Futures
Binance Futures Fees (2026): Maker, Taker, Funding and the Real Cost of a Trade
What does one Binance Futures trade actually cost? Full 2026 breakdown of maker/taker rates on USDT-M and COIN-M, the BNB discount, funding rate mechanics, and the liquidation fee most traders forget — with a worked example on a 10,000 USDT position.
Here is the short answer first. If you open and close a 10,000 USDT position on Binance USDT-M Futures at VIP0 rates using market orders, you pay about 10 USDT in trading fees — 5 USDT to open, 5 USDT to close. Pay in BNB and it drops to 9 USDT. Use limit (maker) orders on both sides and it falls to 4 USDT, or 3.6 USDT with the BNB discount. On top of that sit two costs that are not printed on the order ticket: the funding rate, which flows between longs and shorts every few hours, and the liquidation fee of roughly 1.25% of position value — by far the most expensive fee on the platform if you ever trigger it.
Everything below is based on Binance's official fee schedule and FAQ pages, verified in July 2026. Let's go through each layer of cost in order.
The Fee Table: USDT-M, COIN-M and Spot Compared
Binance charges futures fees as a percentage of the notional value of your trade — the full size of the position, not your margin. There are two fee tiers that matter for every order: maker (your limit order rests on the book and adds liquidity) and taker (your order fills immediately against the book, e.g. a market order).
At VIP0, the standard tier for regular users:
| Market | Maker | Taker | BNB Discount | With BNB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USDT-M Futures (USDⓈ-M) | 0.02% | 0.05% | 10% | 0.018% / 0.045% |
| COIN-M Futures | 0.02% | 0.05% | Not applicable | 0.02% / 0.05% |
| Spot (for comparison) | 0.10% | 0.10% | 25% | 0.075% / 0.075% |
Three things in this table trip people up constantly:
The BNB discount is 10% on futures, not 25%. The famous 25% BNB fee discount applies to spot trading. On futures, Binance's fee schedule only lists a 10% discount, and only for USDⓈ-M contracts. If you assumed your futures fees would drop by a quarter when you toggled BNB payment, they won't — 0.05% taker becomes 0.045%, not 0.0375%.
COIN-M gets no BNB discount at all. The headline maker/taker rates are the same 0.02% / 0.05%, but the official schedule only mentions the 10% BNB rebate for USDⓈ-M contracts. If you trade coin-margined perpetuals or delivery contracts, plan around the full rate.
Futures rates look cheap next to spot — until you size them by notional. 0.05% is half of spot's 0.10%, but futures positions are typically many times larger than the margin behind them, which brings us to the most important clarification in this whole article.
A note on USDC-margined contracts: Binance has run promotional pricing on USDC pairs, including a 0% maker fee for Regular Users. The last officially confirmed promotional window we could verify ran to February 10, 2026 (maker 0% / taker 0.04%). Whether it has been extended since is not confirmed — do not assume 0% maker because an older article said so. Check the live fee page before you route volume there.
Worked Example: What a 10,000 USDT Position Really Costs
The single most misunderstood fact about futures fees: fees are charged on notional value and have nothing to do with your leverage setting.
If you post 1,000 USDT of margin and open a position at 10x leverage, your notional position size is 10,000 USDT — and every fee is calculated on that 10,000 USDT. Trading at 20x with 500 USDT margin for the same 10,000 USDT position? Identical fees. Leverage changes your liquidation distance and your risk, not your fee bill. What leverage does change is the fee relative to your margin: that 10 USDT round trip is 0.1% of the notional, but a full 1% of your 1,000 USDT margin at 10x — and 2% of your margin at 20x.
Here is the round-trip cost on a 10,000 USDT notional position, USDT-M, VIP0:
| Execution | Open Fee | Close Fee | Round Trip | With BNB (-10%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taker in, taker out (market orders) | 5.00 USDT | 5.00 USDT | 10.00 USDT | 9.00 USDT |
| Maker in, maker out (limit orders) | 2.00 USDT | 2.00 USDT | 4.00 USDT | 3.60 USDT |
The spread between full-taker and full-maker execution is 6 USDT per 10,000 USDT of notional — a 60% fee reduction just from using resting limit orders. For active traders doing dozens of round trips, this is the difference that compounds. If you're still getting oriented on how margin, notional and leverage relate, our guide How Binance Futures Work covers the mechanics.
Funding Rates: The Fee That Isn't Binance's
Perpetual contracts never expire, so exchanges use a funding rate to keep the contract price tethered to the spot index. Two things make funding different from trading fees:
It flows between traders, not to Binance. When the funding rate is positive, longs pay shorts; when negative, shorts pay longs. Binance does not take a cut of funding payments. The amount you pay or receive is simply: notional position value × funding rate. Hold a 10,000 USDT long through a settlement where funding is +0.01%, and 1 USDT moves from your account to the shorts. Hold through a negative print and you collect instead.
