by cooked hyperliquid commercial comparison updated 2026-09-17 checked 41d ago

hyperliquid fees: maker, taker and what a round trip costs

Three discounts can bring that $9.00 down to $5.18, and they stack multiplicatively rather than adding up. Most fee pages list them separately and never show you the combined number, so here is the whole thing in one table with the arithmetic shown.

If you only read one line: perps at 0.045% are meaningfully cheaper than spot at 0.070% for the same dollar of volume, and if you are round-tripping size, the staking tier matters more than the referral code.

the numbers

Those are base rates - tier 0. Fee tiers are set by your rolling 14 day volume across seven tiers, 0 through 6, with the top tier above 7B. If you are reading this page you are on tier 0 and will be for a while, so the base rate is the honest number to plan around.

Fees are charged on notional, not collateral. A $1,000 margin position at 10x is a $10,000 notional position and it is billed like one.

what a round trip actually costs

A "round trip" means opening and closing one position. Open a $10,000 position using a market order and close it the same way, and you have made $20,000 in taker volume: $10,000 in, $10,000 out.

Two things worth sitting with. Getting both legs filled as maker is cheaper than any discount stack - $3.00 against $5.18. Maker means the order rests on the book and someone else fills it. A limit order priced through the spread fills at once and pays taker, so the lever is a limit order with Post Only (ALO) set, which Hyperliquid only executes as a resting order. The trade-off is that it may not fill. And spot taker costs about 56% more per volume dollar than perp taker, which is why "just use spot, it's simpler" is expensive advice if you are trading size.

the three discounts, and how they actually stack

This is the part that is genuinely underdocumented. There are three separate levers and they are multiplicative, not additive. A 4% referral discount and a 15% staking discount are not added together. They compound:

effective = base × (1 − referral) × (1 − staking) × tier_scalar

0.045% × 0.96 × 0.85 = 0.03672%

1. Referral code - 4% off your fees. Not only taker: the published fee formula applies it to the maker rate too, wherever that rate is positive. Applies to your first 25M of volume, then expires. It is the smallest of the three and the easiest to get: enter a code at signup. On the round trip above it saves you $0.36. Not nothing, not life-changing.

2. HYPE staking - 5% to 40% off. This is the big one and most people skip it because the top tiers look unreachable.

Bronze at 100 HYPE is a realistic position for an active trader and it is double the referral discount on its own. Whether staking is worth it depends on the HYPE price when you read this and on how much volume you actually do - run your own numbers, and do not treat the token exposure as free.

3. Volume tier. Rolling 14 day volume, seven tiers. Real, and irrelevant to you until you are doing serious size.

leverage and liquidation

Leverage changes the collateral behind a position, not the fee on it. It does move the liquidation point. A position is liquidated when account equity falls below the maintenance margin, which Hyperliquid puts at half the initial margin at max leverage: between 1.25% and 16.7% depending on the asset. So an isolated 10x position holding only its initial margin is liquidated before a full 10% move against it, and how far before depends on the asset. In isolated margin the leverage setting moves the liquidation price; in cross margin it does not, because the position draws on the whole account's equity. The order form shows an estimated liquidation price before you open.

what a code is worth

It is 4% off, it costs you nothing, and you should use one, but it is not the reason to choose a venue. If anyone says their code is a life-changing edge for you, they are selling something. We have a code too, and it is below.

FAQ

Are Hyperliquid fees charged on collateral or notional? Notional. A $1,000 position at 10x is billed as $10,000 of volume.

What is the cheapest way to trade on Hyperliquid? Perp orders that fill as maker, which means resting on the book: a limit order with Post Only (ALO) set. 0.015% on each leg beats any taker discount stack - $3.00 against $5.18 on a $10,000 round trip. A limit order that crosses the spread fills as taker.

Do the referral and staking discounts stack? Yes, multiplicatively. A 4% referral discount and a 15% staking discount give 0.045% × 0.96 × 0.85 = 0.03672% - the second discount applies to what is left after the first, not to the base rate.

Is a referral code worth using? Yes, because it costs you nothing and gives 4% off your fees for your first 25M of volume. No, it is not a meaningful edge. Enter one on the referrals page or arrive through a join link. Hyperliquid doesn't say whether a code applies to an account that has already traded.

Why is spot more expensive than perps? Base spot taker is 0.070% versus 0.045% on perps, roughly 56% more for each dollar of volume. Spot volume does count double toward your fee tier, which partly offsets this at scale and not at all at tier 0.

the link below

The link below is our referral link. If you would rather not use it, signing up without a code works the same and this page is still accurate.

the table is the whole decision: maker both legs if you can wait, taker with whatever discounts you hold if you cannot. if you're setting up a new account, a code goes on through the referrals page or a referral link.