For traders outside the United States, the United Kingdom and the EEA, MEXC is our top pick among the Kraken alternatives in this comparison, on one verified number: Kraken Pro's entry tier is 0.40% maker and 0.80% taker, against 0.0000% maker on MEXC's published schedule.
Key Takeaways
MEXC is our top pick among these Kraken alternatives for traders outside the US, UK and EEA, at 0.0000% maker against Kraken Pro's 0.40%.
Kraken Pro's entry tier is now 0.40% maker and 0.80% taker, and many review sites still publish older, lower figures.
Kraken+ costs 4.99 dollars a month and waives app trading fees up to 10,000 dollars, but it does not cover Kraken Pro and the spread still applies.
Volume from Kraken's Instant Buy never counts toward its fee tiers, so app-only buyers stay at the entry rate indefinitely.
On 50,000 dollars a month of spot and perpetual volume, one year costs 1,080 dollars on Kraken against 120 dollars on MEXC.
Kraken keeps a clear lead on licensing, US equities and EEA access, and MEXC does not serve the US, UK, Canada or the EEA.
Kraken is not a platform people leave because something went wrong.
It has traded since 2013 with no publicly reported loss of client funds, it publishes a complete fee schedule anyone can read without an account, and it holds more licences than any other platform in this comparison.
People look for alternatives because of three specific frictions, and all three are arithmetic rather than opinion.
The first is that Kraken is really two products with very different prices, and most users never move between them.
The second is that the cheaper of those two products got more expensive in 2026, and a lot of published guidance has not caught up.
The third is that Kraken's listing pipeline has been pointing somewhere specific, and if you trade early-stage tokens it has not been pointing at you.
If you left Kraken over what your orders cost or what you could not buy there, this section carries the most detail in the article, so it comes first.
The problem is familiar to anyone who trades more than occasionally.
You place resting limit orders precisely so you are not paying the taker rate, and you still pay on every single fill, because most venues bill makers too.
Then the token you actually wanted to buy listed somewhere else first, and by the time it reached your platform the entry you were waiting for had gone.
MEXC's official fee page, captured August 31, 2026, shows spot at 0.0000% maker with taker running from 0.0000% to 0.0500% depending on the pair. BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT, SOL/USDT, PEPE/USDT and ADA/USDT all sit at 0.0000% maker and 0.0500% taker, and XRP/USDT carries a zero-fee label on both sides.
That is a published schedule rather than a promotional campaign with an end date, which is the distinction that decides whether you can plan around it.
Kraken prices the same trade four different ways, and the cheapest of them still starts at 0.40% maker.
The maker side is the one that compounds, because a resting order is the order type an active trader places most often.
Take a trader running 50,000 dollars a month of resting spot volume and the same again in BTC perpetual notional as a taker.
On Kraken, 50,000 dollars of 30-day spot volume qualifies for the fifth tier across products, so spot maker is 0.15% and futures taker is 0.03%.
That bills 900 dollars a year on the spot side and 180 dollars on the futures side, for 1,080 dollars.
On MEXC, the spot maker side bills nothing, and the BTCUSDT perpetual carries a Special Rate of 0.000% maker and 0.020% taker, which bills 120 dollars.
The gap is 960 dollars a year on identical activity, and it is entirely a function of published rates rather than of any discount either platform offered us.
The same shape holds at a much smaller scale, which is where most Kraken users actually sit.
A 5,000 dollar a month buying habit costs 600 dollars a year in trading fees through Kraken's instant buy flow, before the spread.
The same habit costs 30 dollars a year at MEXC's taker rate and nothing at all as a maker.
MEXC's fee page listed over 2,070 spot trading pairs and over 1,020 USDT-M perpetual pairs when its published pair tables were counted on August 31, 2026.
On spot pairs the gap is narrower than Kraken's conservative reputation implies, and we would rather say so than inflate it.
The derivatives gap is the one that is actually large.
Kraken Futures carries 322 trading pairs against MEXC's 1,020 or more, and CoinGecko counted 879 new perpetual contracts listed by MEXC between January 2025 and April 2026, more than any other exchange in CoinGecko's sample for that period.
