Last updated: 5 April 2025
How We Rank Derivatives Exchanges
At CoinPerps, we rank crypto exchanges using a carefully structured, transparent methodology designed to give traders clear insight into platform quality.
Our scores (out of 10) reflect a detailed evaluation across four critical dimensions: available assets and features, market depth and liquidity, trading fees, and regulatory compliance.
Available Assets and Trading Features (30%)
Exchanges that offer extensive asset coverage and advanced trading capabilities give traders an important competitive edge. Our scoring criteria clearly prioritize these attributes as follows:
- Asset Diversity (35%): Exchanges offering a wide range of cryptocurrencies, derivatives (including perpetual contracts and options), stablecoins, and innovative trading pairs (e.g. ETH/BTC perpetual contracts) score highly.
- Trading Features (35%): Platforms providing best-in-class trading products, such as perpetual contracts, inverse perpetuals, margin trading, futures, options, and advanced order types, receive higher ratings.
- Speed of Listing New Assets (15%): Exchanges that promptly add newly launched, high-demand cryptocurrencies and trading products are scored favorably.
- Platform Quality and Usability (15%): Professional-grade trading interfaces, stable API performance, comprehensive analytics, and intuitive mobile apps contribute positively to exchange scores.
Exchanges earning top scores in this category consistently deliver extensive asset variety, powerful trading tools, quick asset listings, and exceptional platform usability.
Market Depth and Liquidity (30%)
Liquidity determines how efficiently traders can execute orders without significant price impact. Our scoring criteria emphasize liquidity and market depth clearly and specifically:
- Order Book Depth (40%): Exchanges that maintain high liquidity, reflected by substantial volumes of open buy and sell orders near the mid-price, score higher, ensuring minimal slippage during trade execution.
- Trading Volume (40%): Consistent and substantial daily trading volume across key trading pairs demonstrates robust trader participation and results in higher ratings.
- Price Slippage (20%): Platforms where traders experience minimal price deviation when executing large orders earn higher scores, reflecting optimal trading efficiency.
Exchanges that perform strongly in this category offer traders deep liquidity, active markets, and the capability to execute significant orders smoothly with minimal slippage.
Trading Fees (20%)
Trading fees directly impact profitability, especially for frequent traders and institutions executing large volumes. Our scoring evaluates exchanges using explicit and quantifiable criteria:
- Competitive Pricing (45%): We benchmark each exchange’s maker and taker fees against industry averages. Exchanges consistently offering lower fees receive higher scores.
- Fee Transparency (25%): Exchanges must clearly and openly disclose fee schedules, ensuring pricing structures are accessible, straightforward, and unambiguous.
- Absence of Hidden Costs (20%): Exchanges free from hidden or unexpected charges, such as undisclosed withdrawal fees, account inactivity penalties, or trading surcharges, score higher.
- VIP Programs and Volume Discounts (10%): Exchanges offering beneficial fee reductions or rebates based on trading volume, VIP status, or token holdings gain additional points.
Top-scoring exchanges in this category clearly disclose their fees, maintain competitive pricing, and avoid imposing unexpected charges, ensuring cost-efficient trading.
Regulatory Compliance (20%)
Strong regulatory compliance directly protects traders and enhances exchange reliability. Our ranking method assigns clear, weighted scores to exchanges based on rigorous evaluation of regulatory strength and operational transparency:
- Regulatory Licensing (50%): Exchanges earn scores based on licenses held from reputable regulators. Licenses from tier-1 authorities, such as the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or Europe's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), receive higher weighting than offshore licenses, like those from the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) or Seychelles Financial Services Authority (FSA), due to stricter oversight and compliance standards.
- Transparency of Operations (25%): Clear disclosures of management teams, corporate governance, and financial backing enhance exchange scores, indicating accountability.
- Security Track Record (25%): Exchanges with proven records protecting user assets and data security receive higher ratings.
Top-ranked exchanges demonstrate strict adherence to strong regulatory standards, operational transparency, and robust security measures, offering traders greater confidence and reliability.
How We Calculate Final Scores
Our final exchange scores reflect four essential factors, each assigned a clear percentage based on importance to crypto derivatives traders:
- Available Assets and Features: 30% weighting
- Market Depth and Liquidity: 30% weighting
- Trading Fees: 20% weighting
- Regulatory Compliance: 20% weighting
By combining these weighted scores, our rankings transparently highlight each exchange’s key strengths and weaknesses, enabling traders to quickly select the most suitable platform.
Our Review Policy
We regularly update our exchange scores to ensure rankings remain accurate and reliable. Reviews are conducted monthly at a minimum, but scores may also change more frequently based on critical events. Examples include significant feature updates, security incidents or hacks, regulatory actions, new licenses, or major changes to fee structures.
This proactive review policy ensures traders always receive timely, relevant, and trustworthy information for selecting crypto exchanges.
Contact Us
Questions or feedback about our methodology? Contact our team at [email protected] for more details.