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Best No-Fee Crypto Exchanges
Since lower fees translate into higher profits, one of the most important considerations in selecting a cryptocurrency exchange is the fee they charge on each interaction. Generally, the crypto exchange industry charges a standard 0.25% fee for both takers/makers (buyers/sellers) but there are a number of other potential fees including deposit and withdrawal fees.
If you’re willing to look a little harder it’s possible to find a low fee crypto exchange that offers an excellent range of features without extra costs for their customers.
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CryptoVantage Staff
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Apr 16, 2024
Reviewed by Arthur Crowson
The Top No-Fee Crypto Exchanges
As traders, we should always explore new ways to maximize our profits. Reducing our trading fees as close to zero as possible is the surest way to achieve this goal. There are a plethora of platforms branding themselves as no-fee crypto exchanges. But it’s hard to determine which are harnessing the art of lying and which genuinely allow you to buy bitcoin without any fees.
If you are new to the world of cryptocurrency and are wondering how to buy fee-less bitcoin, we have good news for you. In this article, we have put together a list of the top 5 crypto exchanges that allow you to trade digital assets without paying any fees/commissions.
To start things off here’s a look at our top three picks for no-fee (or extremely low fee) trading.
- eToro – Best for flat fee crypto trading
- Kraken – Best for security and low-fee trading platform
- KuCoin – Best for high trading volume and advanced trading tools
- Crypto.com – Best for low-fee stablecoin trades
- Phemex – Best for monthly subscription fee
eToro
- Great for crypto beginners
- Solid crypto/general trading platform
- Reliable company with solid trust in the community
- Fully supports credit cards for deposits and withdrawals
Funding Methodse-Transfer & Wire Transfer
Cryptocurrencies15+
Countries70+
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. eToro USA LLC; Investments are subject to market risk, including the possible loss of principal. Your capital is at risk. This ad promotes virtual cryptocurrency investing within the EU (by eToro Europe Ltd. and eToro UK Ltd.) & USA (by eToro USA LLC); which is highly volatile, unregulated in most EU countries, no EU protections & not supervised by the EU regulatory framework. Investments are subject to market risk, including the loss of principal. Only real cryptocurrencies are available to US customers.
Visit eToroRead Review
Kraken
- Exceptionally secure exchange with proof of reserves
- Supports many different funding options
- Accepts users from across the globe including USA and Canada
- Very high trading volume
Funding MethodsWire Transfer, ACH
Cryptocurrencies185+
Countries150+
Visit KrakenRead Review
KuCoin
- International exchange with hundreds of different cryptos
- Extremely simple sign-up process
- Very high level of security
- Users can invest in the success of KuCoin through KuCoin Shares
Funding MethodsCrypto
Cryptocurrencies100+
Countries170+
Sign Up NowRead Review
Crypto.com Exchange
- One-stop shop for crypto with built-in exchange, app, lending platform, debit card and more
- Native CRO token gives users a huge variety of perks and can be staked for over 10% APY
- Potential for earning high amount of interest when storing digital assets on Crypto.com
- A long-term goal of building cryptocurrency adoption on whole
Funding MethodsCrypto, bank transfer, credit card, debit card
Cryptocurrencies200+
Countries80+
Visit Crypto.comRead Review
How Do No-Fee Exchanges Work?
Typically no-fee crypto exchanges make money by charging deposit or withdrawal fees but very little (or nothing) on crypto trading. Sometimes the model also works by using a “spread” which means there are technically no fees but each cryptocurrency will be slightly more expensive than what’s listed on Coinmarketcap or Coingecko.
Basically crypto exchanges have to make money somewhere so it’s more about prioritizing what’s important to you. Maybe that’s free deposits or perhaps you need extremely low-cost fees for high-volume trading. You also might be interested in margin trading or trading crypto with leverage.
Are No-Fee Crypto Exchanges a Good Idea?
Here’s the harsh reality of no-fee crypto exchanges: They generally still charge a fee.
For example some exchanges that promise no fees instead charge slightly more for Bitcoin (or any other crypto) to make up for that 1-2% loss in revenue. That’s the “spread” that we mentioned above. There are also subscription models where you instead pay a flat monthly fee. Exchanges have to make money somehow.
That’s why we at CryptoVantage usually prefer transparency from exchanges rather than cut-rate crypto fees. Customers also have different needs. If you’re planning on making a single large Bitcoin purchase than we’d suggest picking the most reliable, safe exchange, regardless of the fees it charges.
With that said, here’s a number of rock-solid crypto exchanges with low fees:
Etoro: Best for Flat-Rate Fees
eToro is one of the oldest online trading platforms and has one of the most intuitive pricing models for trading crypto. It charges a flat 1% fee for buying and selling crypto. That’s it.
