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Funding: The Cost Most Traders Never Put in the Spreadsheet

Published 2026-10-28

If you trade perpetual futures, you track entry, exit, stop and size. You probably also know your taker and maker fee. Funding is the line item that often goes missing from the PnL model, and on a position held for any length of time it can matter as much as the commissions you optimize so carefully.

What funding actually is

A perpetual swap has no expiry, so nothing forces its price back toward spot. Funding does that job. At each funding interval, one side of the market pays the other:

• Positive funding: longs pay shorts.
• Negative funding: shorts pay longs.

The payment is calculated on notional, not on margin:

funding payment = position notional × funding rate

That is why leverage makes funding feel worse than it looks. The rate is applied to the full position, but your return is measured against the margin you posted. A small rate on a large notional is a larger bite out of a small account.

Funding is not a fee the exchange charges. It moves between traders, and exchanges differ in how they compute the rate and how often they settle it. Check the contract specs of each venue before you assume anything.

Why it gets missed

1. It is not in the fill. Fees show up on every execution. Funding is a separate ledger entry at the settlement time, so it never appears in your trade history the way a commission does.
2. It only hurts when you hold. A scalper who is flat before the next settlement may never pay it. A swing trader pays it every interval.
3. It tends to be worst when you are most right. In a strong trend, the crowded side pays the most. Being long a rally with high positive funding means you are paying for a trade that is working.
4. It compounds with size. Because it scales with notional, adding leverage raises the funding bill in proportion to the commissions you were already paying.

Funding versus trading fees

Compare what each cost is tied to:

For a high-turnover strategy, fees dominate. For a lower-frequency or carry-style strategy, funding can be the larger number. Neither is "the big one" in general. Which one it is depends on your holding period, and you can only know that by measuring it.

How to put it in your model

Pull the funding history, not just the trade history. Every major exchange lets you export funding payments separately. Add them to your realized PnL per position, not as a lump at month end.

Report PnL three ways: gross, net of fees, and net of fees and funding. If the third number is much worse than the second, your edge is being paid out in carry.

Break it out by holding time. Group positions by how long they were open. You will usually find a holding period past which funding turns a profitable setup into a flat one.

Check the sign before you enter. If you are about to take a swing long and funding is strongly positive, you are paying the crowd to hold the same view. That can still be a good trade, but it should be a conscious choice. When funding runs your way, you are being paid to hold and that belongs in the model too.

Consider the hedge. If you hold spot against a short perp, or run the reverse, funding is your return, not a side effect. That is a different strategy with its own risks, but it shows that funding is a first-class variable and not noise.

The part you can control more directly: trading fees

You cannot negotiate funding. You can lower the commission side of the ledger, and that is where a rebate helps.

Base fees on the five venues we cover:

Two things to be clear about:

• The rebate applies to trading fees, not funding. Funding is paid between traders, so there is nothing to rebate. A rebate lowers one cost. It does not change what you owe on carry.
• The maker/taker gap matters regardless. Every venue above charges the same maker rate and a higher taker rate. If your strategy allows resting orders, the maker rate is the cheaper side before any rebate.

How the rebate works, and what we get out of it

You pay us nothing: no membership fee and no profit share. We are paid by the exchange, and we earn more when you trade more. You should weigh our advice with that in mind. It is a reason to read the numbers above rather than take our word for them.

What we send you is 50% of the referral commission the exchange pays us. Because that commission is only part of the fee you pay, in fee terms it works out to the per-exchange figure in the table. It is not 50% of your fees, and we do not describe it that way. The FAQ on the site has the details.

Your share of the commission rises automatically with 30-day volume:

• 50% of the commission as standard
• 60% from $1M
• 70% from $10M
• 80% from $50M

So the share can reach up to 80% of the commission. Traders above $200,000,000 per 30 days are handled individually by email.

Practical terms:

• Rebates settle monthly.
• They are held for 7 days after month end.
• Minimum withdrawal is 10 USDT.
• We never ask for API keys, passwords or seed phrases. We only need your public exchange UID.

A short checklist

1. Export funding payments for your last set of closed positions.
2. Add them to your PnL and compare net of fees against net of fees and funding.
3. Group by holding time and find where funding starts to eat the edge.
4. Check the funding sign before each entry that you plan to hold across a settlement.
5. Where your strategy allows it, prefer maker orders.
6. Reduce the fee side you can control. A rebate does not touch funding, but it is a cost you can lower without changing how you trade.

Funding will not show up unless you go looking for it. Once it is in the model, you will know which of your trades are earning their keep and which are only paying carry.