Kraken has not stopped listing, and the shape of what it lists is the more interesting fact.
CoinGecko's Kraken exchange report, published May 13, 2026, counted 147 new spot tokens on Kraken between January and April 2026, of which 66 were real-world asset or xStocks listings. Close to half of Kraken's listing capacity in early 2026 went to tokenized equities and RWA products rather than to crypto tokens.
If tokenized equities are what you want, that is a feature and Kraken is ahead of us on it.
If you are trying to be early on a new token, it means the pipeline is pointed away from you.
Put a number on it rather than leaving it as a feeling.
A trader who buys 2,000 dollars of a new listing and pays 0.0500% as a taker gives up one dollar in fees.
The same 2,000 dollars bought through Kraken's instant buy flow costs 20 dollars plus an unpublished spread, and buying it at all requires the token to have cleared a listing process that placed 66 of its last 147 slots elsewhere.
The fee difference is small in isolation and the access difference is not, which is why we put breadth and cost on the same axis rather than treating them separately.
Six dimensions decide this choice and the table below holds all of them.
We picked these six because each one can reverse the decision on its own: what a trade costs on the book you will actually use, what a trade costs on the simple interface most people default to, what derivatives cost, whether the platform is allowed to serve you, and whether you can read the fee schedule before you open an account.
Platform | Spot fees, entry tier | Simple interface cost | Perpetual futures fees, entry tier | Availability notes | Fee source and date verified |
MEXC | 0.0000% maker, 0.0000% to 0.0500% taker | Same published schedule applies | 0.000% to 0.040% maker, 0.000% to 0.100% taker; BTCUSDT perpetual at 0.000% maker and 0.020% taker | Does not serve US, UK or Canada; not MiCA-authorised in the EEA | Official fee page, August 31, 2026 |
Kraken Pro | 0.40% maker, 0.80% taker | 1% on instant and recurring buys, 1.5% on custom orders, plus an unpublished spread; waived up to 10,000 USD monthly with Kraken+ at 4.99 USD monthly | 0.02% maker, 0.05% taker | Serves US and UK; MiCA-authorised in the EEA; futures unavailable in the US, Canada and New Zealand | Official fee schedule, September 2, 2026 |
Coinbase Advanced | 0.40% maker, 0.60% taker at the entry tier, per published third-party fee trackers | Not published on an open page; a spread is added on the simple interface | Not verified for this comparison | Serves US and UK | Not published outside a signed-in session; figure per Bankrate, 2026 |
Binance | 0.10% maker, 0.10% taker | Convert and card routes priced separately | 0.02% maker, 0.05% taker | Global platform does not serve US residents | Official fee schedule, July 28, 2026 |
Bybit | 0.10% maker, 0.10% taker | One-click buy priced separately | 0.02% maker, 0.055% taker | Does not serve US residents; MiCA-authorised EU entity operates separately | Official help centre, July 28, 2026 |
OKX | 0.08% maker, 0.10% taker | Convert and card routes priced separately | 0.02% maker, 0.05% taker | MiCA-authorised in the EEA; serves US users through a separate US platform | Official trading fee page, August 31, 2026 |
Gate | 0.20% maker, 0.20% taker at VIP0 | Quick buy priced separately | 0.02% maker, 0.05% taker | Does not serve US residents | Official published schedule, July 28, 2026 |
Data verified as of September 2, 2026 against each platform's official fee schedule, help centre and terms, except where an earlier verification date is shown. Entry retail tiers only; VIP levels, token discounts and time-limited campaigns can lower effective rates. Availability reflects each platform's published terms, so confirm for your own region before opening an account.
One row deserves a note, because it is a finding rather than a fee.
Kraken publishes its entire schedule, including the tier table and the Kraken+ exclusions, on an open page that requires no account.
Several third-party review pages we checked while researching this article still carried 0.25% and 0.40% as Kraken's entry tier, and one carried figures older still.
Kraken is not hiding the number; the pages writing about Kraken have not rechecked it.
We should say plainly who wrote this.
MEXC publishes this article and MEXC is one of the seven platforms it compares, so you are reading a comparison produced by a participant in it.
That is a reason to check our numbers, and every one of them carries a source and a date so that you can.
