What is liquidity in crypto?
Liquidity is how easily you can buy or sell without moving the price. On an exchange it lives in the order book: the list of buy orders below the current price and sell orders above it. A liquid market has a tight spread (the gap between the best buy and best sell price) and a lot of money waiting close to the price. In a liquid market a large order barely moves the price; in a thin one it pushes the price against you, and that is what traders call slippage.
Trading volume is often used as a stand-in for liquidity, but volume is what already traded. Depth is what is available to trade right now. The standard way to measure it is to add up the orders within a small distance of the price: here, within 0.1% (where most orders up to a few million dollars fill) and within 1% (which a very large order, or a fast market, can reach).
BTC futures: depth within 0.1% of the price
Bids + asks within 0.1% of the mid price, median of 13 reads, 10 Nov 2026, 03:39 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 04:34 UTC. Exchanges marked ≥ in the table: our view of the book ended before 0.1%, so the real figure is higher (Binance and Bybit especially).
Show the numbers
| Exchange | Within 0.1% | Within 1% | Spread | Levels read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BingX | $334M | ≥ $1.5B | 0.04 bps | 2000 |
| OurBit | $279M | $317M | 0.01 bps | 650 |
| WEEX | $195M | $244M | 0.01 bps | 400 |
| MEXC | $151M | ≥ $734M | 0.01 bps | 2000 |
| LBank | $44.7M | ≥ $85.0M | 0.01 bps | 200 |
| Hyperliquid | $43.7M | ≥ $91.9M | 0.13 bps | 74 |
| OKX | ≥ $30.0M | ≥ $30.0M | 0.01 bps | 800 |
| CoinW | ≥ $21.2M | ≥ $21.2M | 0.01 bps | 40 |
| HTX | $18.7M | ≥ $40.2M | 0.01 bps | 300 |
| Lighter | $15.6M | ≥ $17.9M | 0.58 bps | 409 |
| Bitunix | ≥ $14.6M | ≥ $14.6M | 0.01 bps | 100 |
| Bitget | ≥ $11.4M | ≥ $11.4M | 0.01 bps | 200 |
| BloFin | ≥ $10.8M | ≥ $10.8M | 0.04 bps | 200 |
| Gate.io | $10.7M | ≥ $28.4M | 0.01 bps | 600 |
| KuCoin | ≥ $9.1M | ≥ $9.1M | 0.01 bps | 200 |
| Bybit | ≥ $5.2M | ≥ $5.2M | 0.01 bps | 161 |
| Binance | ≥ $5.1M | ≥ $5.1M | 0.01 bps | 255 |
| WhiteBIT | $2.8M | ≥ $8.9M | 0.01 bps | 200 |
The top of this chart needs care. BingX, OurBit, WEEX, MEXC displayed hundreds of millions of dollars within 0.1% of the BTC price. Those books are real in the sense that the exchange shows them, and our slippage study finds that market orders up to $1M barely move on them. But displayed orders can be cancelled before a large order reaches them, and nothing in a public book proves that a $50M order would fill. Treat these numbers as the most optimistic in the table.
At the other end, Binance and Bybit are not small books. We could only read the first $2.5M or so on each side of their futures books, and all of it sat within 0.019% of the price on Binance. Their depth within 0.1% is at least $5.1M and $5.2M, and in the stored hourly data a $1M BTC market order cost only a fraction of a basis point on both. OKX, whose public book we read 400 levels deep, showed ≥ $30.0M within 0.1%. Hyperliquid, the best-known on-chain venue, showed $43.7M, and Lighter $15.6M.
ETH futures
| Exchange | Within 0.1% | Within 1% | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| BingX | $165M | $669M | 0.10 bps |
| MEXC | $121M | $467M | 0.05 bps |
| OurBit | $117M | $199M | 0.05 bps |
| WEEX | $74.3M | $122M | 0.05 bps |
| Bitget | ≥ $27.9M | ≥ $27.9M | 0.05 bps |
| LBank | $27.1M | ≥ $62.8M | 0.05 bps |
| OKX | $26.4M | ≥ $53.6M | 0.05 bps |
| BloFin | ≥ $22.3M | ≥ $22.5M | 0.14 bps |
| CoinW | ≥ $20.4M | ≥ $20.4M | 0.05 bps |
| Hyperliquid | $19.6M | ≥ $105M | 0.47 bps |
| HTX | $14.4M | ≥ $36.5M | 0.05 bps |
| Lighter | $11.7M | ≥ $36.5M | 0.56 bps |
| Bitunix | ≥ $9.9M | ≥ $9.9M | 0.05 bps |
| KuCoin | $6.1M | ≥ $6.9M | 0.05 bps |
| Binance | ≥ $5.3M | ≥ $5.3M | 0.05 bps |
| Bybit | ≥ $5.1M | ≥ $5.1M | 0.05 bps |
| Gate.io | $3.3M | ≥ $14.2M | 0.05 bps |
| WhiteBIT | $1.2M | ≥ $15.3M | 0.05 bps |
Within 0.1% of the price, the ETH book was smaller than the BTC book on 15 of 18 exchanges, and the order of the ranking was broadly the same. The spread on ETH was one price tick (about 0.05 bps) on most centralised books and around 0.47 bps on Hyperliquid and 0.56 bps on Lighter.
