# What a Zero-Fee Trade Actually Costs on Lighter > Lighter charges 0% maker and 0% taker. We measured the costs that are not called fees: spread, slippage at three sizes, funding and gas, across eight markets on 18 August 2026. Source: https://lighterpedia.com/guides/fees/what-a-zero-fee-trade-actually-costs Lighter's entire pitch is one number: zero. Standard accounts pay 0% maker and 0% taker, and that is not a promotion or an introductory rate, it is the model. The claim is true. It is also not the same as free, and nobody seems to have published what the difference actually is. So we measured it. Not the fee schedule, which is easy to read and already covered in our [Lighter fees guide](/guides/fees). The other things: what it costs to cross the book, what funding takes while you hold, and what Ethereum charges to get your money in and out. This page is the arithmetic on a real order book at a real moment, with the method stated first so you can decide how much weight to give it. The trading fee is genuinely 0% on every market we checked. The costs that remain are execution, funding and gas. On BTC a $10,000 round trip cost roughly **0.59 basis points** of slippage. On SEI the same trade cost **11.18**. On the Anthropic pre-IPO market it cost **62.38**, which is more than a fee-charging exchange would have taken. Zero-fee is real, and it is not the whole cost. ## What we measured and how Putting the method first rather than in a footnote, because it is what makes everything below worth quoting. Every figure on this page was read from Lighter's own public API on **18 August 2026 at 09:56 UTC**, in a single pass. Three endpoints did the work: `/api/v1/orderBookDetails` for the fee schedule, margin fractions and 24-hour volume, `/api/v1/orderBookOrders` for the resting order book, and `/api/v1/funding-rates` for the funding readings. Ethereum's gas price came from a public JSON-RPC node at block 25,781,224. The market set is eight names picked to span the range rather than to flatter it: **BTC, ETH and SOL** as the deep crypto markets, **DOGE and SEI** as thinner ones, **LIT** because it is Lighter's own token, **NVDA** as a tokenised equity and **ANTHROPIC** as a pre-IPO contract. Slippage is calculated by sweeping a notional amount through the resting book and comparing the volume-weighted fill price against the mid. We did this at $1,000, $10,000 and $100,000, in both directions, for each market. Now the limits, which are real: - **This is one snapshot, not a study.** A single reading at one minute on one day. Spreads widen and tighten constantly, and a Sunday morning book is not a Wednesday afternoon book. - **The book we read is the top 200 resting orders per side**, which is the maximum the endpoint returns. Every sweep below filled inside that window, so no figure is truncated, but the depth totals are floors rather than the whole book. - **Slippage is simulated, not traded.** We swept the book arithmetically. We did not send the orders, so nothing here accounts for the book moving as you hit it, or for anyone else trading in the same second. - **Funding is a single reading.** A holding-period funding cost needs a time series, and we have one point. Where we express funding as a cost below, it is explicitly "if this reading had held," not "this is what you would have paid." None of the numbers here are estimates or industry figures. Where we could not measure something, it is not in the table. Our [methodology page](/methodology) covers how we handle corrections. ## What Lighter actually charges Start with the part that needs no measurement, only checking. Lighter's API publishes a per-market fee schedule, and on **every one of the eight markets** the response read `maker_fee: "0.0000"` and `taker_fee: "0.0000"`. That includes the pre-IPO and tokenised-equity markets, where you might reasonably expect a surcharge for a harder-to-price instrument. There is none. Two non-zero numbers do sit in that same response. **`liquidation_fee` reads 1.0000**, a 1% charge on position value if you are closed out rather than closing yourself. And **`min_quote_amount` reads 10.000000**, a $10 