Fees & Funding
There are two distinct cost types on perps: trading fees (charged per trade) and funding (paid hourly between longs and shorts while a position is open). Understanding both is essential before sizing a position.
Trading Fees
Perps trading fees are tiered by your rolling 14-day volume, recalculated daily in UTC. Higher volume = lower fees.
Base Tier (Tier 0)
Maker
0.015%
Taker
0.045%
Volume Tiers
0
< $5M
0.025%
0.055%
1
> $5M
0.022%
0.050%
2
> $25M
0.018%
0.045%
3
> $100M
0.014%
0.040%
4
> $500M
0.012%
0.038%
5
> $2B
0.01%
0.036%
6
> $7B
0.01%
0.034%
Info: Spot volume on onchain.cc counts double toward your perps fee tier. Effective volume = (perps 14-day) + 2 × (spot 14-day).
Maker vs. Taker
Maker — your order added liquidity to the book. Limit orders that don't match immediately make liquidity available for others; when they fill, you pay the maker fee (or earn a rebate at the highest tiers).
Taker — your order removed liquidity. A market order, or a limit order that matches immediately, takes existing liquidity. You pay the taker fee.
If you want to enter at the current price right now, you pay taker. If you're patient and rest a limit order, you pay maker when (and if) it fills.
No Fee on Liquidation
The protocol charges no clearance fee on liquidations themselves. The cost of liquidation is the loss of margin, not an additional fee.
Funding
Funding is not a fee paid to the exchange — it is a peer-to-peer payment exchanged between longs and shorts to keep the perp price anchored to the underlying spot price.
Direction of Payment
Perp above spot
Positive
Longs pay shorts
Perp below spot
Negative
Shorts pay longs
This incentivises traders to take the side that closes the gap, which keeps the perp price near spot.
Effect on Your PnL
Long
Positive
You pay — costs you
Long
Negative
You receive — earns you
Short
Positive
You receive — earns you
Short
Negative
You pay — costs you
Settlement Cadence
Funding is paid every hour. Hyperliquid quotes funding as an 8-hour rate but settles ⅛ of it each hour, so you don't have to time the 8-hour boundary to manage it. If you close before the next hourly settlement, you don't pay or receive funding for that period.
How the Rate Is Calculated
The hourly funding rate has two components:
Interest rate component — a fixed 0.01% every 8 hours (≈ 0.00125% per hour, ≈ 11.6% APR), representing the cost difference between borrowing USD and spot crypto.
Premium component — sampled every 5 seconds and averaged over the hour, based on the gap between the perp's impact prices and the spot oracle price.
The hourly rate is capped at 4%. Funding payments are calculated against the spot oracle price (not mark), to convert position size into notional value.
[SCREENSHOT: Funding rate display on the perps panel]
Info: Funding can compound meaningfully over a multi-day hold. A persistent 0.01% per hour is ~7.4% per month. Always check the current rate before opening a long-duration position — and remember the sign can flip.
How These Costs Stack Up
A simple example, ignoring slippage:
You open a $10,000 BTC long with a market order at Tier 0 → opening fee: $4.50 (0.045% taker).
You hold for 24 hours at +0.01% hourly funding → funding paid: ~$24 (long pays positive).
You close with a limit order at Tier 0 → closing fee: $1.50 (0.015% maker).
Total cost of the round trip: ~$30 plus or minus PnL.
The fee bill is far smaller than funding for any hold longer than a few hours — funding is the dominant ongoing cost on perps, not the trading fee.
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