Here is what we think the evidence supports, including the parts that do not favour us.
We do not win on licensing, and it is not close.
Kraken holds two MiCA authorisations passported across the EEA, serves US and UK customers, and clears US derivatives through a CFTC-registered entity.
We hold none of that, and a reader for whom licensing is the deciding factor should not choose us.
We do not win on equities.
Kraken offers real US stocks and tokenized equities, and no crypto-native exchange in this comparison has an equivalent product.
We do not win on spot breadth by the margin our own marketing has sometimes implied.
Counted the same way by the same third party, MEXC carries 2,021 spot pairs against Kraken's 1,412, which is a real lead but not the multiple you may have read elsewhere, including on our own pages.
Where the gap is genuinely large is perpetual futures, at roughly 1,020 pairs against 322.
We also think Kraken deserves credit on a point that costs it something.
It publishes the Kraken+ exclusions and the spread disclosure on the same open page as its headline rates, which makes its own marketing claim look weaker and is exactly the behaviour we want more of.
What we claim is narrow and checkable.
On published spot maker fees we charge 0.0000% while Kraken Pro's entry tier charges 0.40%, and on perpetual pairs we carry roughly three times as many.
Those two facts are the only grounds on which we called ourselves the top pick, and if what matters to you is anything else on this page, the honest answer is one of the other six names.
Nearly every comparison of Kraken fees published this year treats the platform as though it has one fee schedule.
It has four routes to the same trade, and the most expensive costs nearly four times the cheapest.
Route one: the app's instant and recurring buys.
Kraken's published fee schedule charges 1% on instant and recurring trades, and the quoted price also contains a spread that Kraken sets and does not publish.
Kraken states plainly that it may retain any excess spread from a transaction, and that the spread varies with market volatility, asset type, order size, VIP status and account activity.
Route two: custom orders in the app.
Custom orders carry 1.5%, again with the spread included in the quote.
Route three: the Kraken Pro order book.
Kraken Pro runs a maker and taker schedule that starts at 0.40% maker and 0.80% taker, moves to 0.30% and 0.60% above 2,500 dollars of 30-day volume, and reaches 0.22% and 0.38% above 10,000 dollars.
Since 2026 the tier is set by whichever is higher, your 30-day spot volume or your Assets on Platform, so a large idle balance can lower your rate without any trading at all.
Route four: the Kraken+ subscription.
Kraken+ costs 4.99 dollars a month and waives trading fees on up to 10,000 dollars of monthly volume in USD, GBP, CAD, AUD, EUR and CHF.
Two boundaries on that waiver are stated in Kraken's own schedule and appear in almost none of the third-party pages we checked.
The first is that it applies only to Buy, Sell and Convert on the app or web, and specifically does not include spot, futures, API or OTC trades on Kraken Pro.
The second is that trading fees are waived while spreads and card processing fees still apply, so zero fee is not the same as zero cost.
There is a third detail with a longer tail than either.
Kraken's schedule notes that volume generated with Instant Buy does not count toward the 30-day volume incentives.
A casual buyer using only the app therefore never accumulates the volume that would move them down the tier table, no matter how many years they keep buying.
One conclusion follows from all of this and it is not the one we would pick commercially.
If you buy through the Kraken app and nothing else, subscribing to Kraken+ saves you more than moving anywhere: 59.88 dollars a year against 600 dollars, with no migration and no new account.
Coinbase is the closest like-for-like swap for a Kraken user who is staying inside the regulated perimeter.
Benefits
A US-listed public company subject to SEC reporting requirements, which is a disclosure standard no offshore venue matches.
Serves both US and UK customers, the two markets where Kraken users have the fewest alternatives.
A published listing roadmap that gives advance notice of new assets.
Limitations
Entry-tier pricing is reported at 0.40% maker and 0.60% taker, so moving from Kraken Pro saves on the taker side but not on the maker side.
The full fee schedule is no longer published on an open page, so you cannot check your rate before signing in.
Asset coverage is narrower than Kraken's, so switching for breadth moves you the wrong way.
For BTC, ETH, SOL and the other majors at size, Binance's order books remain the deepest available.
