Every venue publishes a fee schedule and it is more structured than the headline suggests. Four things sit between the quoted rate and what you actually pay.
1. Maker and taker are different prices
Providing liquidity costs less than taking it, sometimes less than nothing. For any strategy trading frequently that gap can exceed the strategy’s edge — maker and taker fees.
2. Tiers move with volume
Rates improve at higher volume, so the same trade costs different amounts for different participants. A published strategy that is profitable at an institutional tier can be unprofitable at a retail one, and results quoted without the assumed tier are not comparable.
3. Options fees are capped against premium
Charged on the underlying’s value but capped as a share of the option’s premium, which is what keeps cheap out-of-the-money strikes tradeable at all — why crypto options fees are capped. Without the cap the wings of the book would not exist, and skew would not be measurable.
4. Funding is not a fee and behaves like one
It appears nowhere in a fee schedule and it is a real recurring cost of holding a perpetual — funding is rent. For any hold longer than a session it usually dominates the fees entirely.
What to compare instead
Not the headline rate. The realised cost of your actual pattern: your tier, your maker-taker mix, your holding period, and the spread you actually cross — assembled as in the true cost of a round trip.
Two venues with identical published fees can differ substantially once those four are applied, and the difference frequently exceeds the headline gap people switch venues over.