minimum order across the board. The one place a Lighter trading fee exists at all is the optional Premium tier. Per [Lighter's published fee schedule](https://docs.lighter.xyz/trading/trading-fees), read 18 August 2026, a Premium account with nothing staked pays 0.0040% maker and 0.0280% taker, falling to 0.0028% and 0.0196% at 500,000 LIT staked. You do not need it to trade at zero, and the full mechanics are in our [complete fee walkthrough](/guides/fees/lighter-fees-explained). ## What gas costs, and why it is not a per-trade cost This is the part most cost comparisons get structurally wrong. Lighter matches orders off-chain and settles proofs to Ethereum, so **you do not pay gas per trade**. You pay it twice: once to deposit, once to withdraw. That changes what kind of cost it is. Gas on Lighter is a fixed toll on entering and leaving, so it divides across however many trades you place in between. Ten trades or a thousand, the on-chain footprint is the same two transactions. At the moment we measured, Ethereum's suggested gas price was **0.047 gwei**. At that level the arithmetic barely matters: a transaction consuming somewhere in the usual 100,000 to 200,000 gas range costs between 0.0000047 and 0.0000094 ETH, which against the $1,896.06 ETH mid on Lighter at the same instant is roughly **one to two cents**. We are quoting a gas-units range rather than a measured figure there, because we did not execute a deposit and cannot report Lighter's actual contract consumption as fact. The honest caveat is that 0.047 gwei is unusually cheap for Ethereum. Gas is the one cost here that can move by two orders of magnitude in an afternoon, and it does so for reasons that have nothing to do with Lighter. Plan the timing of deposits and withdrawals, not the timing of trades. ## Funding: the cost nobody counts Funding is not an exchange fee. It moves between longs and shorts to keep the perpetual tethered to its reference, and Lighter takes no cut of it. It still leaves your account, which is why it belongs in a cost total. Lighter pays funding **at each hour mark**, per [its funding documentation](https://docs.lighter.xyz/trading/funding). The rate combines a premium component sampled every minute against the index price with a base interest component, then gets clamped: a small clamp of 0.05% pulls a near-equilibrium premium toward the base rate, and a big clamp caps the whole thing at 4% per 8-hour period. Here is what the rates read at 09:56 UTC on 18 August 2026, alongside the reference venues the same endpoint publishes for BTC:
Lighter funding rate readings, single sample, 18 August 2026 09:56 UTC
MarketLighter funding rateDirection
BTC+0.0008%Longs pay
ETH-0.0040%Shorts pay
SOL-0.0048%Shorts pay
DOGE+0.0096%Longs pay
SEI+0.0096%Longs pay
LIT+0.0096%Longs pay
NVDA+0.0032%Longs pay
ANTHROPIC+0.0032%Longs pay
The three markets reading exactly +0.0096% are worth noticing. Lighter's API also publishes a `base_interest_rate` of 0.0100% per market, and the documentation says a premium inside the small clamp defaults funding toward that base rate. Three unrelated markets landing on the same value is what a clamp looks like from the outside, not a coincidence. The more useful comparison is across venues. On BTC at that instant, **Lighter read +0.0008% while Binance's reference read +0.006616%, Bybit's +0.001919% and Hyperliquid's -0.00405%**. Four venues, four different signs and magnitudes, same asset, same second. Funding is a condition of the market you are in rather than a property of the exchange you chose, and anyone telling you a venue "has cheap funding" is describing weather. One reading is not a holding-period cost. Funding flips sign, and a rate that is trivial at one hour can be the largest line in your total by the next day. Treat the table above as a demonstration of scale, not as a forecast. Nothing here is financial advice or a prediction. ## Spread and slippage: where the real money goes This is the cost that replaces the fee, and it is the reason "zero-fee" and "free" are different words.
Cost of crossing the book, in basis points from mid. Single sample, 18 August 2026 09:56 UTC.
