Crypto Exchange Fees Compared: What $10,000 of Trades Costs at Kraken, IBKR, BYDFi and WEEX

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-11-08

Covered on this page: Kraken. And for traders outside the US: BYDFi and WEEX.

Crypto exchange fees at entry level ran from 0.10% to 0.80% a trade on the fee pages we read on 8 November 2026: a $10,000 market buy cost $10 at BYDFi or WEEX, $18 at Interactive Brokers and $80 at Kraken Pro tier 1. In 180 order-book snapshots that day, the spread and book added a median $1.41 or less.

So on a liquid coin, the fee schedule is the decision. This page prices one month of trading through each schedule, shows where Kraken Pro’s tiers and Interactive Brokers’ minimum change the ranking, and measures what the order book adds on top. It does not rate apps or name any venue as right for you.

What we measured: a $10,000 market buy of bitcoin gave up $0.01 or less to the book at Kraken, Coinbase and WEEX, and solana, the thinnest of the three coins, a median of up to $1.41. On the same venue, the fee was at least 8 times the median book cost: $10.00 against $1.12 on WEEX solana.

What they are: five fee schedules, two of them for traders outside the US

• Kraken Pro is Kraken’s order-book screen. It charges by 30-day volume across 17 tiers, from 0.40% maker and 0.80% taker at tier 1. The Kraken app’s Buy, Sell and Convert screens instead charge 1% on instant and recurring trades, 1.5% on custom orders, and add a spread to the quoted price.
• Interactive Brokers routes crypto orders to Paxos or Zero Hash, which execute and hold the coins. The commission is 0.18% of trade value up to $100,000 a month, with a $1.75 minimum per order that can never exceed 1% of the order. IBKR also passes through a $0.15 monthly Paxos account fee to clients with a Paxos account.
• Coinbase shows its Advanced rates only to signed-in users, so they are not in our tables. Its public disclosure lists a spread on simple buys and a 1% execution fee on simple limit orders, and says it may also charge a Coinbase fee of 1.875% that varies by payment method. Its order book is public, and we measured it.
• BYDFi charges 0.1% maker and 0.1% taker on spot, and 0.02% and 0.06% on USDT-margined perpetuals, on its help-center fee page. It lists spot and derivatives markets on the major coins for traders outside the US.
• WEEX reports a 0.001 maker and taker rate, 0.10%, for BTC, ETH and SOL spot in its own public market API, and 0.02% maker and 0.08% taker on futures in its fee guide. It runs futures and spot markets side by side for traders outside the US.

How a fee shows up on a single trade, alongside the spread, SEC fees and slippage, is set out on trading fees.

How they differ: a percentage, a tier and a minimum

Maker or taker is the first split. A limit order that rests on the book pays the maker rate; a market order or a limit that fills at once pays the taker rate. At Kraken Pro tier 1 that is the difference between $40 and $80 on $10,000. BYDFi, WEEX and Interactive Brokers charge the same rate either way at entry level.

The tier is the second. Kraken Pro sets the tier from your rolling 30-day spot and margin volume, so the rate falls only after the volume is already traded. Interactive Brokers’ tiers are monthly trade value: 0.18% to $100,000, 0.15% to $1,000,000 and 0.12% above that.

The minimum is the third, and it only matters at one venue. Interactive Brokers charges the larger of 0.18% and $1.75, but never more than 1% of the order. Below $175 the 1% cap binds. Between $175 and $972.22 the $1.75 floor does. Only from $972.22 does the order pay 0.18%. A $500 order pays $1.75, or 0.35%.

A worked example: one month, $10,000, ten orders of $1,000

Take a new account that buys and sells $10,000 of bitcoin in a month as ten orders of $1,000, starting from no history.

• Kraken Pro, first month: taking the tier as updated after each fill, the first three orders see under $2,500 of trailing volume and pay tier 1; the other seven pay tier 2 (0.30% and 0.60%). The month costs $33.00 as maker or $66.00 as taker.
• Kraken Pro, a later month: with $10,000 already traded in the trailing 30 days the account sits at tier 3, 0.22% and 0.38%: $22.00 or $38.00.
• Interactive Brokers: 0.18% of $1,000 is $1.80, above the minimum: $18.00 either way.
• BYDFi or WEEX spot: 0.10%: $10.00 either way.
• Kraken app instant buys: 1%: $100.00, before the spread in the quoted price.

Now split the same $10,000 into smaller orders. As twenty orders of $500, Interactive Brokers charges $35.00, because each pays the $1.75 minimum. As a hundred orders of $100, it charges $100.00, the 1% cap. The rates at BYDFi, WEEX and Kraken Pro are percentages with no minimum, so their month costs the same however it is split.

