Welcome to the ChangeNOW Blog. Here we focus on research, real use cases, and practical insights — not hype. While we double-check our facts, nothing here should be taken as financial advice; crypto is a high-risk space, and your own research always matters.
Crypto exchanges make money from several groups of customers at once, each paying for a different service. The trading fee is the one everybody sees. The less obvious lines underneath it are what this article breaks down.
Key Takeaways
- Trading fees: around 0.10% of every matched trade, charged to the buyer and the seller.
- The spread: the gap between the buy and the sell price, paid by the trader, collected by whoever quotes both sides.
- Withdrawals: the blockchain fee plus the platform's own markup.
- Listings: token projects pay six to seven figures, plus a pool of their own tokens so the pair has something to trade against.
- Fiat rails, cards, staking: outside providers run them and split the fee with the exchange.
- Margin interest, custody, subscriptions: billed by time, so money arrives through slow quarters.
Trading Fees
Trading fees are the core income. The exchange takes a cut of every trade it matches. At 0.10%, a $10,000 trade pays the platform $20: $10 from the buyer and $10 from the seller. The platform is paid for the match itself. Winning and losing trades bill the same. Volatile markets bring more trades, and the same schedule earns more.
Two decisions set the rate:
- Match the industry standard: 0.10% is the baseline set by Binance, and users compare your pricing against it. Charging a premium works when traders can see what they get for it.
- Vary the rate by account: Two mechanics do most of the work here.
- Volume discounts: The more a user trades in a month, the lower the percentage.
- Maker/Taker pricing: A trader who places an order in advance and waits adds liquidity (Maker) and gets the deepest discount. A trader who buys at the current market price, taking someone else's order (Taker), pays the full rate.
Millions of small charges a day carry the business. Lending, staking, custody, and subscriptions keep those traders on the platform and pay the bills when volume dries up.
Deposit and Withdrawal Fees
The income on deposits and withdrawals is the markup over the real cost. A crypto withdrawal costs the exchange a network fee, and it charges the user more than that. Fiat is priced by speed. Crypto deposits stay free to keep funding easy.
If you are setting up an exchange, here is how payment economics usually work:
- Crypto deposits: Free everywhere. Every platform wants the money in.
- Crypto withdrawals: A flat fee per asset or a small percentage, such as 0.2%. It covers the network cost and leaves a margin on top.
- Fiat operations: ACH transfers are usually free. Instant card withdrawals run about 1.5%. Wire transfers pass the bank's flat charge through to the user, around $10 to deposit and $25 to withdraw.
- Markup strategy: New exchanges absorb part of the withdrawal cost to lower customer acquisition cost. Established ones keep the margin and treat it as steady revenue.
Kraken sets crypto withdrawal fees per asset and network and shows the final number at confirmation. The cost it passes on moves with the chain: the same stablecoin runs to cents on one network and several dollars on another. Coinbase charges 0.2% on Lightning transfers and 0.01% on USDT withdrawals, capped at 20 USDT.
Fiat runs on a provider's license
Dollars move through a licensed payment company, and the exchange rents that license. Cards, custody, staking, and on-ramps work the same way. Almost everything past order matching is another company's product wired into the interface. A provider inside the same holding follows the same rules, with its own legal entity and its own cut taken before anything reaches the exchange.
Two deal shapes cover most integrations:
- Revenue share. The provider gives API access and builds its fee into the price the user sees. It keeps its part and passes the rest to the exchange. One payment from the user funds both companies at once. Instant swap providers price this way, with the partner's cut typically starting around 0.4% of the swap.
- Fixed payments. Money moves on a schedule, and the direction depends on who needs whom. A large exchange sends real volume, and the provider pays for the placement. A small platform that needs the feature to look complete pays the provider for access.
Which shape applies decides which line of the P&L the integration lands on.
Listing Fees
Token issuers are a separate paying customer. The exchange charges them a one-time B2B fee to add the asset, and what it sells is distribution: direct access to an active user base and its capital. The project pays before trading starts, and the exchange keeps the money regardless of how the token performs afterward.
The full cost structure:
- Pricing: Small platforms charge in the tens of thousands. Tier-1 exchanges charge anywhere from $100,000 to $3 million.