There are potentially lower fees on competing exchanges but they are usually harder to unlock or don’t come with the security of eToro. That’s why we really enjoy the simple no-fuss model of a flat fee exchange.
eToro
- Great for crypto beginners
- Solid crypto/general trading platform
- Reliable company with solid trust in the community
- Fully supports credit cards for deposits and withdrawals
Funding Methodse-Transfer & Wire Transfer
Cryptocurrencies15+
Countries70+
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. eToro USA LLC; Investments are subject to market risk, including the possible loss of principal. Your capital is at risk. This ad promotes virtual cryptocurrency investing within the EU (by eToro Europe Ltd. and eToro UK Ltd.) & USA (by eToro USA LLC); which is highly volatile, unregulated in most EU countries, no EU protections & not supervised by the EU regulatory framework. Investments are subject to market risk, including the loss of principal. Only real cryptocurrencies are available to US customers.
Visit eToroRead Review
Kraken: Best for High Security and Low Fees
Kraken is one of the most high-quality crypto exchanges in history and it just so happens that it also charges extremely low fees. It boosts some of the highest customer satisfaction in the industry thanks to its high level of security and proof of reserves system so that you can actually confirm the assets it currently holds.
The exchange also offers numerous digital assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Polygon and many others.
Kraken charges no fees for deposits or withdrawals and crypto trading fees are extremely low at 0.16% and 0.26% respectively. That can also be improved depending on your crypto trading volume.
You’ll still have to deal with network fees when you withdraw but that’s the case of nearly every crypto exchange.
Kraken
- Exceptionally secure exchange with proof of reserves
- Supports many different funding options
- Accepts users from across the globe including USA and Canada
- Very high trading volume
Funding MethodsWire Transfer, ACH
Cryptocurrencies185+
Countries150+
Visit KrakenRead Review
KuCoin: Best for High-Volume Trading
Established in 2017, KuCoin is one of the most secure and advanced cryptocurrency exchanges in the world for buying/selling Bitcoin, Litecoin, and more than 250 other digital assets. KuCoin offers fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-crypto (with more than 440 trading pairs) services, as well as staking, futures trading, and lending.
Recently, the platform has launched its Instant Exchange service. The service provides customers with the best available exchange rates in the global market and allows them to instantly purchase all supported digital assets based on the provided rates. Furthermore, Kucoin charges 0 percent trading fees for these trades.
Kucoin charges a 0.10% flat fee on normal trades. It is indeed very low considering the global industry average is around 0.25%. Also, it doesn’t charge any fees for deposits.
KuCoin
- International exchange with hundreds of different cryptos
- Extremely simple sign-up process
- Very high level of security
- Users can invest in the success of KuCoin through KuCoin Shares
Funding MethodsCrypto
Cryptocurrencies100+
Countries170+
Sign Up NowRead Review
Crypto.com: Best for Low-Fee Stablecoin Trades
Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency platform that allows you to buy, store, transfer, and exchange more than 100 different cryptocurrencies. However, they offer a lot of other products and services. For example, through their crypto Visa Card, you can convert your digital assets and spend it anywhere Visa Cards are accepted. Other services include Defi Wallet, Crypto Credit, Crypto Earn, and many more.
Crypto.com offers some of the lowest fees among centralized exchanges. Using their Android and IOS app, you can deposit cryptocurrencies, exchange your digital assets with other cryptocurrencies, and transfer them to your Crypto.com wallet, all free of charge. Also, crypto.com allows you to buy bitcoin with zero percent credit card fees. Furthermore, new users can take advantage of 0% trading fees for the first 90 days.
Crypto.com Exchange
- One-stop shop for crypto with built-in exchange, app, lending platform, debit card and more
- Native CRO token gives users a huge variety of perks and can be staked for over 10% APY
- Potential for earning high amount of interest when storing digital assets on Crypto.com
- A long-term goal of building cryptocurrency adoption on whole
Funding MethodsCrypto, bank transfer, credit card, debit card
Cryptocurrencies200+
Countries80+
Visit Crypto.comRead Review
Phemex: If You Really Want No Fees
Founded in 2019, Phemex is a cryptocurrency trading exchange for buying/selling digital assets with a innovative fee structure. Phemex was formed by eight top former Morgan Stanley Executives and is headquartered in Singapore. Currently, the platform is ranked number 6 based on daily trading volume.
Phemex works based on a zero-trading fee model. Instead, clients must pay for a premium membership ($9.99/month, $19.99/three months, and 69.99/12 months.) Aside from not paying any fees, premium members can take advantage of hourly withdrawals with no limit, set conditional spot orders, and endow friends with free trial premium memberships.
Furthermore, Phemex offers extremely low makers/takers fees. Phemex charges takers 0.075% per order and makes an attractive fee of -0.025%, meaning they actually get paid for each trade.
Lykke
Lykke is a Swiss cryptocurrency exchange providing financial products and services at both business-to-business and business-to-consumer levels. Lykke works with more than 100 crypto-asset trading pairs and accepts fiat currencies. Aside from its web-based software for trading cryptocurrencies, the exchange also provides a cryptocurrency wallet downloadable from Google Play or Apple App store.