Spot books, including Coinbase and Kraken
| Exchange | Within 0.1% | Within 1% | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| OurBit | $24.5M | $25.4M | 0.00 bps |
| WEEX | $22.8M | $44.4M | 0.00 bps |
| Bitget | ≥ $15.1M | ≥ $18.0M | 0.00 bps |
| Binance | $13.7M | ≥ $24.1M | 0.00 bps |
| Kraken | $13.7M | $40.4M | 0.01 bps |
| BingX | $10.3M | $26.7M | 0.00 bps |
| CoinW | ≥ $9.3M | ≥ $9.3M | 0.04 bps |
| OKX | $6.8M | ≥ $11.6M | 0.01 bps |
| Coinbase | $3.6M | $26.1M | 0.00 bps |
| LBank | $2.9M | $7.8M | 0.00 bps |
| Bybit | ≥ $2.5M | ≥ $4.6M | 0.01 bps |
| MEXC | $2.2M | $8.3M | 0.06 bps |
| HTX | $1.7M | ≥ $19.4M | 0.00 bps |
| WhiteBIT | $1.1M | ≥ $10.1M | 0.00 bps |
| Gate.io | $762k | $18.1M | 0.01 bps |
| KuCoin | ≥ $715k | ≥ $715k | 0.01 bps |
Spot liquidity is smaller across the board: the median BTC spot book held $6.8M within 0.1%, against $18.7M on futures. Binance's BTCUSDT spot book (read directly, 1,000 levels a side) held $13.7M within 0.1%. Coinbase's BTC-USD book, which we read in full (tens of thousands of levels), held $3.6M within 0.1% and $26.1M within 1%. Kraken's XBT/USD showed $13.7M and $40.4M. Both US books are among the deeper spot books once you look out to 1%, which matters for large orders.
| Exchange | Within 0.1% | Within 1% | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| OurBit | $11.7M | $23.3M | 0.05 bps |
| Bitget | $6.5M | ≥ $13.2M | 0.05 bps |
| WEEX | $6.2M | $23.1M | 0.05 bps |
| CoinW | ≥ $5.9M | ≥ $5.9M | 0.14 bps |
| Kraken | $5.9M | $26.3M | 0.05 bps |
| Binance | $4.4M | ≥ $15.7M | 0.05 bps |
| OKX | $3.4M | ≥ $11.2M | 0.05 bps |
| LBank | $3.0M | $3.5M | 10 bps |
| BingX | $2.4M | $12.5M | 0.10 bps |
| Coinbase | $2.2M | $12.6M | 0.05 bps |
| Bybit | ≥ $1.5M | ≥ $4.5M | 0.05 bps |
| HTX | $1.2M | ≥ $15.5M | 0.05 bps |
| KuCoin | $989k | ≥ $1.5M | 0.05 bps |
| MEXC | $599k | $5.2M | 0.05 bps |
| Gate.io | $382k | $5.6M | 0.05 bps |
| WhiteBIT | $216k | ≥ $3.0M | 0.05 bps |
How to use this
- If your orders are under $100,000 on BTC or ETH, every large exchange here has more than enough depth; compare fees instead.
- For orders in the millions, look at depth within 0.1% to 1%, and look at more than one read: depth moves all day.
- Be wary of very large displayed books on smaller exchanges. A book that never seems to move is worth testing with small orders first.
- Liquidity drops in fast markets and at quiet hours. See the best time of day to trade.
These are 13 reads on a single day in a calm market. Depth can halve in minutes during a sell-off. The calculator walks the live book for your exact size, and the status page shows which books are healthy right now.
Method
We read the public order book of every exchange CostDepth covers (BTC and ETH, USDT perpetual and spot; USD pairs on Coinbase and Kraken) 13 times between 10 Nov 2026, 03:39 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 04:34 UTC, about every 5 minutes, using the same endpoints and parsers as the live site. For each read we added up the dollar value of all resting orders within 0.1% and within 1% of the mid price, bids and asks together, and took the median of the reads.
Public books have limits. Most endpoints return a fixed number of price levels (for example 200, 500 or 1,000 per side), so on deep books our view can stop before 0.1% or 1% from the price. When that happens the figure is marked "≥": the real depth is at least that much. Binance futures, Bybit futures and Bybit spot refuse requests from our research server's location, so for those we used CostDepth's own live book endpoint (read from Frankfurt), which keeps only about the first $2.5M per side. Their figures are always lower limits and should not be read as small books.
Displayed depth is not the same as usable depth. Some exchanges show very large orders at or near the best price for hours; we report them as shown but cannot test whether they would fill. Hidden orders are not visible at all. Variational has no public book (it quotes prices) and is left out. Hyperliquid's figure includes coarser grouped levels further from the price.
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.