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Perp vs Spot: What Holding a Position Actually Costs You

Published 2026-10-19

Most traders compare perpetuals to spot by looking at leverage. Few actually sit down and compare the cost of running the same trade on both markets. That's a mistake, because the fee structure is where a surprising amount of your edge disappears — especially if you hold positions for more than a few hours and never account for what a rebate program can give back.

This article breaks the cost down into its real components: the one-time cost of a spot trade, the recurring cost of a perp position, and how fee rebates change the math on five major exchanges.

Spot cost: pay once on the way in, once on the way out

Buying spot has a simple cost structure. You pay a trading fee when you buy, and another when you sell. That's it — no ongoing charge for holding the asset, no matter how long you sit on it.

The size of that fee depends on whether you're a maker (resting an order) or a taker (crossing the spread). Standard spot fees are noticeably higher than futures fees:

A spot round trip (buy + sell) as taker costs 20bp (0.20%) of notional on all five. Resting maker orders on OKX brings it to 16bp; elsewhere maker and taker are the same at the standard tier.

Perp cost: the same entry/exit fee, plus a cost spot never has

Opening and closing a perpetual position uses the futures fee schedule, which is lower than spot:

A perp round trip as taker costs 10bp on Binance, OKX and Gate.io, 11bp on Bybit and 12bp on Bitget — roughly half the spot round trip. As maker on both sides it drops to 4bp everywhere.

What's different is that a perp position accrues funding while it's open. Funding is a periodic payment exchanged between longs and shorts to keep the perpetual price tethered to the underlying index. Depending on which side of the market you're on and how the market is skewed, you either pay funding or receive it, and the rate changes over time — it isn't fixed, and it isn't something we can quote a single number for here.

The practical takeaway: for a trade you open and close within minutes, the perp is usually cheaper than spot — its entry/exit fee is about half, and funding barely has time to accrue. For a position you hold for days or weeks, funding accumulates on top of that fee, and depending on market conditions it can end up mattering far more than the trading fee itself. If you're comparing "cost of perp vs cost of spot" for a swing position, the entry/exit fee is only one line item — funding is the one that compounds.

Where the fee actually goes — and how much comes back

Every taker or maker fee you pay is split between the exchange and whoever referred you. When you sign up through our links, a share of that referral commission comes back to you as a rebate. In fee terms, that works out to:

Concretely: a $50,000 perp position, opened and closed as taker on Binance, costs $50,000 × 0.10% = $50 in fees. At 20%, you get $10 back. Do the same trade on Bybit — $50,000 × 0.11% = $55 in fees — and the 22.5% rebate returns $12.38. Trade as maker instead and the fee drops to $20 (0.04% round trip), with the rebate dropping proportionally — the percentage is constant, the dollar amount scales with what you actually pay.

The rebate scales up with your volume

The standard rate above corresponds to us passing on 50% of the commission the exchange pays us. That share isn't fixed — it rises automatically as your 30-day trading volume grows:

• 50% of the commission — standard tier
• 60% of the commission — from $1,000,000 in 30-day volume
• 70% of the commission — from $10,000,000 in 30-day volume
• up to 80% of the commission — from $50,000,000 in 30-day volume

These tiers apply automatically, no action needed on your part. Traders doing over $200,000,000 in 30-day volume are handled individually by email rather than through the standard tiers. Full details and the exact conversion of each tier into fee terms are in our FAQ.

What this costs you: nothing

There's no membership fee, no profit share, no catch. You pay the exchange's normal trading fee — nothing extra — and we return a share of what the exchange pays us as commission. We never ask for API keys, passwords, or seed phrases; all we need is your public exchange UID to track the rebate.

Rebates settle monthly, held for 7 days after month end before release, with a minimum withdrawal of 10 USDT.

The bottom line

If you're only holding a position for the length of a quick scalp, the perp usually costs less than spot — it's an entry/exit fee story, and futures fees are roughly half of spot fees at the standard tier. If you're holding longer, funding on the perp side adds a cost spot simply doesn't have, and it's worth tracking separately from your trading fees. Either way, the fee you do pay is partially recoverable — stacking a rebate on top of choosing the cheaper exchange and the maker side of the book is the most reliable way to lower your real cost of trading, regardless of which product you use.