

This fee is the greater of either a flat fee or a variable percentage, which can be slightly confusing to figure out. Then there’s the aptly named “Coinbase Fee,” which is contingent on the size of your purchase, the fiat currency you use to make it and how you pay. There may be padding on either end to help Coinbase make a profit. Coinbase then adds on the spread fee which it terms the “consumer exchange rate.” This is essentially the difference between the price Coinbase pays to get a crypto and the price it resells it to you for. To determine what that’s worth in Bitcoin, Coinbase uses the exchange rate on Coinbase Pro. When you want to buy a cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, you log into your Coinbase account and pick an amount you want to buy, say $100 worth. The problem is that Coinbase’s most consumer-friendly offering, its namesake Coinbase platform, charges higher fees for its convenience and simplicity than you may get elsewhere-even on its more complicated crypto trading platform, Coinbase Pro.įirst there’s the so-called “spread fee,” which Coinbase says is typically 0.50% of your transaction.


This isn’t necessarily bad-almost all crypto exchanges charge fees, whether they’re overtly labeled as such or not. One reason why Coinbase has earned nearly $3 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, per Morningstar, is that it charges a bunch of fees. Getting lower fees requires using a different Coinbase platform altogetherĬurrently you can buy the following cryptocurrencies on Coinbase:.Expensive and difficult-to-understand fee structure.Wide selection of cryptocurrencies to trade.
