Pacifica vs Gate

Pacifica or Gate: which to use

Pacifica vs Gate is a decentralized exchange against a centralized one. On Pacifica you trade from a self-custody wallet on Solana without ID, at 1.5 bp maker and 4 bp taker, with up to 50x. Gate requires KYC before the futures account opens, holds your funds in an account, and charges 2 bp maker and 5 bp taker, with up to 200x. As of 1 October 2026 Gate lists 1022 perp markets against Pacifica's 77. Custody, ID and market count decide it for most traders.

How each exchange is built

Pacifica is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that runs on Solana. You trade from a self-custody wallet. It matches orders on a central limit order book.

Gate is a centralized exchange (CEX): you open an account with the company, and the account holds your funds. It also matches orders on a central limit order book.

Both match orders on a central limit order book, so on each your order trades against resting limit orders. The difference is who holds the funds and what you must show to open an account.

Fees and what they mean

Pacifica's base tier is 1.5 bp maker and 4 bp taker, per Pacifica's fee page. Gate's base tier is 2 bp maker and 5 bp taker, per Gate's fee announcement. Fees are in basis points: 1 bp is 0.01% of the position.

A market order pays the taker fee to open and again to close. That is 8 bp per round trip on Pacifica and 10 bp on Gate. A limit order that rests on the book and is filled later pays the maker fee instead: 1.5 bp on Pacifica and 2 bp on Gate.

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 round trip in the cost table above adds the taker fee twice to the slippage we read from each live book. Every exchange's trading cost is compared on one page.

Markets and leverage

As of 1 October 2026 Gate lists 1022 active perps, 301 of them stocks, commodities, FX or other real-world assets. Pacifica lists 77, 24 of them real-world assets. If you want a long tail of coins or a wide range of stock and commodity perps on one exchange, the count matters.

Gate allows up to 200x and Pacifica up to 50x on their highest-leverage markets. Most markets on each allow less.

Pacifica pays funding every hour on every market. Gate pays every 1 hour, 4 hours or 8 hours depending on the market. An hourly market settles 24 times a day and an 8 hour market three times, so a position held across funding is charged or paid in smaller, more frequent steps on the hourly schedule. Check a market's interval on Gate before you hold it. The list further down this page shows the markets both exchanges have and each one's funding rate, and the funding matrix shows every asset on every exchange.

Who can use them

Pacifica asks for no ID. It is closed to the US, Canada, the UK, China, Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines and sanctioned countries.

Gate requires KYC before the futures account opens. Unverified accounts can only withdraw and close positions, so you cannot open new futures positions without verifying.

Vaults, tokens and points

Pacifica has no vault run by the exchange that arb.sh tracks, and no token yet. As of 19 September 2026 its points and airdrop program status was "Active". Running programs and launched tokens are listed on the airdrops page. Gate's token is $GT.

Reading the numbers on this page

Both exchanges publish open interest as longs plus shorts, both sides of every position. The figure reads about twice a one-side count on each, so the open interest row and chart above compare like with like.

TVL is the exception. Pacifica's TVL row and chart show DefiLlama's figure for the exchange, which for an order-book DEX is the deposits its bridge holds. Gate is a centralized exchange and publishes no TVL, so those rows show Pacifica alone. A missing Gate line is not a zero.

Fee rates here are base tier. The cost table above is the place to check what a round trip costs today at each size.

Which one fits you

• Pick Pacifica if you want to keep funds in your own wallet and trade without ID.
• Pick Pacifica if you trade with market orders: 4 bp taker against 5 bp on Gate.
• Pick Pacifica if you want every market on an hourly funding schedule.
• Pick Gate if you accept KYC and prefer an exchange account that holds your funds.
• Pick Gate if you want a wider list of markets: 1022 against 77 as of 1 October 2026, with 301 real-world asset perps.
• Pick Gate if you need more than 50x, up to 200x on its highest-leverage markets.