A perp DEX is a decentralised exchange for perpetual futures: you trade from your own wallet, and the order book or price engine runs on a blockchain or on a system that settles to one. A CEX is a centralised exchange like Binance or Bybit, which holds your funds and runs its own matching engine. The question most traders ask is simple: which is cheaper to trade on? We measured it on the same orders for three of each.
On the CEX side: Binance, Bybit and OKX. On the DEX side: Hyperliquid (an on-chain order book), Lighter (an order book whose trades are proven with zero-knowledge proofs) and Variational (which quotes you a price instead of showing a book). All six list BTC and ETH perpetuals; CostDepth samples all of them every 5 minutes.
The fees
| Venue | Type | Maker | Taker | Fee on $100k market order |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Binance | CEX | 0.02% | 0.05% | $50.00 |
| Bybit | CEX | 0.02% | 0.055% | $55.00 |
| OKX | CEX | 0.02% | 0.05% | $50.00 |
| Hyperliquid | DEX | 0.015% | 0.045% | $45.00 |
| Lighter | DEX | 0% | 0% | $0.00 |
| Variational | DEX | 0% | 0% | $0.00 |
This table already settles most of the question for small and mid-size orders. Lighter's standard accounts and Variational charge nothing to trade. Hyperliquid, the best-known perp DEX, charges a fee in the same range as the CEXs: 0.045% at its base tier. So “DEXs are cheaper” is true for some DEXs and not others. Lighter's premium accounts, built for high-frequency traders, do pay a small fee; the standard account is the one most people use.
The total cost of a market order
Base taker fee (teal) plus median spread and slippage (orange), basis points. 6 Nov 2026, 00:00 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 03:00 UTC.
Show the numbers
| Venue | Fee | Spread + slippage | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lighter | 0.00 bps | 0.37 bps | 0.37 bps |
| Variational | 0.00 bps | 0.63 bps | 0.63 bps |
| Hyperliquid | 4.5 bps | 0.18 bps | 4.7 bps |
| Binance | 5.0 bps | 0.02 bps | 5.0 bps |
| OKX | 5.0 bps | 0.03 bps | 5.0 bps |
| Bybit | 5.5 bps | 0.07 bps | 5.6 bps |
Lighter was the cheapest at $3.67 for $100,000, followed by Variational at $6.29. Then there is a big step to Hyperliquid ($46.76) and the three CEXs (Binance $50.24, Bybit $55.74, OKX $50.27). The orange part of each bar shows something less obvious: the CEX books were the cheapest to cross. Binance's spread and slippage on $100,000 was $0.24, Lighter's $3.67 and Variational's $6.29. The DEXs win on fee, not on depth.
| Venue | BTC $1k | BTC $100k | BTC $1M | ETH $100k | ETH $1M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lighter | 0.23 | 0.37 | 0.89 | 0.64 | 1.7 |
| Variational | 0.56 | 0.63 | 1.7 | 0.91 | 4.1 |
| Hyperliquid | 4.6 | 4.7 | 5.1 | 4.9 | 5.7 |
| Binance | 5.0 | 5.0 | 5.4 | 5.1 | 6.0 |
| OKX | 5.0 | 5.0 | 5.3 | 5.1 | 5.7 |
| Bybit | 5.5 | 5.6 | 6.1 | 5.7 | 6.9 |
The fee-free DEXs stay cheapest at every size we sample, up to $1M. Among the venues that charge a fee, the order shifts a little with size, because depth starts to count. On ETH at $1M, Variational's quote widened to 4.1 bps, but even that ($409) stayed below the fee alone on any of the CEXs ($500 to $550 per million). Lighter's ETH book cost 1.7 bps at $1M.
With maker orders the picture changes. A post-only limit order pays no spread, and the maker fee is 0.02% on Binance, Bybit and OKX, 0.015% on Hyperliquid and 0% on Lighter and Variational. A patient trader on a CEX pays $20 per $100,000 instead of $50 to $55, which narrows the gap a lot, though a limit order may not fill.
Depth: who can take a large order?
In our live snapshots, resting orders within 0.1% of the mid price (both sides) came to about $30.0M on OKX, $43.7M on Hyperliquid and $15.6M on Lighter for BTC. For Binance and Bybit we could only see roughly the first $2.5M per side, so their figures (at least $5.1M and $5.2M) are lower limits. Lighter's public feed lists up to 250 single orders per side, so very large orders may see more liquidity than we count. Our liquidity ranking has the full table.
Funding: hourly on the DEXs, 8-hourly on the CEXs
| Venue | Interval | Rate per interval | Per day | Per day on $100k long |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Binance | 8 h | 0.01% | 0.03% | $30.00 |
| Bybit | 8 h | 0.0019% | 0.006% | $5.70 |
| OKX | 8 h | 0.0038% | 0.011% | $11.50 |
| Hyperliquid | 1 h | 0.0013% | 0.03% | $30.00 |
| Lighter | 1 h | 0.0012% | 0.029% | $28.80 |
| Variational | 8 h | 0.01% | 0.03% | $30.00 |
Hyperliquid and Lighter settle funding every hour; Binance, Bybit and OKX every 8 hours. Hourly funding spreads the cost evenly: a position pays for roughly the hours it is open, instead of paying (or skipping) a full 8-hour payment depending on whether it is open at the settlement time. The daily total still depends on the rate. In our readings the daily cost of a $100,000 BTC long ranged from $5.70 to $30.00. Over months the gap can be large: in our Hyperliquid vs Binance study, a BTC long paid roughly twice as much funding on Hyperliquid as on Binance between 2023 and 2026.
What the numbers do not show
Trading on a DEX adds costs that are not in an order book: moving funds on-chain (bridge or network fees), and sometimes a fee to withdraw. Variational charges a flat $0.10 to deposit or withdraw. On a CEX, deposits are usually free but withdrawals have a fee, and you hold your funds with the exchange. Risks differ too: smart contracts, bridges and oracles on one side, custody and account rules on the other. None of that is priced here, and none of it is advice.
On pure trading cost, in early November 2026, the fee-free perp DEXs were clearly cheaper for market orders up to $1M, while the CEXs had the deepest books and the cheapest spreads. Hyperliquid's fee puts it in the CEX price range. Run the comparison for your own size on the calculator.
Method
CostDepth reads each venue's BTC and ETH perpetual order book every 5 minutes, walks it for market orders from $1k to $1M from the mid price, and stores hourly averages. We used the median hour (6 Nov 2026, 00:00 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 03:00 UTC), buy and sell averaged, and added each venue's base taker fee from CostDepth's fee files (official fee pages and docs, 5–6 November 2026). Lighter and Variational joined the sampler on 6 November, so they have 82 hours instead of 100.
Variational has no public order book. It quotes an all-in price for $1k, $100k and $1M orders (a request-for-quote model); CostDepth turns those quotes into a book that fills at exactly those prices. Lighter's public endpoint lists up to 250 single orders per side, which CostDepth merges by price.
Funding readings come from CostDepth's live funding API, read every 5 minutes from 10 Nov 2026, 03:42 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 04:33 UTC (12 readings). That window is short; it shows the size and the interval, not a long-run average.
Not included: deposit and withdrawal costs, gas or bridge fees, and the different risks of each kind of venue (custody on a CEX, smart-contract and bridge risk on a DEX). Fee discounts from tokens, VIP levels and referrals are left out.
The numbers behind every chart and table are in data.json (free to reuse with a credit to CostDepth). This is fee and cost data, not financial advice.