Lighter vs Variational: fees and real trading cost
Both charge no trading fee. Lighter has a public order book; Variational quotes a price instead. The cheaper one is whichever spread is tighter for your size.
Live order book · updated · refreshed every 20 seconds
BTC futures market buy, Lighter against Variational
| Size | Lighter fee + slippage | Variational fee + slippage |
|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | $0.00 + $0.27 | $0.00 + $0.50 |
| $100,000 | $0.00 + $5.14 | $0.00 + $5.01 |
| $1,000,000 | $0.00 + $112.30 | $0.00 + $215.40 |
Try your own size on Lighter
USDT
Lighter fee · Standard · 0%fee-free
Spread + slippage · live Lighter book, 20:18:05 UTC$5.14 (0.0051%)
Total cost$5.14
Lighter charges no trading fee. Join with referral code
Your only cost on Lighter is the spread: $5.14 (0.0051%) on this order.
Affiliate link to Lighter: CostDepth may earn a commission.
Variational is $0.13 cheaper than Lighter for this order.
Same order on Variational · All accounts
Trading fee · All accounts · 0%fee-free
Spread + slippage · live Variational book, 20:18:05 UTC$5.01 (0.005%)
Total cost$5.01
Variational charges no trading fee. Join with referral code
Your only cost on Variational is the spread: $5.01 (0.005%) on this order.
What differs between Lighter and Variational
- Lighter: Premium accounts get faster order handling for 0.004% maker / 0.028% taker, cut by up to 30% with LIT staked.
- Lighter: Funding is settled every hour, like Hyperliquid, so a 3-day hold counts 72 payments.
- Variational: Prices come from its public quotes for $1k, $100k and $1M orders; sizes above $1M show as beyond visible depth.
- Variational: Funding is published as a yearly rate and paid every funding interval (8 hours on BTC and ETH).