Benefits
Depth on established pairs that matters more than fees once your order size starts moving the market.
Spot at 0.10% on both sides, a quarter of Kraken Pro's entry maker rate.
Mature fiat rails across most non-restricted markets.
Limitations
The global platform does not serve US residents, so it solves nothing for the largest part of Kraken's user base.
Selective and slower on early-stage tokens by design.
European availability has been reshaped by MiCA, so check your own country before assuming access.
Bybit is the natural destination for a Kraken user whose actual complaint is the futures product rather than the spot fees.
Benefits
A large perpetual futures book with a professional interface and pre-market perpetuals on new tokens.
Publishes proof-of-reserves reporting.
Operates a separately authorised European entity for EEA clients.
Limitations
Futures taker of 0.055% is above Kraken's own 0.05%, so a pure futures trader is not saving money by moving.
Spot costs 0.10% on both sides, which removes any advantage to placing limit orders.
Does not serve US residents.
OKX is the one alternative here that matches Kraken on regulatory reach while beating it substantially on spot cost.
Benefits
Spot at 0.08% maker and 0.10% taker, a fifth of Kraken Pro's entry maker rate.
Holds a MiCA authorisation in the EEA and runs a separate US platform, which is the combination Kraken users in regulated markets are usually unwilling to give up.
Runs a genuine options book and a unified account with portfolio margin.
Limitations
Product surface is dense, and a Kraken app user will find the learning curve steeper than the one they left.
Fee tiers reward volume rather than balances, so a large idle holding earns nothing the way it now does at Kraken.
Gate is the other venue with genuine long-tail breadth, and on that axis it is a real competitor to us rather than a distant one.
Benefits
Wide long-tail coverage and a high listing cadence, built up over more years than most rivals.
Competitive futures pricing at 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker.
A broad product surface across perpetuals, bots and earn products.
Limitations
Spot at 0.20% on both sides is the most expensive crypto-native schedule in this table, and four times MEXC's taker rate.
Gate's own pages have published different base figures in different places, so confirm your actual tier first.
Does not serve US residents.
Four things, and none of them are small.
Licensing depth that nothing on this list matches.
Its US derivatives business runs through NinjaTrader Clearing, a CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant and NFA member.
Real US equities, not a tokenized proxy.
The RWA-weighted listing pipeline described earlier is Kraken executing that strategy rather than neglecting its catalogue.
Competitive futures pricing.
Kraken Futures starts at 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker, which sits below the top of MEXC's own futures range.
On the specific contracts where MEXC prices toward the upper end of that range, Kraken is cheaper, and you should check your contract before assuming otherwise.
A fee schedule anyone can read.
Kraken publishes the full tier table, the Kraken+ exclusions and the spread disclosure on an open page.
Coinbase publishes less, and that transparency is worth something even when Kraken's own taker rate is the highest in this comparison.
This is the section that decides the question for a large share of Kraken's users, so it comes with a matrix rather than a footnote.
Region | Kraken | MEXC | Who to use instead if MEXC is unavailable |
United States | Available, with futures unavailable | Not available; named in the User Agreement | Kraken, Coinbase, or OKX's separate US platform |
United Kingdom | Available | Not available; named in the User Agreement | Kraken or Coinbase, both FCA-registered |
EEA | Available under two MiCA authorisations | Not MiCA-authorised and not on the ESMA register | Kraken, Coinbase, OKX, or Bybit's European entity |
Canada | Available, with futures unavailable | Not available; named in the User Agreement | Kraken or Coinbase |
Most other markets | Available, with product access varying | Available, with product access varying | Compare on cost and pairs using the table above |
Availability verified September 2, 2026 against each platform's published terms and the ESMA register of authorised crypto-asset service providers. Product availability within an available market still varies, so confirm for your own account.
Three points belong here in plain language rather than in a disclaimer at the bottom.
MEXC has advised affected Dutch users to move their assets by October 31, 2026, with final offboarding on November 16, 2026.
Readers in the EU or EEA should choose a platform that appears on the ESMA register, and Kraken is one of them; nothing in this article is an invitation to do otherwise. MEXC also carries a lighter top-tier licensing footprint than US or EU regulated venues, which our security review covers in full.