MarketSpreadBuy $1kBuy $10kBuy $100kAsk depth read24h volume
BTC0.33 bps0.400.430.60$5.71M$583.7M
ETH0.63 bps0.320.470.80$7.38M$237.1M
SOL0.13 bps0.901.101.56$7.80M$31.0M
LIT2.53 bps1.733.4214.90$1.13M$8.37M
NVDA2.63 bps1.882.304.81$1.20M$641K
DOGE4.87 bps2.435.057.99$1.23M$538K
SEI7.73 bps3.874.5119.44$262K$20.7K
ANTHROPIC46.56 bps27.0129.1481.20$737K$90.5K
The spread on [BTC](/markets/btc) was a third of a basis point. On [Anthropic](/markets/anthropic) it was 46.56, roughly 140 times wider, and that is before you move any size at all. Buying $100,000 of Anthropic cost 81.2 basis points against 0.6 on BTC. A few things in that table are worth sitting with. **SOL had the tightest spread and worse slippage than ETH.** A 0.13 basis point spread on the touch says nothing about what happens at $10,000, where SOL cost 1.10 against ETH's 0.47. The top of the book and the depth behind it are different questions, and the first one is what a price display shows you. **Volume is a better guide than spread, and it is not perfect either.** SEI traded $20,700 in 24 hours and cost 4.51 basis points at $10,000. NVDA traded $641,000 and cost 2.30. But LIT traded $8.37M and still cost 14.90 basis points at $100,000, because a $1.13M book runs out faster than a busy tape suggests. **The asymmetry is real.** On SOL, buying $10,000 cost 1.10 basis points and selling cost 0.18. On SEI it ran the other way, 4.51 to buy and 6.67 to sell. Order books are lopsided at any given moment, and which side you are on is part of your cost. **The pre-IPO markets are a different instrument.** Anthropic's 29.14 basis points at $10,000 is not a defect, it is what an internally priced contract on a private company looks like when nobody is obliged to make a market in it. If you trade those, read [how pre-IPO perps work](/guides/trading/lighter-pre-ipo-perps) first, because the execution cost is the smallest of the things that make them unusual. ## One round trip, all in Four separate numbers are not an answer. Here is the single figure, for a $10,000 position opened and closed as a taker, held for one funding interval, using the measured values above.
All-in cost of a $10,000 taker round trip, held one funding interval. Built from the single 18 August 2026 sample.
MarketTrading feeEntry slippageExit slippageFunding, if the reading heldAll in
BTC$0.00$0.43$0.16$0.08$0.67
ETH$0.00$0.47$0.39$0.40 earned$0.46
SOL$0.00$1.10$0.18$0.48 earned$0.80
SEI$0.00$4.51$6.67$0.96$12.14
ANTHROPIC$0.00$29.14$33.24$0.32$62.70
Gas is left out of that table on purpose. It is a per-visit cost rather than a per-trade one, and adding a cent or two to each row would imply it scales with the trade when it does not. The two rows marked "earned" are not a trick. A long in ETH or SOL was receiving funding at that moment rather than paying it, which is why the all-in cost is below the pure execution cost. That flips whenever the rate does. For scale: the same $10,000 taker round trip at Hyperliquid's published 0.045% taker rate is **$9.00 in fees alone**, before that venue's own spread and slippage. Our [Lighter versus Hyperliquid comparison](/compare/lighter-vs-hyperliquid) sources both schedules. So on BTC, Lighter's all-in cost came in at roughly 7% of Hyperliquid's fee line. On Anthropic, it came in at seven times that fee line. The venue did not change between those two sentences. The market did. That is the finding, and it is not the one the marketing on either side would give you. **Zero fees make your market and size selection matter more, not less.** When the fee is a fixed 4.5 basis points, a two basis point difference in slippage is noise. When the fee is zero, slippage is the entire bill. ## What this does not cover Things we did not measure, listed so nobody quotes this page for them: - **Withdrawal and bridge costs beyond base gas.** We read Ethereum's gas price, not Lighter's contract consumption, and not any bridging you do to get USDC to Ethereum in the first place. - **Anything over a holding period.** One sample. Funding over a week, spread through a volatile hour, slippage during a liquidation cascade: all real costs, none of them in these numbers. - **Maker execution.** Every figure here is a taker crossing the book. Resting a limit order changes the arithmetic completely, and costs you time and fill risk instead. - **The Premium tier in practice.