coins you would receive instead.

What a public order book looked like on one calm morning

For scale, here is the same arithmetic on the public books. Five venues publish BTC-USD books through free APIs. Eight snapshots were taken about 17 seconds apart between 06:15 and 06:17 UTC on October 23, 2026, with bitcoin near $81,800. For each one, a market order was walked through the book and its average fill compared with the mid. Values are medians, in basis points (0.01 percent) with dollars where meaningful.

This is a snapshot, not a measurement of typical conditions: eight observations over about two minutes in a calm period, and top-of-book depth is thin at times. It shows only that the order book itself, as opposed to the fee on top of it, cost cents on a $1,000 order and low single-digit to low double-digit dollars on $50,000 on a liquid pair in quiet conditions. It does not show that any app's spread is excessive, and it does not rank the venues. What it does explain is why the measurement above is worth doing: a quoted spread such as the 0.96 percent example, or the 1.96 percent in the invented one, is a charge in a different range from anything the book itself imposes.

Putting dollars on it: a $1,000 round trip and a year of buying

The arithmetic below uses the dated schedule rates, a $1,000 buy, and a sale of the same coins that fills at the mid price. It assumes the fee is charged on top of the buy and taken from the sale proceeds. It is arithmetic on published rates, not a statement of what you would pay.

For a recurring plan, a percentage fee paid ten times on ten $100 purchases totals the same as one fee on a $1,000 purchase, unless a flat per-trade charge applies. At $200 a month for 12 months, $2,400 in all, the fee for the year at the lowest tier is $19.20 for a Kraken Pro taker order, $9.60 for a maker order that always fills, $22.80 for Robinhood exchange-routing taker orders and $12.00 for its maker orders. Kraken's tier 2 starts at $2,500 of 30-day volume, far above $200 a month, so a small plan stays at the top rate. Our dollar-cost averaging guide works through how fees affect a recurring plan.

Maker orders halve the commission but may not fill, because a resting order can sit while the price moves away. And a buy-and-hold investor pays only the buy side, so the round-trip column is the relevant figure only for someone who may sell soon.

Funding and withdrawal, the layers outside the trade

Funding costs depend on the payment method. Robinhood's schedule lists $0 for debit card, bank transfer and buying power, and Kraken's page says payment-method fees vary and that card processing fees still apply to instant buys. Both say the order preview shows the fees before you confirm.

Withdrawals carry a network fee. Robinhood's schedule says it does not charge for crypto transfers but that "every crypto transfer does require a network fee," paid to miners or validators and varying with network activity. Kraken's page says withdrawal fees depend on the method and currency, can be static or dynamic, and are shown on the withdrawal page. A fixed withdrawal fee matters more for a small transfer than a large one, which is one reason to batch withdrawals; our guide to withdrawing from an exchange to self-custody covers choosing a network and sending a test amount first.

Staking is a separate cost of holding. Robinhood's schedule shows a 25 percent commission on staking rewards, which is not a trading fee but is a deduction the headline reward rate does not show. For the other cost-of-trading topics, see the market structure topic hub.

Once you know your spread, the remaining variable is order size. How slippage works shows how to check book depth before a larger order so the fill price is not a surprise.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the fees on a crypto exchange?

Up to five costs: a trading commission (maker and taker percentages), the spread between buy and sell prices, order-book slippage, payment-method charges and withdrawal or network fees. Commission schedules are published. The spread on app-style products often is not.

Is commission-free crypto trading really free?

Not necessarily. Robinhood's US default routing charges no commission and earns from its market maker, with the amount built into the price, according to its own support page. The cost is real, but it appears in the quote and not as a line item.

How can I find the spread my app charges?

Compare the app's buy and sell quotes at the same moment with the mid price of a public order book. The gap between buy and sell, divided by the mid price, is the round-trip spread. Repeat it a few times, because prices move between screens.

What is the difference between maker and taker fees?

A maker order rests on the order book and adds liquidity. A taker order matches an existing order and removes liquidity. Maker fees are lower: at Kraken's lowest tier they are 0.40 percent against 0.80 percent for takers.