Lighter vs Pacifica

Lighter vs Pacifica: which to use

Lighter vs Pacifica comes down to fees, market count and access. Lighter's default Standard account pays 0 bp maker and 0 bp taker, but its taker orders wait 300 ms; Pacifica charges 1.5 bp maker and 4 bp taker. Lighter lists more perps, including more stocks, commodities and FX. Pacifica runs on Solana and has a points program marked Active. Neither asks for ID. Pick Lighter for zero fees and the widest market list, and Pacifica if you want Solana.

How each exchange is built

Both are decentralized exchanges (DEX): you trade from your own self-custody wallet, not from an account held by a company. Lighter runs on zkLighter. Pacifica runs on Solana. Both match orders on a central limit order book, so resting orders sit on a public book until they are filled.

For the trader, this means the book is visible and a limit order waits in line at its price. Your funds stay in your wallet until you deposit them to trade.

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 are on Lighter's fee page.

Pacifica's base tier is 1.5 bp maker and 4 bp taker, per Pacifica's fee page. A market order pays the taker fee on entry and again on exit, so a round trip on Pacifica costs 8 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 at 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. Pacifica lists 77, 24 of them real-world assets.

Both offer up to 50x on their highest-leverage markets; most markets allow less. Both pay funding every hour on every market, so a position settles funding 24 times a day instead of three times on an 8-hour exchange. A shorter interval means the rate you pay or receive is applied in smaller, more frequent steps. Each exchange's funding rates are on the funding page. The list further down this page shows the markets both exchanges have and each one's funding rate.

Who can use them

Neither exchange asks for ID. Lighter's card deposit on-ramp is optional, and Lighter is not for the US, Canada, the UK, China, Russia, Ukraine or sanctioned countries. Pacifica blocks the US, Canada, the UK, China, Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines and sanctioned countries. The one difference in the lists is the Philippines, which Pacifica blocks.

Vaults, tokens and points

Lighter runs a vault, LLP (Lighter Liquidity Provider). It takes USDC deposits, makes markets and takes liquidations, so depositors carry the traders' profit and loss in both directions. It has no lock and no operator fee. Pacifica has no vault run by the exchange that arb.sh tracks. The vaults page lists the vaults perp DEXs run themselves.

Lighter's token is $LIT. Pacifica has no token yet. As of 19 September 2026, Lighter's points program was in "Season 3" and Pacifica's was "Active". The airdrops page tracks programs running and tokens launched.

Reading the numbers on this page

Pacifica publishes open interest as longs plus shorts, both sides of every position. Lighter publishes one side. For the same positions, Pacifica'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, and the two are measured differently. For Lighter it is the deposits its bridge holds, not the size of its LLP vault. For Pacifica it is DefiLlama's figure for the exchange.

Which one fits you

• Pick Lighter if you want to pay no trading fee and a 300 ms wait on taker orders does not matter to your strategy.
• Pick Lighter if you trade stocks, commodities or FX and want the larger set of real-world asset markets.
• Pick Lighter if you want a vault with no lock and no operator fee.
• Pick Pacifica if you want to trade on Solana from a self-custody wallet.
• Pick Pacifica if you want a flat 1.5 bp maker and 4 bp taker schedule.
• Pick Pacifica if you want an active points program on an exchange with no token yet.

Lighter's page and Pacifica's page have each exchange's markets, funding and fees.