Understanding fees

Updated: Sep 5, 2024

Bullish does not charge fees for opening an account. All fees are associated with transactions.

Trade fees

When are fees charged?

Different fees may apply depending on whether your order immediately matches against an existing order (is a “taker”), is matched later (is a “maker”), or some combination of both. When an order is placed, potential taker fees are pre-locked even if an order cannot be a taker. If you do not have a sufficient balance this can also cause an auto-borrow of the fee currency. However, at order execution, we only charge fees on the filled amount. Fees locked up for the unfilled amount (partial or full) will be released if the order is canceled or expires.

Maker fees

Maker fees are charged on the amount filled when your limit order is matched later with a subsequent taker order.

We do not charge maker fees for any of our markets.

Taker fees

Taker fees are charged on the amount filled when you send a market order or when you send a limit order that immediately matches against another market participant’s previously sent limit order.

Taker fees are not applied when trading stablecoins for fiat or vice-versa.

Spot Market fees

In spot markets buyers pay their fees in the same currency that they paid in (e.g. USD for BTC/USDC) and sellers in the currency they sold (e.g. BTC for BTC/USDC).

Perpetual Markets fees

In perpetual markets both buyers and sellers pay their fees in the perpetual contract’s settlement currency (e.g. USDC for BTC/USDC PERP).

The potential taker fee is always locked, even for maker orders. This can cause automated borrowing if you do not have enough balance of the settlement currency.

Margin Services

Lender interest payments

As detailed in Understanding interest charges, interest payment will be charged to borrower hourly from the moment of opening the loan. Interest rate payments are calculated using the following formula. 

Borrower Interest Charge = ((1 + APR)^(1/365 x 24) - 1) x Borrow x (1 + Multiplier x Taker Fee)

Automated Market Making Instructions

No fees are charged to submit or terminate AMM Instructions.

AMM fees

As detailed in Understanding Automated Market Making Instructions, on every fill made by a taker against an AMM Instruction, Bullish collects earnings consisting of the taker fees paid against one or more AMM Instructions and the spread income generated by those AMM Instructions.
Bullish’s AMM fees for all supported spot and perpetual markets are broadly categorized into three tiers as specified below:

1. 75:25 i.e the exchange retains 25% of the Gross AMM Payments.
2. 90:10 i.e the exchange retains 10% of the Gross AMM Payments.
3. 100:0 i.e the exchange does not retain any amount.

Please contact your Relationship Manager for market specific fees.

Liquidation Engine fees

Any order sent by the automated liquidation engine will incur an additional fee of 50bps (0.5%) for any fills that arise from use of the engine.

Settlement fees

Ordinarily settlement does not incur any fees, other than potentially the interest on the amount borrowed to fulfil your obligations if you have an unsettled loss and do not have sufficient funds to pay it from your available balance.

Delayed Settlement Fee

If you have an unsettled loss, insufficient funds to pay that loss and in addition you are unable to borrow those funds to make immediate settlement – for instance, because you are already above IM% = 100% – then you have no way to immediately meet your settlement obligations and you will be charged a Delayed Settlement Fee. This is charged as an APR, converted to an hourly charge using the compounding formula.

If the asset has an active loan market:

Otherwise:

As mentioned above, this APR is converted to an hourly charge and added to your unsettled loss

For example if you had an unsettled loss of 1,000 USDC and the current borrowing rate of USDC was an APR of 20%, then you would be charged a Delayed Settlement Fee of 0.0384 USDC = 1000 x (power(1.4, 1 / 8760) - 1).

Deposit and withdrawal fees

Deposit and withdrawal fees are detailed below.

Your bank may also charge additional fees. For these additional fees, please contact your bank for more information.

Viewing charged fees

To view the records of charged fees:

1. Go to the left-hand navigation and choose History.
   
2. Choose Trading.
3. Choose Fills.
   
4. View the Fees column.
   
   
   

Viewing your paid trade fees

To check your paid trade fee history:

1. Go to the left-hand navigation and choose History.
   
2. Choose Trading.
3. Choose Fills.
   
4. View the Fees column.
   
   
   

You can also filter your search results by:

• Market (e.g. BTC/USDC, EOS/USDC, ETH/USDC).
• Side (Buy or Sell).
• Time Span (Hour, Day, Week, Month, Quarter).