** We read its published rates but did not trade on it, so we cannot say what the lower taker latency is worth against the fee. - **Price impact from your own order.** The sweeps are arithmetic against a static book. If you want to reproduce any of this, the endpoints are named in the method section and the API is public and unauthenticated. If you find we got something wrong, the [contact page](/contact) is the fastest route, and corrections get a dated note rather than a silent edit. ## Bottom line Lighter's zero is real. We checked it per market rather than taking the marketing copy for it, and every market in our set returned 0.0000 on both sides. Signing up through a [referral link](/referral) does not change that number in either direction, because there is no standard fee left to discount. What the zero does is strip away the one cost that used to dominate and leave you with the ones that were always underneath. On a deep market that is an enormous win: 0.67 basis points all in on BTC against 9 in fees alone somewhere else. On a thin market it is a warning, because 62 basis points to get in and out of Anthropic is a real cost that no fee schedule will show you. Read the [full fee mechanics](/guides/fees/lighter-fees-explained) for the schedule side of this, and the [disclaimer](/disclaimer) before you act on any of it. This is a cost measurement, not advice, and we take no view on whether any of these markets is worth trading. All-in cost of a $10,000 taker round trip on Lighter, held one funding interval (measured 18 August 2026, 09:56 UTC) MarketTrading feeEntry slippageExit slippageFundingAll in BTC$0.00$0.43$0.16$0.08$0.67 ETH$0.00$0.47$0.39$0.40 earned$0.46 SOL$0.00$1.10$0.18$0.48 earned$0.80 SEI$0.00$4.51$6.67$0.96$12.14 ANTHROPIC$0.00$29.14$33.24$0.32$62.70

Source: What a Zero-Fee Trade Actually Costs on Lighter — Lighterpedia. Single-sample measurement from Lighter’s public API, 18 August 2026.

`} /> ## FAQ ### Is Lighter really zero-fee? The trading fee really is zero. Lighter's public market API reports maker_fee 0.0000 and taker_fee 0.0000 on every market we checked on 18 August 2026, including the pre-IPO and tokenised-equity markets. What is not zero is the cost of crossing the spread, the funding you pay while holding a position, and the Ethereum gas on the deposit and withdrawal that bracket your time on the exchange. On a deep market those add up to well under a basis point per round trip. On a thin one they can exceed what a centralized exchange would have charged in fees. ### What does a $10,000 round trip cost on Lighter? On BTC, measured at 09:56 UTC on 18 August 2026, sweeping $10,000 through the resting book cost 0.43 basis points on the way in and 0.16 on the way out, so roughly $0.59 in execution plus $0.08 of funding if the rate reading at that moment had held for its interval. On the SEI market the same $10,000 round trip cost 11.18 basis points of execution, about $11.18. On the Anthropic pre-IPO market it cost 62.38 basis points, about $62.38. Those are single snapshots, not averages. ### Does slippage cancel out Lighter's zero-fee advantage? Not on the deep markets. A $10,000 BTC round trip cost roughly 0.59 basis points of slippage in our measurement, against 9 basis points of pure fees for the same round trip at Hyperliquid's published 0.045% taker rate. On the thinnest markets the picture reverses: a $10,000 round trip on Anthropic cost about 62 basis points of execution, which is more than a fee-charging venue would have taken. Size and market choice matter far more than the fee schedule. ### How much gas do you pay to use Lighter? Gas applies to the deposit and the withdrawal, not to individual trades, because matching happens off-chain and settles to Ethereum in batches. That makes it a fixed cost of entering and leaving rather than a per-trade one, so it amortizes across however many trades you place in between. Ethereum's suggested gas price was 0.047 gwei at block 25,781,224 on 18 August 2026, low enough that the transaction cost rounded to cents. ### Is funding a fee on Lighter? No, funding is a transfer between longs and shorts rather than revenue for the exchange, but it leaves your account all the same, so it belongs in an honest cost total. Lighter pays it at each hour mark. At the moment we sampled, Lighter's own published rate on BTC was +0.0008% while Binance's reference read +0.006616% and Hyperliquid's read -0.00405%, which is a reminder that funding is a market condition rather than a property of the venue.