Lighter fees: zero base rate, measured cost and tiers
Lighter fees at a glance
The default Lighter account pays 0% maker and 0% taker on perps. The rates come from docs.lighter.xyz, read on September 23, 2026. Lighter had the lowest cost of 43 venues for a $10,000 BTC market buy on September 25, 2026: 0.36 bps. That is 4.77 bps less than Binance in the same sweep (5.13 bps).
Lighter and Paradex are the 2 venues on these pages with a 0% base rate on both sides. On Lighter, the account type sets the fee and the order latency together, and the free Standard account has the slower taker path.
Lighter measured cost: rank 1 of 43 on BTC
Lighter charged no trading fee, so the full 0.36 bps of the $10,000 BTC buy came from spread and impact. A $1,000,000 BTC buy cost 1.47 bps on Lighter, 1.10 bps more than the $10,000 buy.
| Cost part | BTC $10,000 | BTC $100,000 | BTC $1,000,000 | ETH $10,000 | ETH $100,000 | ETH $1,000,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Place in the sweep | 1 of 43 | 1 of 42 | 1 of 37 | 1 of 43 | 1 of 42 | 1 of 35 |
| Taker fee, bps | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Half of the spread, bps | 0.36 | 0.54 | 0.54 | 0.40 | 0.50 | 0.50 |
| Price impact, bps | 0.00 | 0.32 | 0.93 | 0.00 | 0.41 | 0.90 |
| All-in cost, bps | 0.36 | 0.86 | 1.47 | 0.40 | 0.91 | 1.40 |
| All-in cost, USD | $0.36 | $8.61 | $146.55 | $0.40 | $9.11 | $139.73 |
What a zero Lighter fee leaves to pay
With no fee, the spread and the price impact are the full cost of a market order.
| Rate | Percent | bps | Fee on $10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | 0% | 0 bps | $0.00 |
| Taker | 0% | 0 bps | $0.00 |
Lighter fees vs Binance and Hyperliquid
Lighter undercuts both Binance and Hyperliquid on the base taker rate, by 5 and 4.5 bps.
| Metric | Lighter | Binance | Hyperliquid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base maker | 0% | 0.020% | 0.015% |
| Base taker | 0% | 0.050% | 0.045% |
| Lowest ladder taker | — | 0.017% from $25B | 0.024% from $7B |
| Measured BTC buy, $10,000, bps | 0.36 | 5.13 | 4.56 |
| Funding interval, hours | 1 | 8 | 1 |
Worked example: a $10,000 round trip on Lighter
Hypothetical: a $10,000 Lighter position opens and closes at one price, so only the trading fees apply. The fee total is zero, so the market-order cost on Lighter is only the spread and the price impact.
| Entry + exit | Entry fee | Exit fee | Total fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taker + taker, base | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
Lighter funding interval and leverage cap
Lighter settles funding every hour on every market. The Lighter BTC perpetual allows leverage of up to 50x.
- Funding payments occur at each hour mark. The clamp is 4% per 8 hours, or 0.5% per hour. docs.lighter.xyz, read September 23, 2026.
Lighter discounts and fee conditions
- The Standard account is the default and pays 0% maker and 0% taker, with 300 ms taker latency. docs.lighter.xyz, read September 23, 2026.
- The opt-in Premium account pays 0.0040% maker and 0.0280% taker with no LIT staked. At 500,000 LIT staked, the rates go down to 0.0028% and 0.0196%. docs.lighter.xyz, read September 23, 2026.
- Premium cuts the taker latency to 140 ms. The opt-in Plus account, for API volume, pays a flat 0.5 bps and gets higher rate limits. docs.lighter.xyz, read September 23, 2026.
More on Lighter
Sources
- Base rates: docs.lighter.xyz, read September 23, 2026
- BTC leverage cap: mainnet.zklighter.elliot.ai
- Funding interval: docs.lighter.xyz
- Measured cost: PerpFinder cost methodology