It only hits you if you hold through settlement. By default, funding settles every 8 hours at 00:00, 08:00 and 16:00 UTC. Some contracts settle every 4 hours instead. There is also an escalation rule: if the funding rate in the previous period touches its cap, Binance can switch that contract to hourly settlement, and it reverts to the normal schedule only after 16 consecutive periods with the rate at or below 0.025%. In a violent squeeze, this means funding can bill you far more often than you expected.
Funding rates are capped. For BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT and similar majors, the cap is 0.75 × the maintenance margin rate; for most other contracts it is ±2%. A ±2% cap on an hourly schedule is not theoretical — during extreme dislocations, holding the wrong side of a small-cap perp can cost 2% of notional per hour.
To check what a contract has actually been charging, use the official history: on the Binance Futures site, go to Data → Futures Data → Funding Rate History. Before holding any position through multiple settlements — especially overnight or over a weekend — look at the recent prints. A persistently positive rate is a real carrying cost for longs that no maker-fee optimization will offset.
The Liquidation Fee: The Most Expensive Fee Nobody Budgets For
When a position gets liquidated, Binance charges a liquidation clearance fee calculated as a rate multiplied by the notional value of the position. For major USDT perpetuals such as BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT, that rate is about 1.25%; some contracts are higher (XMRUSDT, for example, is listed at 2%). The fee is directed into the insurance fund, which backstops the platform against negative-balance losses.
Run the numbers on our standard 10,000 USDT position:
- One taker fill: 5 USDT
- Full taker round trip: 10 USDT
- Liquidation fee: ~125 USDT — 25 times a single taker fill, and that's before counting the margin you lost on the position itself.
This is why obsessing over maker rebates while trading at high leverage without a stop-loss is optimizing the wrong number. A single liquidation erases the fee savings of dozens of perfectly executed maker round trips. The practical defense is simple: close positions yourself before the exchange does it for you. A stop-market order that exits you near your liquidation price costs the ordinary taker fee — 0.05% instead of 1.25%. Reducing leverage, which moves the liquidation price further away, is the other lever. Avoiding liquidation is worth more than every fee discount on this page combined.
How to Actually Pay Less
In order of impact for most traders:
- Don't get liquidated. Use stop-losses and sane leverage. This dwarfs everything else (1.25% vs 0.05%).
- Enter and exit with maker orders where your strategy allows. 0.02% vs 0.05% cuts a round trip from 10 to 4 USDT per 10,000 notional.
- Enable BNB fee payment for USDT-M. A flat 10% off — smaller than spot's 25%, but free money if you hold BNB anyway. Remember it does not apply to COIN-M.
- Mind your funding windows. If you don't need to hold through 00:00/08:00/16:00 UTC on a contract printing high positive funding, closing before settlement is a legitimate cost decision.
- Watch official promotions. USDC pairs have had 0% maker promos for Regular Users — but verify the current window on the fee page rather than trusting dated articles (the last confirmed window ended February 10, 2026).
FAQ
Does higher leverage mean higher fees? No. Fees are a percentage of notional position value. A 10,000 USDT position costs the same in fees at 5x, 10x or 20x. Leverage changes how large that fee is relative to your margin, and how close your liquidation price sits — not the fee itself.
Is the BNB discount on futures 25% like on spot? No — this is the most common mix-up. Spot gets 25% off with BNB; USDⓈ-M futures get 10% (0.05% taker → 0.045%). COIN-M futures get no BNB discount at all per the official fee schedule.
Does Binance profit from funding rates? No. Funding payments transfer directly between long and short position holders; Binance takes no cut. It settles every 8 hours by default (4 hours on some contracts, hourly in extreme conditions after a cap-touching period), and only affects positions held through the settlement timestamp.
How big is the liquidation fee really? For BTCUSDT/ETHUSDT-class USDT perpetuals, about 1.25% of notional — roughly 125 USDT on a 10,000 USDT position, versus 5 USDT for a taker fill. Some contracts run higher (e.g. 2% on XMRUSDT). The fee goes to the insurance fund. Exiting via stop-loss before liquidation costs a fraction of this.
Disclaimer: All rates above reflect Binance's official fee schedule and FAQ (trading fees, funding rates) as verified in July 2026 at VIP0 level. Binance adjusts fees, discounts and promotions over time — always confirm on the live official fee page before trading. This article is educational content, not financial advice.