Binance.US now charges 0% maker and 0.02% taker on spot trades, a pricing change that took effect on April 22, 2026 and applies to every account on the platform from the very first trade. There are no portfolio minimums, no volume thresholds to climb and no paid subscription tier gating the rate — an unusual structure in a US market where cheap execution has traditionally been reserved for high-volume desks.
For anyone buying or selling bitcoin on a US-regulated venue, the practical question is what that headline actually costs once withdrawals, spreads and order types are accounted for. The short answer: the trading fee itself has become close to irrelevant, and the real expenses have moved elsewhere.
What the new fee schedule actually says
According to the announcement published on the Binance.US blog, the 0% maker / 0.02% taker rate covers more than 250 Advanced (Spot) trading pairs. A handful of select markets, including BNB/USD, sit slightly lower at 0% maker and 0.01% taker.
Translated into dollars, a $10,000 bitcoin buy executed as a market order costs roughly $2 in taker fees. The same order placed as a limit order that rests on the book and gets filled costs nothing at all. That gap is the most important thing for a retail trader to internalise: on this schedule, patience is the discount.
Two mechanical details are worth knowing before assuming the rate applies automatically:
- The BNB discount requires activation. Binance.US offers an additional 5% off spot fees when they are paid in BNB, but the exchange's help centre documentation notes that users must toggle "Use BNB to pay fees" in account settings and hold enough unstaked BNB to cover the charge. It is not on by default.
- Volume accounting still runs behind the scenes. Fees are calculated against 30-day rolling volume, refreshed daily at 8pm EDT, and that calculation excludes self-trading as well as Tier 0 pairs — a holdover from the tiered system the flat rate replaced.
How it compares with Coinbase and Kraken
Binance.US framed the cut aggressively, claiming savings of up to 98% versus Coinbase and citing Coinbase entry-level rates of 0.60% maker and 1.20% taker as of April 21, 2026. Chief executive Stephen Gregory said in the release that "American crypto traders have been paying too much for too long," adding that the company wanted to prove "a fully regulated U.S. platform can also be the most affordable one."
That comparison deserves a caveat, because it is measured against Coinbase's simple retail pricing rather than its professional order book. Traders who use Coinbase Advanced pay materially less than the headline figure — third-party fee surveys through mid-2026 put Coinbase Advanced's base tier nearer 0.40% maker and 0.60% taker, with Kraken Pro's published schedule starting around 0.25% maker and 0.40% taker before volume discounts.
Measured against those professional tiers rather than retail pricing, the saving is smaller than the advertised 98% — but it remains substantial. A trader paying 0.40% taker elsewhere pays twenty times what the same market order costs on the new Binance.US schedule. The direction of the claim survives scrutiny even if the specific percentage is a marketing figure rather than a like-for-like benchmark.
The costs that did not go to zero
Near-zero trading fees shift where money leaks out of an account rather than eliminating it. Three costs remain:
- Withdrawal fees. Moving bitcoin off the exchange into self-custody incurs a network withdrawal charge set separately from trading fees and adjusted as blockchain conditions change. Because these rates move, they should be checked against the live fee schedule at the time of withdrawal rather than assumed from a figure quoted months earlier.
- Spread. On thinner order books, the gap between the best bid and best ask can easily exceed a 0.02% fee. Savings on an illiquid pair are routinely swallowed by a wider spread, which makes the headline rate meaningful only where depth is genuinely good.
- Instant-buy convenience pricing. Simplified buy interfaces across the industry generally price differently from advanced order books. The 0%/0.02% schedule is specifically an Advanced (Spot) Trading rate, not a universal platform rate.
Why Binance.US is doing this now
The pricing move follows a difficult stretch for the exchange. Binance.US lost substantial US market share after June 2023, when the SEC sued the company alongside Binance Holdings and founder Changpeng Zhao, and its banking relationships and dollar services were disrupted in the aftermath.
That case ended on May 29, 2025, when the SEC and Binance jointly moved to dismiss and the dismissal was granted with prejudice, meaning the agency cannot refile the same claims. As independent coverage of the fee cut from BanklessTimes noted, the exchange is now trying to rebuild volume from a much-reduced base, and had previously run limited zero-fee promotions on selected bitcoin pairs before extending the structure platform-wide. Binance.US also pointed to its completion of a SOC 2 Type II audit as evidence its systems can absorb the volume it hopes to attract.
The strategic logic is straightforward: liquidity attracts liquidity, and giving away maker fees entirely is a direct bid to rebuild order-book depth. Whether it works depends on whether market makers actually show up.
A correction worth making on offshore alternatives
Fee comparisons circulating online frequently list MEXC alongside Coinbase, Kraken and Binance.US as a low-cost option for American traders. This is wrong, and the distinction matters. MEXC is not a US-regulated exchange. The United States is listed among prohibited jurisdictions in MEXC's own user agreement, the platform does not accept US resident registrations, and it blocks US IP addresses. It has not obtained the state money transmitter licensing or federal registrations that operating lawfully in the US market would require.
A headline fee rate on a venue that will not lawfully serve you is not a comparison. Traders who reach such platforms through a VPN also forfeit the regulatory protections, dispute channels and recourse that domestically licensed venues carry. Any genuine fee comparison for a US-based trader runs among Binance.US, Coinbase, Kraken and the other US-licensed platforms.
The bottom line for bitcoin traders
At 0% maker and 0.02% taker with no tiers, Binance.US has turned trading fees into a rounding error for most retail bitcoin activity. The traders who capture the full benefit are those who use limit orders, stick to liquid pairs where the spread is tight, and withdraw to self-custody in fewer, larger batches rather than many small ones.
The caution is that promotional pricing is a competitive lever, not a permanent guarantee, and fee schedules can be revised with notice. Anyone building a strategy around execution costs should verify current rates on the official schedule before sizing trades around them.