- The invoice is one part of the bill: Projects also put up a security deposit and a pool of their own tokens for the pair to trade against. The market-making budget is a third line. That inventory sits on the exchange, and the price risk on it stays with the project.
- Undisclosed terms: Some exchanges state publicly that listings are free. Founders report multi-million dollar asks for the same slot.
- Volume sets the price: Issuers are buying access to traders. Pricing power follows the volume you can show them.
Tiered Fee Structures
A tiered schedule earns money indirectly. Each step down rewards a trader for concentrating volume in one place. The platform trades margin per trade for activity that is large and predictable, and that activity brings in most of its daily revenue.
Volume discounts
The fee drops as the user's 30-day volume rises. On Coinbase, a beginner pays 0.60%, which comes to $30 on a $5,000 trade. An account above $400 million in monthly volume pays 0.04% on the same trade, or $2. A fund that splits its flow across three exchanges pays the beginner rate on all three. Consolidating everything on one platform is simple arithmetic.
Maker and taker pricing
Volume is the first variable, order type is the second. Makers place limit orders in advance and supply liquidity, which earns them the lowest rate or a rebate. Takers buy at the market price and pay more. The same account can pay two rates in the same hour depending on how it executes.
Exchange token discounts
A mechanic Binance made standard. The platform takes another 25% off for users who hold its native token. The cheapest rates require buying the exchange's own asset, which supports the token's price and ties the account to the platform.
The Spread
The spread is the gap between the best buy price and the best sell price. Anyone who buys at the market price pays it, and it is priced into the quote itself. Whoever quotes both sides of that gap collects it.
A $10,000 market buy on a pair quoted 0.1% wide costs the trader $10 on top of any published fee. On an order book, that $10 goes to the market maker who posted the ask, and the exchange earns the difference between the taker fee and the maker rebate. In a broker or instant-swap model, the platform quotes both sides itself and keeps the whole $10. A zero-fee platform runs on exactly this.
Market Making
A market maker quotes a bid and an ask at the same time and earns the difference when both fill. Buy at $100.00, sell at $100.10, and repeat a few thousand times a day: the margin is those ten cents, multiplied by fill count.
Most exchanges pay outside firms to do it. The mechanism is a rebate, which is a negative fee. A taker pays 0.05%, the maker is paid 0.015%, and the exchange keeps the 0.035% difference. Part of the fee buys a book that stays quoted around the clock.
In-house market making puts the exchange's own inventory on its own book, and the full spread stays with the platform. The risk sits in the inventory. When the price runs against a position, spread income covers the loss first, and specialist firms carry that exposure for most platforms.
Income That Bills on a Calendar
Margin, staking, custody, and subscriptions bill by time or by assets held. The invoices go out on schedule through a quiet quarter.
- Margin interest. The platform lends a trader capital to open a position on margin and charges by the hour or the day until it closes. Much of that capital comes from other users lending idle balances, and the exchange keeps the spread between what it pays them and what it charges the borrower. Liquidation fees land on top when a position gets closed out.
- Staking commission. Users delegate coins through the exchange, the network pays rewards, and the platform keeps a published cut before passing the rest along. The customer sees a net rate. Coinbase sets its commission per asset, and the size of the pool makes this one of the larger recurring lines on the books.
- Interest on reserves. Fiat and stablecoin balances sit in accounts that earn a yield, and the exchange keeps most of it. Coinbase booked $1.35 billion in stablecoin revenue in 2025, about 19% of its total.
- Custody. Funds, treasuries, ETF issuers, and corporate holders pay an annual percentage of the assets held, plus setup and transfer charges.
- Subscriptions. A monthly plan bundles lower fees, boosted staking rates, priority support, and account perks. Coinbase One has close to a million paying members.
- White label and licensing. An exchange rents out its matching engine, liquidity, back office, and compliance stack to a company that wants a branded platform of its own. Payment usually combines a monthly license with a share of the volume it generates.
Revenue Streams by Business Model
How exchanges make money depends on who sets the price. If you are deciding what kind of product to build, the margin sits in a different place in each model:
| Model | How the price is set | What the platform earns on |
|---|---|---|
| Order book | Competing buy and sell orders | Volume fees, listing payments, institutional access |
| Broker | The broker quotes both sides | The markup inside its own quote |
| Instant | Sourced from aggregated pools | The markup over the sourced quote |
| Ecosystem | Set per layer | Trading, plus wallet, staking, cards, and subscriptions |
Where each model takes its margin. The rows describe pricing mechanics; the revenue behind them depends on volume.