You trade actively, place resting orders, and you are outside the US, UK and EEA.
MEXC is your answer, and the maker side is where the difference shows up first.
Open an account and check the live rate on your own pairs before you move any size. You buy through the Kraken app a few times a month and nothing else.
Subscribe to Kraken+ before you consider moving anywhere, because 59.88 dollars a year against 600 dollars is the largest saving available to you and it requires no migration.
You are in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or the EEA.
Stay on Kraken or move to another locally authorised platform.
MEXC does not serve you and nothing on this page should be read as suggesting otherwise.
You trade tokenized or real US equities.
Stay on Kraken, because no crypto-native alternative in this comparison offers an equivalent.
You trade perpetual futures and nothing else.
Check the specific contract, because Kraken's 0.02% and 0.05% is competitive and beats the upper end of MEXC's range.
You want breadth for its own sake.
Gate and MEXC both carry long-tail coverage, and MEXC is cheaper on spot while Gate has been building its catalogue for longer.
Step 1: Check the withdrawal network and the minimum.
Confirm your destination supports the exact chain you plan to send on, because USDT on TRC20 and USDT on ERC20 are not interchangeable at the deposit address.
Check the minimum withdrawal on the sending side and the minimum deposit on the receiving side, since the two are set independently and do not always match.
Step 2: Send a small test transfer first.
Move a small amount, wait for it to credit, and only then move the rest.
A test transfer costs one network fee, and skipping it can cost the entire balance.
Step 3: Move the balance and keep the records.
Save the transaction hashes and timestamps, because your cost basis and any tax reporting depend on them and exchanges do not always retain full history after an account closes.
Four things cause most failed transfers: the wrong network, a missing memo or destination tag on chains that require one, an amount below the minimum, and a ticker collision where two different tokens share a symbol.
Check the ticker against the contract address rather than the name.
You do not need to close your Kraken account to do any of this, and for most people keeping it open is the better call.
What are the best Kraken alternatives in 2026?
MEXC, Binance, Bybit, OKX and Gate are the closest crypto-native alternatives, while Coinbase is the main option for US and UK traders.
Which one fits depends on your region and whether cost or licensing decides it.
Which crypto exchange has lower fees than Kraken?
All five crypto-native platforms in this comparison are cheaper on spot than Kraken Pro's 0.40% and 0.80% entry tier.
MEXC is the cheapest at 0.0000% maker and 0.0500% taker, verified September 2, 2026.
Is Kraken+ worth it, or is another exchange cheaper?
Kraken+ pays for itself if you buy more than about 500 dollars a month through the Kraken app.
It does not apply to Kraken Pro trades and the spread still applies, so order-book traders get nothing from it.
Which Kraken alternative lists new tokens fastest?
CoinGecko counted 879 new perpetual contracts on MEXC between January 2025 and April 2026, more than any other exchange in its sample.
Can US residents use these Kraken alternatives?
Only the locally licensed ones, which here means Coinbase and OKX's separate US platform.
MEXC, Binance's global platform, Bybit and Gate do not serve US residents.
Is MEXC available in the UK or the EEA?
No.
MEXC names the UK as a prohibited jurisdiction and is not authorised under MiCA, so EEA readers should use a platform on the ESMA register such as Kraken, Coinbase or OKX.
How do I move my crypto off Kraken safely?
Confirm the withdrawal network matches your destination, send a small test transfer, then move the balance and save the transaction hashes.
Most failed transfers come from a wrong network or a missing memo tag.
Should I close my Kraken account after switching?
No, and there is rarely a reason to.
Keeping it open preserves your fiat rails, your verification status and your transaction history for tax reporting.
Perpetual futures and leveraged products can lose more than your initial margin, and liquidation can happen faster than you can react.
Newly listed and small-capitalisation tokens carry thin liquidity, and on thin pairs the spread can cost more than every trading fee discussed in this article combined.
Platform availability, fee schedules and product access vary by jurisdiction and change without notice, so verify both against your own account before acting on anything here.
MEXC does not serve residents of the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada, and is not authorised as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA in the European Economic Area.
Nothing in this article is financial advice.