What is Bitget?
Bitget is a Seychelles-based exchange founded in 2018 that has grown into a top-five perpetuals venue by open interest, serving more than 100 million users under CEO Gracy Chen. Its defining product decision was building the industry's largest copy trading ecosystem, letting any account automatically mirror the positions of vetted lead traders, which turned derivatives from a professional product into the platform's main growth channel.
For perpetual traders the draw is a full-depth derivatives stack, 125x leverage on majors, and the fastest-growing traditional-asset perps business outside the top three. The exchange's native BGB token threads through the fee system and its launch platforms, and its athlete and sports partnerships, from LALIGA to MotoGP, have made it one of crypto's most visible consumer brands.
Bitget Perpetual Futures Fees
Bitget charges 0.02% maker and 0.06% taker fees on USDT-margined perpetuals at the standard tier, per the official fee schedule, placing its maker rate level with Binance and OKX while the taker rate runs one basis point above them. Top VIP tiers compress rates to roughly 0.0072% maker and 0.028% taker.
The VIP mechanics reward cross-product activity in a way most rivals don't. Tiers are assessed on spot volume, futures volume, asset balance, and BGB holdings separately, and the highest tier achieved in any single category applies across all products, so a large spot trader inherits discounted futures rates without derivatives volume. Forced liquidations carry a 0.5% fee on the position's notional value, a meaningful cost at size that many traders discover only when it hits. How Bitget's ladder measures against rival programs is mapped in our exchange VIP program breakdown, and a Bitget referral code adds a standing discount at signup.
How Bitget Funding Rates Work
Bitget settles crypto perpetual funding three times daily at 00:00, 08:00, and 16:00 UTC, paying the rate directly between long and short holders based on the spread between contract price and the underlying index. Rates float per pair and compress toward zero in balanced markets, then run persistently positive when trending markets crowd the long side.
The stock perpetuals run on different funding parameters than the crypto book, and Bitget recently raised the funding cap on stock perps from 0.1% to 0.5% per interval, an acknowledgment that equity contracts trading around the clock against closed underlying markets need wider bands to hold their peg through overnight gaps. Live Bitget rates against every venue, including where its equity-market funding diverges from crypto norms, run on the CoinPerps funding rates dashboard.
Bitget Perpetual Contract Types & Leverage
Bitget lists USDT-margined, USDC-margined, and coin-margined perpetuals, with leverage reaching 125x on major pairs and stepping down through risk tiers as position size grows. Margin runs in cross or isolated mode, and cross-margin behavior across venues is compared in our guide to the best cross margin crypto exchanges.
Copy trading is the structural layer no direct rival matches at scale. Follower accounts replicate lead traders' entries, exits, and sizing automatically, which channels retail capital into the perps book and adds a profit-share to the leader on top of standard fees. High-leverage followers inherit their leader's liquidation risk in full, and Bitget's share of forced closures during volatile sessions is visible on our liquidations tracker. Traders sizing up should also understand how auto-deleveraging works before assuming the backstop absorbs every gap.
Bitget TradFi & Stock Perpetuals
Bitget runs one of the largest traditional-asset perps businesses of any exchange, clearing close to $70 billion in TradFi perpetuals volume in a single quarter per TokenInsight's exchange report. The core product is stock perpetual futures, USDT-margined contracts on US equities that trade 24/7 with no market closures, using dynamic leverage that auto-adjusts to position size, alongside gold, silver, and forex perps under a dedicated TradFi section.
Bitget cut maker fees on tokenized stock perpetuals to zero in February this year, a direct play for the order books in AI, semiconductor, and crypto-adjacent equities where its volume concentrates. Tokenized stocks trade on the spot side as well, letting the same account hold equity exposure and hedge it with the perp. How the lineup compares against Binance, MEXC, Gate, and Kraken is covered in our best TradFi perpetual exchanges guide.
Bitget Licenses & Regulation
Bitget holds registrations including an MSB in the United States, OAM in Italy, VASP status in Poland and Bulgaria, a Lithuanian crypto registration, and El Salvador's BSP, listed on its compliance page. No major enforcement settlement has been brought against the exchange.
The open front is Europe. Bitget does not hold a MiCA license and confirmed in June this year that Bitget EU has applied for CASP authorization through Austria's FMA, having established its European headquarters in Vienna under EU chief executive Oliver Stauber. CEO Gracy Chen stated the exchange will not serve EEA users without authorization, so European access is suspended pending the Austrian decision, the same position Binance occupies and the opposite of MiCA-licensed OKX and Kraken. The broader licensing shift across venues is covered in our explainer on crypto perpetual futures regulation, and the country-level picture is maintained in our Bitget restricted countries list.
Where is Bitget Available?
Bitget serves users in more than 150 countries with roughly two dozen jurisdictions restricted, including the United States, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Netherlands, with EEA access additionally suspended while the MiCA application is pending. Americans who reach the platform through VPNs risk account freezes and fund recovery problems, covered in our guide on using Bitget in the USA.
Where access is open, onboarding requires full KYC, and the deepest product availability including stock perps concentrates on the global platform rather than any regional entity.
Is Bitget Safe?
Bitget carries a clean record with no confirmed exchange-level hack since its 2018 founding. Custody combines cold storage with multi-signature controls, accounts support 2FA, anti-phishing codes, withdrawal whitelists, and fund codes, and the platform holds ISO 27001 and 27701 certifications alongside AA ratings from external security assessors.
A Protection Fund pledged at $300 million stands behind users against platform-level incidents, and monthly Merkle-tree Proof of Reserves reports have shown coverage around 130% of customer liabilities, verifiable per user. The check that matters on any venue this size is continuity, whether reserve ratios hold through drawdowns and whether the fund is deployed when incidents demand it, and counterparty risk never reaches zero on a centralized exchange however clean the history reads.
How Does Bitget Compare to Other Perpetual Exchanges?
Bitget's closest structural rival is Bybit, the venue it most resembles in derivatives depth, copy trading emphasis, and token-driven fee mechanics, and the gap between them is narrower on open interest than on brand recognition. Against MEXC and Gate it competes for the same altcoin derivatives audience with a stronger compliance posture than the former and a bigger copy trading base than either, while its TradFi perps volume now challenges everyone outside Binance.
The trade-offs are the pending EU license, a taker rate a notch above the largest venues, and a thinner top-of-book on majors than Binance or Bybit at institutional size. Side-by-side data across every exchange runs on our comparison hub, and positioning shifts update in real time on the long/short ratio dashboard.