What separates the models in practice:
- Who sets the price: On an order book, buyers and sellers set it and the platform charges for the match. A broker sets both prices itself, and the gap between them is the profit.
- The instant model is the cheapest to launch: Orders route to outside liquidity, the provider handles settlement, and the platform earns on the markup. The build comes down to a frontend and an API key.
- The ecosystem model spreads the risk: New services bill the same users. That is how Coinbase makes money now: subscriptions and services generate roughly 40% of its total revenue.
Use Cases: How Real Platforms Make Money
Public numbers show three working answers: micro-fees on huge volume, a growing layer of subscriptions, and a margin built into the quoted rate. Each platform picks the stream that carries the business and the one that covers it when the first stream stalls.
How the market leaders split their income:
- Diversification and subscriptions (Coinbase): Trading fees generate 56.5% of revenue, or $4.06 billion for FY2025. Subscriptions and services make up 39.4%, or $2.83 billion, and that segment grows much faster than fees. Twelve separate products inside the ecosystem each clear $100 million a year.
- Massive volume (Binance): Binance charges a flat 0.10% for every account trading under $1 million a month. The flat rate holds up on the share of global volume Binance carries.
- Hidden margins (brokers and instant swaps): These services quote one all-in price, and the profit sits inside it. Their cost base is the liquidity they buy and the routing they run, and revenue moves with conversion volume.
How much money do crypto exchanges make?
| Platform | Annual revenue | Period | Data source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binance | ~$17.5B | Mid-2025 | Outside estimate |
| Coinbase | $7.18B | FY2025 | Official report |
| Kraken | $1.6B (adj.) | 2024 | Company disclosure |
| Gemini | $180M | 2025 | Public filings |
Sources: Coinbase Q4'25 shareholder letter, Kraken 2024 financial highlights, Gemini Space Station reported revenue, and the CoinLedger estimate cited above for Binance. OKX, KuCoin, Bybit and Bitfinex stay private, so any figure circulating for them is a third-party estimate.
A rule for founders: Read outside revenue estimates for private exchanges as a wide range. Analysts multiply public trading volume by an assumed average fee. The same daily volume produces $215,000 at the cheapest tier or $4.4 million at the most expensive one. The gap between those two guesses runs into billions.
How to Increase Revenue
Exchange revenue is a fee rate multiplied by a volume base, and growth comes from the base. Raising rates puts your largest traders in play for competitors. Growth means widening the base or billing more services to the same accounts.
Four levers move it:
| Lever | What moves it | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Turnover | Fast execution, mobile apps, local payment options | The transaction base your fee applies to |
| Value per account | Tiered schedules, VIP programs | The share of a user's volume that stays with you |
| Calendar income | Custody, subscriptions, lending | Revenue stability in a zero-volume quarter |
| Coverage | Assets, networks, and payment methods you support | How often a user finishes a transaction on your platform |
Coverage feeds turnover directly: every transaction a user completes on your platform enlarges the base the fee percentage applies to.
Earning on Assets Outside Your Listing Sheet
Every exchange supports a finite set of coins and networks. User demand runs wider than that set. The rest can sit on outside infrastructure, and the exchange takes a share of every swap that runs through it. That is how a lot of crypto companies make money on flow they route somewhere else.
OKX built the cross-chain transfers in its DEX on ChangeNOW's bridge, covering 11 networks including Bitcoin, Solana, Arbitrum, and Tron. The ChangeNOW Exchange API sources 1,500+ assets across 90+ networks from centralized and decentralized venues. Partner commission starts at 0.4% per swap and is set per asset and pair. Integration runs about a week, and a white-label option keeps the flow under your own brand.
Conclusion
How do crypto exchanges make money? By charging several groups for different things. Traders pay per trade, issuers pay to list, borrowers pay interest, subscribers pay monthly.
Which of those a platform can bill for comes down to its model: an order book charges for the match and sells listings, a broker keeps what sits inside its own quote, and an ecosystem bills the same user across several products.