The Kraken Pro ladder: seventeen tiers priced on $10,000

Kraken publishes every spot tier with the 30-day volume that unlocks it. The fee on $10,000 of trades:

Kraken also lets a tier be reached by futures volume or, from tier 3 up, by assets held, and lists a further 0.02-point discount on selected spot pairs that is not applied here. All 17 rows are in the downloadable table.

Two crossings matter for a US trader. Kraken Pro’s maker rate drops below Interactive Brokers’ 0.18% at tier 5, from $50,000 of 30-day volume. Its taker rate only matches 0.18% at tier 9, from $1,000,000.

The original data: 180 order books, and the spread was the small part

We pulled the public spot order book for bitcoin, ether and solana from Kraken, Coinbase Exchange and WEEX every 30 seconds, 20 times, between 20:45 and 20:55 UTC on 8 November 2026. For each snapshot we walked a $10,000 market buy through the asks and measured how far its average price sat above the mid.

That figure includes half the spread. WEEX quotes in USDT, the other two in US dollars, so each is measured against its own mid.

The fee was the cost. At Kraken Pro tier 1 the same buy paid $80.00 in fee; at WEEX, $10.00. The largest book cost in any single snapshot was $3.28, on solana at WEEX. Interactive Brokers and BYDFi publish no public spot book we could read, so they are priced on fee alone.

This is a different measure from the one on the bid-ask spread, which tested 622 Kraken pairs at the top of the book; here the buy walks into the depth, which is where slippage comes from. How to read those levels yourself is on reading the order book.

Download the data: order-book snapshots and fee schedules. Reuse either file freely, crediting this page with a link, under the site license.

Who each venue serves: residence, read from the terms

Kraken states it does not serve residents of New York and Maine; elsewhere in the US it does. Interactive Brokers offers crypto through Paxos and Zero Hash from its US commission page.

BYDFi’s User Agreement names the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada among its Prohibited Jurisdictions, and WEEX’s Terms of Use, section 1.1(d)(ii), names Canada and the United States among the places it does not serve. Both serve traders in the many countries outside those lists, which is where their 0.10% spot rate applies.

Which to pick: matching the fee schedule to order size and residence

BYDFi and WEEX cost the least per trade when you live outside the US and the countries their terms list: 0.10% a side at entry level, $10.00 on $10,000.

Interactive Brokers costs the least for a US resident when orders are $972.22 or larger and 30-day volume is below $50,000: 0.18% against Kraken Pro’s 0.40% maker and 0.80% taker at tier 1. It still beats the tier 1 maker rate down to orders of $437.50, where $1.75 is exactly 0.40%.

Kraken Pro limit orders cost less than Interactive Brokers when your 30-day volume is at least $50,000, tier 5 at 0.15%, or when your orders are under $437.50, where the $1.75 minimum is more than 0.40% of the order. Kraken’s 0.80% taker rate is the cheaper of the two only below $218.75.

The Kraken app’s instant buy costs the most when it is used for regular trading: 1% plus a spread, against 0.40% to 0.80% for the same coin on Kraken Pro.

When it fails: four ways a fee table misleads

It fails when the tier lags. Kraken Pro sets the rate from the volume already traded, so a first month pays more than the headline tier: $66.00 instead of $38.00 for the same $10,000 of taker orders.

It fails on the buy screen. The simple Buy screens at Kraken and Coinbase add a spread to the price and charge their own fee, so the order-book rate on this page does not apply to them.

It fails off the spot market. Withdrawal fees are charged per transfer and sit on separate pages, and futures rates are different numbers: 0.02% and 0.05% at Kraken tier 1, 0.02% and 0.08% at WEEX.

It fails when the rate is not the one you get. BYDFi notes that maker and taker rates may vary with platform events or user region, and Coinbase shows its Advanced rates only after sign-in. The rate in your own trade history is the one to compare.

Crypto fee questions, answered briefly

Which crypto exchange has the lowest fees?

On 8 November 2026 fee pages, BYDFi and WEEX listed 0.10% a side on spot for non-US traders. For US residents, Interactive Brokers listed 0.18% on orders of $972.22 or more.

Why did my trade cost more than the fee?

Usually because it went through a simple Buy screen with a spread, or as a market order at the taker rate. On a liquid coin the book itself added a cent or less per $10,000 of bitcoin in our snapshots.

Is a maker fee always lower?

At Kraken Pro, yes, at every tier: 0.40% against 0.80% at tier 1. At BYDFi and WEEX spot the two rates were equal, 0.10%.

Related

The steps around the fee, from the jurisdiction clause to a test withdrawal, are on how to use a crypto exchange. What the fee does to a strategy that trades often is tested on how to trade crypto, and the profit on one trade after both fees is worked out by the crypto profit calculator.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money. Some links on this page earn a commission if you buy through them. It costs you nothing and it does not decide what appears here or in what order — how these pages are made is set out in our methodology.