The cheapest exchange
depends on which button you press
Every exchange charges Quick buy, market orders and limit orders differently, and most cut the rate as your monthly volume grows. Tell us how you buy, how much and how often, and we'll price them all on your pattern.
Same three buttons. Different prices on every exchange.
Frequently Asked Questions
Because the same exchange can charge you several times more for one route than another. Tapping "Buy" in the app takes an instant quote — typically 0.5% to 1.5% in fees, plus a spread hidden in the price. Placing a market order on the same exchange's order book is often 0.1%, and a limit order that waits to fill can be cheaper again. Most people never leave the instant screen, so the headline fee they see is the most expensive one. We ask how you buy and price every exchange on that route.
When an exchange quotes you an instant price it sits a little above the market price, and that gap is the spread. It is a real cost — often as large as the stated fee — but no Australian exchange publishes it, and it moves minute to minute. Rather than guess a number we would have to defend, the cost breakdown carries it as an explicit "not published" line whenever you buy instantly, so the total reads as a floor, not a promise. On the order book the spread is set by the market, is close to zero on major coins, and is not something the exchange charges.
Order-book exchanges charge two rates. A taker fee applies when you buy at a price someone is already offering — a market order. A maker fee applies when you set your own price and wait for someone to trade against it — a limit order — and it is lower because you are adding liquidity. Both usually step down as your 30-day trading volume rises. We never use the jargon on screen: you tell us whether you take the price shown, buy at market, or set your own price, and we read the right schedule.
Bank transfers and PayID are free on almost every Australian exchange. Debit and credit cards typically cost 2% to 4% of every deposit — on a $1,000 purchase that is more than the trading fee at most exchanges. Some exchanges do not accept cards or PayPal at all, and one or two have lost access to Australian bank rails entirely. Telling us how you pay both prices the deposit and filters out exchanges that cannot take your money the way you want to send it.
Order-book exchanges cut their percentage as your rolling 30-day traded volume grows — an exchange might charge 0.85% under $500 a month and 0.2% above $1 million. You do not need to know your tier: we work it out from how often you trade and your typical size, and show which band you land in. For most people that is the bottom band, which is exactly why the headline "from 0.1%" rate an exchange advertises is rarely the one you pay.
There is no Consumer Data Right feed or regulator dataset for crypto exchange pricing, so unlike our savings and mortgage data this cannot be pulled from an API. Fees and features are read from each exchange's own published fee page and curated by hand. Each exchange card shows when its figures were last checked, and anything not yet confirmed against the source carries an "Unverified" badge — check the exchange's site before acting on it.