Deribit vs Kraken Futures

Deribit or Kraken Futures: which to use

Deribit vs Kraken Futures is a choice between two centralized exchanges that both match on a central limit order book and hold your funds in an account. Deribit charges 1.5 bp maker and 3.5 bp taker, and lists 34 real-world asset markets. Kraken Futures charges 2 bp maker and 5 bp taker, lists 278 perps, and allows up to 100x against Deribit's 50x. Both pay funding every hour. Fees and real-world assets favor Deribit. Market count and leverage favor Kraken Futures.

How each exchange is built

Deribit is a centralized exchange (CEX): you open an account with the company, and the account holds your funds. It matches orders on a central limit order book. Kraken Futures is built the same way: an account at the company, and a central limit order book. For the trader the two differ little here. The choice comes down to fees, markets, leverage and access.

Fees and what they mean

Deribit's base tier is 1.5 bp maker and 3.5 bp taker, read from Deribit's API, which has no fee page to link. Kraken Futures' base tier is 2 bp maker and 5 bp taker, per Kraken's fee schedule. A basis point (bp) is 0.01% of the position.

A market order pays the taker fee to open and again to close: 7 bp per round trip on Deribit and 10 bp on Kraken Futures. A limit order that rests on the book pays the maker fee instead, 1.5 bp on Deribit and 2 bp on Kraken Futures.

The fee is only part of a trade's cost. Slippage, the price you move by eating through the order book, grows with size. The cost table above adds the taker fee twice to the slippage we read from each live order book, at sizes from $1k to $5M. Every exchange's trading cost is also compared on one page.

Markets and leverage

As of 1 October 2026 Kraken Futures lists 278 active perps, 19 of them stocks, commodities, FX or other real-world assets. Deribit lists 134, of which 34 are real-world assets. Kraken Futures has more markets in total. Deribit has more real-world asset markets, both in count and as a share of its list.

Kraken Futures allows up to 100x and Deribit up to 50x on their highest-leverage markets. Most markets on both allow less. Both exchanges pay funding every hour on every market, so a position on either settles funding 24 times a day. A positive rate means longs pay shorts. Because the interval is the same, the funding rate on a market is directly comparable between the two. The list further down this page shows the markets both exchanges have and each one's funding rate, and the funding per day chart shows the last 30 days.

Who can use them

Both exchanges require KYC. Deribit asks for ID, proof of address and a financial profile before any deposit, and it is closed to the US, Canada, Japan and retail UK clients. Kraken Futures requires full verification. It is closed to the US, where Kraken runs a separate US product, to Canada, to Australia except for wholesale clients, and to retail UK clients.

Reading the numbers on this page

Both exchanges publish open interest as one side of open positions, so the open interest row and chart above compare like for like. Neither exchange has a TVL figure: centralized exchanges publish none, so the TVL row and chart are empty for this pair.

Order-book depth and the cost table are measured from each exchange's live book, so they move through the day. Check them at the size you trade. The BTC page shows both exchanges next to every other exchange that lists BTC.

Which one fits you

• Pick Deribit if you trade with market orders: 3.5 bp taker against 5 bp.
• Pick Deribit if you rest limit orders and want the lower maker rate, 1.5 bp against 2 bp.
• Pick Deribit if you want stocks, commodities or FX perps: 34 markets against 19.
• Pick Kraken Futures if you want the wider list of perps: 278 markets against 134.
• Pick Kraken Futures if you need more than 50x, up to 100x on its highest-leverage markets.
• Pick Kraken Futures if you want more markets to compare for funding spreads against other exchanges in the funding arbitrage ranking.