How Much Are Cryptocurrency Transaction Fees?
The basic Coinbase service tends to be a bit more costly than Binance and others. You can save a bit by using the Coinbase Advanced trading service, which charges fees but doesn’t include a price spread because you’re interacting more directly with the underlying blockchain networks. The subscription-based Coinbase One service, on the other hand, skips the Coinbase fee but usually includes a price spread in each transaction.
Robinhood
The popular stockbroker Robinhood (HOOD +0.98%) also offers trading services for a handful of cryptocurrencies. The company says your crypto trades are commission-free on Robinhood, with a 0% fee for any type of order.
While Coinbase and Binance earn revenue and profits from their transaction fees, Robinhood makes money in other ways. First, it doesn’t actually execute crypto trades on its own. Instead, the company routes its incoming cryptocurrency orders to market makers in exchange for transaction rebates that are not passed on to the customer.
Crypto orders also are not executed at the current market price. Instead, you’ll buy crypto tokens from Robinhood at a slightly inflated price and sell them at a lower price. The difference between effective transaction prices and current quotes tends to sit near 0.6%, which is in the same range as the fees charged by Binance.
Cryptocurrency exchanges with low transaction fees
You’ll never be able to avoid cryptocurrency transaction fees entirely, but you can choose to use services with lighter fee structures. Those fees can add up if you do a lot of trading in the crypto market.
Options with lower fees include Robinhood and Kraken. However, as noted above, every trading service will make some money on your crypto orders. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive option worked out to as much as 2% in some test runs, dropping down to a rounding error in other cases.