What is a crypto trading fee rebate?

Exchanges run partner (affiliate) programmes. A partner brings new users, and the exchange shares part of the fees those users pay with the partner. When the programme lets the partner pass some of that share back to the user, or when the exchange itself gives a discount to users who joined through a partner, the user sees it as a rebate.

Three things define every rebate:

• The share — which part of your fee comes back. It is a share of the fee, not of the trade: a rebate on a small fee is a small amount.
• The market — spot, futures or both. Many new-account rebates cover spot trading only; futures may have a separate rule or none at all.
• The period and the cap — many rebates last for a fixed period after sign-up or stop once a maximum amount has been returned.

This is how the conditions look today for two exchanges we cover. A value appears only after we have checked it on the exchange's own pages; until then the cell says it is still to be confirmed.

The fee in the exchange's schedule is the headline rate. What you pay after the rebate is the effective fee: the headline fee minus the share that comes back. That is the number worth comparing between exchanges, because a lower headline fee with no rebate can cost more than a higher fee with a generous rebate, and the other way round.

The comparison page shows the effective fee side by side for every exchange we cover, and the guide on calculating trading fee savings walks through the arithmetic for your own volume.

The exchange calculates and pays the rebate, usually into your exchange account on its own schedule. Some programmes credit it daily, others weekly or monthly, and it may come in the coin you paid the fee in or in a stablecoin. The rules belong to the exchange's partner programme; on each Getref exchange page we describe how that exchange credits it.

Getref does not hold your money and has no access to your account. Through the exchange's partner tools we can see that an account was registered through our link — nothing about your trades, balances or fees. That is why we cannot see or pay a rebate ourselves, and why we never ask for your password, API keys or 2FA codes. What we do is show the conditions, where they come from and when they were last checked.

If nothing arrives, check that the account was opened through the partner link or with the code, that you traded on the market the rebate covers, and that the period has not ended. The exchange's support can confirm which referral code is attached to your account. The guide on how exchanges pay rebates goes through the common reasons one by one.

A welcome bonus is a one-time reward for completing steps such as a deposit, identity verification or a first trade. It usually comes as a voucher or trial funds with conditions of its own: which products it can be used for, a deadline, and often a trading requirement before anything can be withdrawn. A rebate is ongoing: it applies to every eligible trade while its conditions last, and it usually arrives as ordinary balance.

The "up to" amount of a bonus is the maximum across all its steps, not what a typical user receives. For someone who trades regularly, the rebate usually matters more over a year than the bonus; for someone who will make a handful of trades, it is often the other way round. The guide to rebates, cashback and welcome bonuses compares the three in detail, and each exchange page lists both.

If you forgot to enter the code, some exchanges let you add it afterwards. On Bybit the window after sign-up is 14 days; for the other exchanges, our guide to a forgotten referral code sets out each exchange's rule.

A rebate is a share of your fee, so anything that lowers the fee also lowers the rebate in absolute terms: VIP fee tiers, paying fees with the exchange's own token, or maker orders that already pay less. None of these is a reason to skip a discount — a lower fee is still a lower fee — but on a heavily discounted account the rebate is smaller than a simple calculation on the base fee suggests. Read about maker and taker fees to see why the order type matters.

A rebate also does not cover everything you pay on an exchange. Withdrawal fees, the spread between buy and sell prices and futures funding payments are separate costs, and a trading fee rebate does not reduce any of them.

See also: How to calculate trading fee savings from a rebate.

See also: How exchanges pay rebates and how to check yours.