Affiliate disclosure: links to exchanges on this page are referral links. They never worsen your trading terms; in some cases they add a fee discount. Risk: leveraged futures trading can result in the loss of your entire deposit.
TL;DR
| Venue | Base maker / taker | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| MEXC | 0.000% / 0.020% | The only major venue with 0% maker at zero volume |
| OKX | 0.020% / 0.050% | Best taker path among big CEXs; VIP 1 from $5M/30d |
| Hyperliquid | 0.015% / 0.045% | Cheapest non-zero maker; on-chain, hourly funding |
| Bybit | 0.020% / 0.055% | Standard maker, pricier taker; discounts via VIP |
Short version: if most of your orders are resting limits, MEXC's 0% maker is unbeatable at retail volume — nobody else gives it away without a nine-figure volume requirement. If you take liquidity, the field tightens: four venues charge 0.050% taker at base, and the real separator becomes funding and book depth, not the fee page.
All fees below are base-tier USDT-perpetual rates from our data sheet, verified against primary sources on July 1, 2026.
Who actually charges 0% maker
One exchange: MEXC. Its base schedule is 0% maker / 0.020% taker on futures — no VIP requirement, no 30-day volume threshold, no token to hold. As of mid-2026 it also runs a zero-fee promotion on a set of majors where both sides trade free; that promo covers regular retail accounts, while API traders and market makers sit on separate schedules.
Everyone else keeps 0% maker behind serious volume walls:
- Bybit reaches 0% maker only at Supreme VIP — $500M of 30-day volume (taker 0.030% there).
- OKX hits 0% maker at VIP 6, which takes $1B of 30-day volume. From VIP 7 the maker rate turns negative (−0.002%): the exchange pays you to quote.
- Hyperliquid zeroes the maker fee at tier 4 — $500M of volume in a rolling 14 days.
Those thresholds are institutional. For everyone below them, MEXC's headline is real and unconditional.
The catch is on the other side of the trade. Exit with market orders and you pay MEXC's 0.020% taker like anywhere else — on $1M of monthly taker volume that's $200. And as of mid-2026 MEXC's order books on smaller alt perpetuals run thinner than Bybit's or OKX's, so on illiquid pairs part of your fee saving can leak out through the spread. On BTC and ETH this is a non-issue.
Open a MEXC account (referral fee discount)
Base fees across the 8 venues we track
Base tier, USDT perpetuals, no discounts applied:
| Venue | Maker | Taker | Max BTC leverage | Funding interval |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEXC | 0.000% | 0.020% | 500x | 8h |
| Hyperliquid | 0.015% | 0.045% | 40x | 1h |
| OKX | 0.020% | 0.050% | 100x | 8h |
| Gate.io | 0.020% | 0.050% | 200x | 8h |
| BingX | 0.020% | 0.050% | 200x | 8h |
| Binance | 0.020% | 0.050% | 125x | 8h |
| Bybit | 0.020% | 0.055% | 100x | 8h |
| Bitget | 0.020% | 0.060% | 150x | 8h |
Three things jump out. First, the maker column is nearly flat — 0.020% everywhere except MEXC and Hyperliquid. The market has converged; maker fees stopped being a differentiator among the big CEXs years ago. Second, the taker column is where base-tier money is actually won or lost: 0.020% (MEXC) to 0.060% (Bitget) is a 3x spread on every market order. Third, Bitget is the most expensive taker in the set while offering nothing cheaper elsewhere in the fee schedule, so if minimal cost is the goal it's hard to justify on fees alone.
Leverage is a separate axis — the 500x on MEXC has nothing to do with its fees, and chasing maximum leverage is its own trade-off. We break that down in high-leverage futures exchanges.
What VIP tiers actually buy
Volume discounts matter earlier than most traders assume. Entry thresholds and VIP 1 rates from our sheet:
| Venue | VIP 1 threshold | VIP 1 maker / taker |
|---|---|---|
| OKX | $5M 30-day volume or $100K assets | 0.016% / 0.045% |
| Bybit | $10M 30-day volume or $100K assets | 0.018% / 0.040% |
| Hyperliquid | $5M 14-day volume | 0.012% / 0.040% |
| MEXC | $15M 30-day volume or $2.5M assets | not published (base is already 0% maker) |
OKX's $5M entry is the most reachable on the CEX side: roughly $167K of daily turnover. An active day trader running $20–50K positions gets there; note the alternative route via $100K in account assets, which both OKX and Bybit accept in place of volume. Hyperliquid measures over 14 days instead of 30, so bursty traders qualify faster than the headline suggests.
Below VIP, two cheaper levers exist as of mid-2026: exchange-token programs (holding MEXC's MX or Bitget's BGB trims fees further) and referral registration, which applies a fee discount from day one with no volume condition. Neither typically stacks with VIP pricing — the better rate applies, not both.
Funding: the fee that isn't on the fee page
Every venue in the table except Hyperliquid settles funding every 8 hours — three payments a day; Bybit can shorten the interval when rates go extreme. Hyperliquid settles hourly, 24 times a day, with a hard cap of 4% per interval.
Hold a position for days and funding dwarfs trading fees. A funding rate merely equal to Bybit's 0.020% maker fee, paid three times daily, costs 0.060% per day — every day, per unit of position, while the maker fee was paid once. Over a week that's 0.42% against a 0.020% entry fee. For swing positions, the venue with the consistently better funding on your pair beats the venue with the cheaper fee schedule, full stop.
Rates diverge across venues on the same pair, and the gap moves. Check the live spread before you choose where to open — that's what our funding rate tracker is for.
Matching the venue to your style
Mostly resting limit orders. MEXC — 0% maker with no conditions is the whole argument. Watch depth on small alts.
Market orders and size. OKX — 0.050% base taker, 0.045% at a reachable VIP 1, and books deep enough that slippage doesn't eat the discount.
Cheapest all-around schedule without a CEX. Hyperliquid — 0.015% / 0.045% base beats every CEX except MEXC's maker. It's an on-chain venue: no fiat rails, no KYC as of mid-2026, different custody model. If that's a feature for you, see no-KYC futures exchanges.
Fees are secondary. If execution quality, product range, or copy trading weigh more than a basis point, our overall futures exchange ranking weighs those axes instead.