Lykke takes security very seriously, and it complies with AML standards and KYC policies. Another thing that makes Lykke stand out is its outstanding customer support. The platform provides 24/7 technical support through live chat, email, or even direct calling via Skype.
In terms of trading fees, Lykke doesn’t charge different fees for makers/takers. In fact, the platform goes one step further and doesn’t charge any trading fees at all. Furthermore, they don’t charge any fees for withdrawal operations. Instead, they collect revenue by providing insurance and consulting services as well as market liquidity.
Different Types of Cryptocurrency Fees
It would be wise to treat all claims about exchanges with 0% fees with a grain of salt. After all, fees are the primary source of revenue for these institutions. Even if they don’t charge fees for one specific service, they certainly charge for others, such as withdrawing or depositing. To give you a better idea of how cryptocurrency exchanges work, we have compiled here the standard types of commission fees.
Deposit/Withdrawal Fees
All crypto exchanges allow traders to swap their digital assets with other cryptocurrencies or fiat currency. In exchange for their services, they charge a fee when clients deposit or withdraw their fiat money. In general you should try to avoid withdrawal fees as this can cut into your profits. It’s even worse for deposit fees. You’ll often see heavy crypto exchange fees when you pay with a credit card. The best crypto exchanges tend to avoid charging deposit or withdrawal fees.
Deposit/withdrawal fees are quite often a flat fee ranging from $1-$5 but it can vary.
Exchange Fees
Crypto exchanges play an intermediary role between traders, and consequently, they charge makers/takers a fee for trades made on their platform. Makers/traders who place orders that can’t immediately be matched. In other words, they provide liquidity to a market. On the other hand, takers place orders to take liquidity from the order book. In order to provide traders with an incentive to place orders on the book, exchanges charge makers a lower fee, while takers generally pay higher fees.
Most of the time these fees are quite low but high-volume crypto traders will want to pay attention to this one. This is a basic cost of crypto trading.
Network Fees
Cryptocurrency is based on blockchain technology and crypto exchanges (especially decentralized ones), and their users must directly or indirectly pay a fee for the mining costs associated with blockchain. Quite frequently you’ll also have to pay network fees on centralized exchanges but they sometimes opt to pay them for their customers.
Market Spread
To understand what a market spread is, we must first have a basic understanding of the exchange order book. The order book is defined as the list of all open orders for a specific trading pair available at a particular time. And by an open order, we basically mean the price that people offer to buy or sell a particular asset. Now that we know the definitions of the order book and open order, let’s see what market spread is. The market spread is defined as the gap between the lowest buy bid and the highest bid offer on the order book. This gap is the difference between the price the seller is asking to sell a particular asset and the price buyers are willing to pay to buy that asset. For example, let’s say you want to buy one Bitcoin from a seller. You offer to buy his/her BTC for $40,000, while the seller thinks the price should be $45,000. This $5,000, or the difference between your bid and his/her offer, is the spread. The lowest ask price and the highest bid price determine the market spread. You’ll notice slightly different prices between exchanges and is usually because of spread.
Market spread is frustrating to crypto traders because its rather vague and can vary immensely from exchange to exchange. Pay attention if users complain about the spread on a certain crypto exchange.
Monthly Subscription Fees
Some high-volume exchanges, most notably Phemex and Coinbase, have experimented with charging a single flat monthly charge rather than per trade. The Coinbase One monthly subscription launched in 2023 at $29.99 per month in the USA.
It’s an interesting model that might make sense for high-volume traders and it certainly simplifies the entire concept of paying fees. It’s definitely not for everyone, however, and it wouldn’t make sense for infrequent crypto purchasers.
How Do the Major Exchanges Stack Up?
If you’re looking for even more information about some of the popular crypto exchanges and how they stack up against each other you might want to look into our popular showdown articles:
- Kraken vs. Coinbase
- eToro vs. Coinbase
- Uphold vs. Coinbase
- Kraken vs. Coinbase
- Kraken vs. eToro
- Coinbase vs. Crypto.com
- Kucoin vs. Binance
Conclusion: Find the Right No-Fee Exchange For You
With literally hundreds of cryptocurrencies available and many more being launched every day, it could be overwhelming to find the perfect one that meets all your demands. In this article, we compiled a list of the top 5 crypto exchanges where you can buy bitcoin without paying any fees.
Of course, not all the services these platforms provide are free of charge. But in a world where cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are going mainstream, and many countries are developing digital forms of their national currency, it won’t be long before institutions and governments provide all their services free of charge. Until such a day, you can use the exchanges introduced here to trade and buy bitcoin with zero fees or at least extremely low fees.
About the Author
CryptoVantageStaff
CryptoVantage.com is committed to simplifying cryptocurrency for everyday people. Learn more about CryptoVantage.com and our team on the About Us page.
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