How We Rank Crypto Exchanges
Most "best exchange" lists hide their methodology. Ours is published in full. Here's exactly how we evaluate every exchange in our roster.
The four ranking criteria
40%
Cashback rate (effective fee impact)
We weight effective fee (after cashback) most heavily because it's the line item directly affecting your wallet. Headline cashback % alone doesn't make this list.
25%
Trading fees (base rate, withdrawal, funding)
Standard maker/taker, withdrawal cost, and (for perps) funding rate behavior. The full fee stack, not just the headline.
20%
Reliability (jurisdiction, history, security)
Regulatory licenses (US MSB, Singapore MAS, EU MiCA, Japan FSA), years operating, proof-of-reserves history, past incident handling.
15%
User experience (app, support, language)
Mobile and desktop UX, customer support response times, language coverage (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, English at minimum).
Methodology transparency
- We do not pay for inclusion. Exchanges earn placement by qualifying on the four criteria above.
- We do not accept "boosted ranking" packages. Every exchange shown is editorially selected.
- Cashback rates listed are the rates we actually pay traders, not aspirational marketing claims.
- Fee numbers are pulled from each exchange's published fee schedule and verified monthly.
Conflict of interest disclosure
We earn commission from all 7 listed exchanges. Higher-cashback exchanges typically pay us more, which creates an obvious incentive to favor them. We mitigate this by:
- Publishing the methodology you're reading right now.
- Showing the actual effective fee on every exchange page, so you can verify our claims.
- Providing comparison tools where you can model your own volume against any pair of exchanges.
If our ranking and the published methodology disagree, the methodology wins. If you spot a discrepancy, email us via the contact page.
Why we don't include some exchanges
We deliberately exclude exchanges that fail our reliability bar (no major-jurisdiction license, history of withdrawal freezes, opaque ownership). We also exclude exchanges that do not offer competitive cashback to their referral partners — we can only share what we receive.