The fee an exchange advertises is almost never the fee you pay. Once you add the headline rate, the spread baked into the price on "simple" buy screens and the withdrawal charge, two platforms can be twenty times apart on the same purchase.
This calculator stacks all three layers. The preloaded rates are the ones published as of 28 August 2026 for the entry-level tier, with no volume discounts and no rebate for paying in the platform's own token. Amounts are shown in dollars as illustrative figures — they are not currency conversions of the published schedules.
The three layers of cost
The explicit fee. This is the one printed in the fee schedule. It splits into maker (you add liquidity to the order book with a limit order that does not fill immediately) and taker (you remove it by executing against an order already sitting there). Buy with a market order and you are always the taker, which is the more expensive side.
The spread. This is the invisible layer. "Buy in one click" interfaces do not charge you a separate fee: they hand you a worse price than the market. The cost is real, but it never appears on a line of its own. In Coinbase's simple app that variable charge can reach 1.875%, and the spread sits inside the price you are shown.
The withdrawal. Moving coins to your own wallet costs money, and on most platforms it is a flat amount per network rather than a percentage. On a $100 purchase it can be the largest of the three costs; on a $5,000 one it barely registers.
Published fees as of August 2026
| Platform | Maker | Taker | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binance | 0.100% | 0.100% | 0.075% when the fee is paid in BNB |
| Coinbase Advanced | 0.40% | 0.60% | $0–10,000 of 30-day volume |
| Coinbase (simple app) | — | — | Variable fee up to 1.875% plus spread in the price |
| Kraken | 0.40% | 0.80% | Tier 1 on the current official schedule |
| Bit2Me Pro | 0.5% | 0.6% | Lowest 30-day volume tier |
| Bit2Me (wallet) | — | — | 0.95% base; fiat purchases up to 1.99% |
Two caveats about this table. We do not list Bitstamp's fees because we could not confirm them on the company's own page, and a gap is better than a doubtful figure. And in Kraken's case, the 0.40%/0.80% pair from its official schedule differs from the historic Kraken Pro structure (0.25%/0.40% at low tiers): check which one applies to the specific product you intend to use before trusting the number.
Why the gap matters so much
A $1,000 purchase at 0.10% costs $1. The same purchase through a simple interface charging 1.875% plus half a point of spread costs $23.75. Repeat that twelve times a year and the difference is $273 you never invested: you paid it for convenience.
That money does not come back. For a position carrying 2.375% of entry cost to break even, the price has to rise 2.43% just to cover the way in — and the exit fee is still waiting.
What this calculator leaves out: currency conversion costs if you fund an account in a currency the platform does not hold, card deposit fees (usually far higher than a bank transfer), and the blockchain network fee on withdrawal, which moves with congestion. On that last one, the gas fees guide explains how it is calculated.
Before you pick a platform, check the licence
Cost matters, but it is the second criterion. Since 1 July 2026, with the end of the MiCA transitional period, only firms authorised as crypto-asset service providers by an EU national competent authority — or passporting an authorisation in from another member state — may serve customers in the Union. The older national registers that predated MiCA have been wound down, and appearing on one no longer entitles anyone to operate.
You can check this yourself: ESMA publishes the EU-wide register of authorised crypto-asset service providers, and each member state keeps its own list. Whatever country you live in, look the platform up in your own national regulator's public register before you open an account — a slick website and a European-sounding name prove nothing. The full set of criteria is in the guide to how to choose a safe exchange, and the regulatory background in crypto regulation.