Hyperliquid vs Lighter

Hyperliquid or Lighter: which to use

Hyperliquid vs Lighter comes down to fees and markets. Lighter's default Standard account pays no maker or taker fee, but its taker orders wait 300 ms; Hyperliquid charges 1.5 bp maker and 4.5 bp taker. Lighter lists stocks, commodities and FX on its own book; Hyperliquid's main book is crypto only, and its stock and commodity perps live on HIP-3 exchanges you trade from the same wallet. Neither asks for ID. Pick Lighter to keep fees at zero and accept the delay, Hyperliquid if you want its order book and the HIP-3 markets around it.

How each exchange is built

Both are decentralized exchanges: you trade from your own wallet, not from an account held by a company. Hyperliquid runs on its own chain, Hyperliquid L1. Lighter runs on zkLighter. Both match orders on a central limit order book, so resting orders sit on a public book until they are filled.

Hyperliquid also lets other teams deploy their own perp exchanges on its chain under HIP-3. You trade them from the same Hyperliquid account and wallet. The live ones include tradeXYZ (110 markets), Paragon (29 markets), Entropy (8 markets) and Markets by Kinetiq (5 markets), and most of Hyperliquid's stock and commodity perps are there. Lighter keeps all of its perps, crypto and real-world assets, on one exchange.

Fees and what they mean

Lighter's Standard account is the default and charges 0 bp maker and 0 bp taker. The condition is speed: its taker orders wait 300 ms. A Premium account cuts the wait to 140 ms and pays 0.4 bp maker and 2.8 bp taker. The rates and the delays are on Lighter's fee page.

Hyperliquid's base tier is 1.5 bp maker and 4.5 bp taker, per Hyperliquid's fee page. A market order pays the taker fee on entry and again on exit, so a round trip costs 9 bp in fees before anything else. A limit order that rests on the book pays the maker fee instead.

The fee is only part of a trade's cost. The rest is slippage: the price you move by eating through the order book, which grows with size. The cost table above adds both for each size, and every exchange's trading cost is compared on one page.

Markets and leverage

As of 1 October 2026, Lighter lists 194 active perps, 75 of them stocks, commodities, FX or other real-world assets. Hyperliquid's own book lists 178, all crypto; its stocks and commodities are on the HIP-3 exchanges above.

Lighter allows up to 50x and Hyperliquid up to 40x on their highest-leverage markets; most markets allow less. Both pay funding every hour, so a position settles funding 24 times a day instead of three times on an 8-hour exchange. The markets both exchanges list are further down this page, with each one's funding rate.

Who can use them

Neither exchange asks for ID. Hyperliquid accepts any EVM wallet or an email login and is closed to the US, Ontario and sanctioned countries. Lighter's card deposit on-ramp is optional, and the exchange is closed to the US, Canada, the UK, China, Russia, Ukraine and sanctioned countries.

Vaults, tokens and points

Both exchanges run a vault that makes markets and takes liquidations, so depositors carry the traders' profit and loss in both directions. Hyperliquid's HLP takes USDC with a 4-day lock per deposit and no fee. Lighter's LLP takes USDC with no lock and no operator fee. The vaults page tracks both.

Hyperliquid's token is $HYPE and Lighter's is $LIT. As of 19 September 2026 Hyperliquid's points program was in Season 2 and Lighter's in Season 3.

Reading the numbers on this page

Hyperliquid publishes open interest as longs plus shorts, both sides of every position. Lighter publishes one side. For the same positions, Hyperliquid's figure reads about twice as large, so the open interest row and chart above are not a like-for-like comparison of size.

TVL above is DefiLlama's figure for each exchange's bridge: the deposits it holds, not the size of its vault.

Which one fits you

• Pick Lighter if you want to pay no trading fee and a 300 ms wait on market orders does not matter to your strategy.
• Pick Lighter if you trade stocks, commodities or FX on one exchange's book.
• Pick Lighter if you need up to 50x, or a vault without a lock.
• Pick Hyperliquid if you want its crypto book plus the HIP-3 exchanges from one wallet.
• Pick Hyperliquid if you are in the UK, Canada or another region Lighter is closed to.

Hyperliquid's page and Lighter's page have each exchange's markets, funding and vault.