How we measure and how we rank
Every figure published here is one we produced. This page says exactly how, because a ranking nobody can check is just an opinion with a table around it.
The composite price
We collect the full ticker set from each venue we track, on a cycle measured in seconds, and store it in our own database. For a given asset we take every market quoted against a US dollar stablecoin or dollar itself, weight each venue's print by its own quote volume over the last twenty four hours, and discard any print sitting more than five percent away from the volume-weighted median before averaging.
That trim exists because one halted market should not move a headline number the rest of the site quotes. For the high-low spread, we add a second guard: each market must have at least $10,000 of quote turnover in the previous 24 hours. Turnover is the one liquidity proxy every venue reports consistently, and it stops a nearly empty pair from defining the headline gap. What survives these checks is published alongside two things most price pages leave out: how many venues agreed, and how far apart the highest and lowest of them were. A wide spread is information, not noise. Beside each spread we publish its confidence: High requires at least three eligible venues and $1 million of combined qualifying 24-hour turnover; Medium requires at least two venues and $100,000; everything thinner is marked Low. Confidence describes the evidence behind the measurement, not whether a trade is profitable.
Current coverage: 6,063 markets across 4 venues, of which 3 are counted as independent price sources (binance 1362 spot and 569 perpetual, bybit 541 spot and 812 perpetual, okx 1388 spot and 460 perpetual, pionex 325 spot and 606 perpetual).
Market data from our own market database, measured across 4 venues, updated .
Which venues count as a price, and which do not
We track four venues. Our composite uses three of them, and the difference is deliberate.
A price is only worth averaging if it is an independent opinion. Some venues do not run their own order book: they route orders to other exchanges and republish the resulting prices. Counting one of those as a separate venue does three things, all bad. It double-counts the underlying exchange's volume. It makes a statement like "four venues agree" mean less than it sounds, because two of them are the same book. And in a volume-weighted average it quietly hands the mirrored exchange a second helping of weight.
Pionex is currently classified this way, and we would rather show the working than ask you to take it on faith. In a simultaneous snapshot, 77% of its ask prices matched Binance's to the tick, its order book sat on Binance's exact price grid, and it reported 1.96 times Binance's Bitcoin volume, which is not a credible claim for a venue of its size against the largest spot exchange in the world. Before we caught this it was carrying 47% of the weight in our Bitcoin composite while adding no independent information.
So Pionex is excluded from the composite price, from the volume behind that price, and from the venue count. It remains fully tracked, reviewed and included in fee and market comparisons, because those are questions about the venue itself rather than about what Bitcoin is worth. If its book becomes native, the classification changes.
Funding rates
Perpetual funding is collected per contract per venue and annualised to a common basis, because venues settle on different schedules and an unannualised comparison between an eight-hour and a one-hour rate is meaningless. Where we show a gap between venues, it is the difference between the most and least expensive venue we track for that same contract.
Fees
Fee tables are the one thing we do not automate, because venues bury the real number under volume tiers, token discounts and promotional periods that a scraper reports as fact. Each row is read by a person, recorded as the standard rate for a new account with no tier and no discount, and stamped with the date. Anything older than ninety days is flagged by our own monitoring before a reader ever sees it go stale.
How a venue is rated
Five components, each scored out of five: cost, liquidity, tooling, security and support. Cost comes from the verified fee schedule and observed funding. Liquidity comes from the market counts and volumes in our own database rather than from what a venue publishes about itself. Tooling, security and support are judged, and the judgement is signed by a named person who is accountable for it.
A ranked list is ordered by the thing its heading promises. If the page says lowest fees, the order is the fee column and nothing else. We do not run a house pick that quietly floats to the top, and no partner has ever been offered a position.
How we make money, and what it does not buy
Some links to exchanges are affiliate links and we are paid when a reader opens an account through one. That funds the collection and the writing. It does not buy a rating, a ranking position, or the removal of a criticism, and venues that pay us nothing sit in the same tables on the same terms. The full disclosure spells out the commercial relationships.
Corrections
If a number here is wrong, we want to know and we will fix it and say that we did. Write to the editor with the page and the figure.