Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by daily volume and the cheapest venue we have tested. It also paid a $4.3 billion settlement to the US Department of Justice in November 2023, lost its UK registration, and lost 7,000 bitcoin to attackers in 2019. We funded a live account with the equivalent of $1,000 and spent more than five weeks on it across January and February 2026.
Disclosure: this review is independent and we receive no commission from Binance. Our assessment comes from live testing against fixed criteria. Read how we make money.
| Overall rating | 7.4/10 |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2017 |
| Headquarters | Dubai, United Arab Emirates (Binance FZE) |
| Main licences | VARA (Dubai) full VASP, FSA (Japan), VASP registrations in France, Spain, Poland and Lithuania |
| Minimum deposit | No fixed minimum; varies by method and currency |
| Spot trading fees | 0.1% maker / 0.1% taker before discounts |
| Futures trading fees | 0.02% maker / 0.05% taker |
| Maximum leverage | 125x (perpetual futures) |
| Cryptocurrencies | 500+ |
| Trading pairs | 1,500+ |
| Swap-free account | Not offered |
| Investor compensation scheme | None |
Pros and cons
We opened a verified account, deposited the equivalent of $1,000, placed more than 80 spot and futures trades, tested three withdrawals and contacted support five times, all in Q1 2026.
What works:
- The deepest liquidity in crypto: near-instant fills, negligible slippage
- Spot fees from 0.1%, falling with BNB fee payment or a higher VIP tier
- More than 500 cryptocurrencies across more than 1,500 pairs
- A peer-to-peer marketplace with escrow, if your bank refuses payments to exchanges
- A $1 billion SAFU insurance fund, converted from stablecoins to Bitcoin in January 2026
- No inactivity fee
What does not:
- A serious security history, including the 2019 breach that cost $40 million
- An interface that will overwhelm a beginner: 15-plus top-level sections
- A Trustpilot score of 2.1 out of 5, with complaints about frozen accounts and verification
- No Islamic or explicitly interest-free account option
- Mostly tier-three registrations rather than full operating licences
- High withdrawal fees on some networks, particularly over Ethereum
Crypto trading carries a high risk of losing your capital. Nothing here predicts what your account will do.
Company information
Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, founded Binance in China in July 2017 and moved operations quickly to Japan and then Malta as Chinese regulatory restrictions tightened. In April 2024, Binance FZE received a full Virtual Asset Service Provider licence from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority and became the regional headquarters, a clear legal home after years of ambiguity.
Late 2023 was hard. Under the US Department of Justice settlement, CZ paid a $50 million personal fine and stepped down as chief executive. Richard Teng, a former regulator from Singapore and Abu Dhabi, took over in November 2023 — a deliberate turn toward compliance.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Legal names | Binance FZE (Dubai), Binance Holdings Limited |
| Founded | 2017 |
| Regional headquarters | Dubai, United Arab Emirates |
| Chief executive | Richard Teng (since November 2023) |
| Founder | Changpeng Zhao (CZ) |
| Registered users | More than 280 million |
| Countries served | More than 180 |
| Cryptocurrencies | More than 500 |
| Trading pairs | More than 1,500 |
| Daily spot volume | Above $15 billion |
Who this exchange suits (and who it does not)
Binance suits a trader who wants the widest asset range at the lowest cost and will navigate a dense interface for it. Trading between $100 and $5,000 on BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT, we saw no meaningful slippage, and on thinner venues slippage can cost more than the fee itself. Breadth is the second reason: spot, perpetual futures, margin, peer-to-peer, Earn and Launchpad in one account.
It does crypto only, there is no Sharia-certified account, and if you are new to crypto the interface will confuse you in a way a simpler platform like Coinbase will not.
Licensing and regulation
Binance’s regulatory position varies enormously by country. Rather than the one or two licences a conventional broker holds, it operates through registrations in more than 18 jurisdictions, as at our February 2026 check.
Dubai is the strongest single credential. Binance FZE holds a full VASP licence from VARA, granted in April 2024, covering broking and trading including derivatives, management and investment services, and lending and borrowing. It is verifiable on VARA’s public register.
In Europe, Binance holds VASP registrations in France (AMF), Spain (Bank of Spain), Poland (the tax administration chamber) and Lithuania (through Bifinity UAB). These are registrations, not full operating licences of the kind the FCA or BaFin issue. Binance is working toward a CASP authorisation under the EU’s MiCA regulation, with a July 2026 deadline.
It also holds licences or registrations in Japan (through Binance Japan, licensed by the FSA), Australia, Canada, Brazil and India. Against that, it is banned or restricted in several markets: the United States, where Binance.US operates as a separate entity; China; and the United Kingdom, where its FCA registration was withdrawn.
We classify Binance’s licences as tier three in general, with the Japanese FSA licence the exception at tier one. The European and Dubai VASP registrations are built around anti-money-laundering obligations rather than investor protection in the sense the FCA or CySEC provide, so fewer regulatory layers sit between you and a loss.
So is Binance genuinely licensed? Yes, with reservations. The licences are real and verifiable, but the November 2023 settlement and its $4.3 billion fine confirm real compliance failures in the company’s past. The direction of travel is toward more compliance; the journey is not finished. Binance is also not licensed by Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority, though no explicit CMA prohibition had been issued as at this review’s date.
| Authority | Country | Type | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| VARA | Dubai, UAE | Full VASP licence | vara.ae/licenses |
| AMF | France | VASP registration | amf-france.org |
| Bank of Spain | Spain | VASP registration | bde.es |
| Tax Administration | Poland | VASP registration | podatki.gov.pl |
| FNTT | Lithuania | VASP registration | fntt.lt |
| FSA | Japan | Full licence | fsa.go.jp |
Opening an account and verification
Opening an account in January 2026 split into two stages. Basic registration took under two minutes and needed only an email address or phone number and a password, but permits no deposits, withdrawals or trading.
Identity verification is mandatory for every service. We supplied a passport photograph, a selfie holding it, then proof of address, and were approved in roughly 15 minutes — fast against Coinbase (over an hour in earlier testing), Bybit (around 10 minutes) and OKX (slightly under 10). Rejections for unclear photographs, name mismatches or expired documents can stretch it to several days.
We then enabled two-factor authentication through Google Authenticator. SMS codes and a physical key such as a YubiKey also work, but we would strongly recommend the app over SMS, because SIM-swap attacks defeat SMS.
Account freezes after verification are a common complaint with a mechanical explanation: automated monitoring can restrict new accounts on unusual activity, and further documents can be requested at any time. We did not hit this, but expect it.
Account types
The usual broker framing does not apply: no standard account, no ECN account, no VIP account in the CFD sense. Binance runs a single account with a nine-level VIP structure that sets fees from 30-day volume and BNB holdings.
Every new user starts as a Regular User at 0.1% maker and taker on spot. At VIP 1 — more than $1 million in monthly volume or 25 BNB held — spot falls to 0.09% maker and 0.1% taker. VIP 9 pays 0.011% and 0.023%.
Funds sit in separate wallets: Spot, Futures, Margin, Earn and Funding, the last handling P2P, deposits and withdrawals. Transfers between them are free and instant. There is no fixed minimum first deposit; card purchases start around $15 and P2P minimums, set by the advertiser, typically from $10.
Swap-free and interest-free trading
Binance offers no account marketed as Islamic or swap-free. Spot crypto does not carry the overnight rollover interest a leveraged forex position does, so the swap question does not arise in the same form. But Earn and Lending pay explicit interest, so a trader concerned with this would need to stay in spot. Any ruling on the structure rests with qualified scholars.
| Tier | 30-day volume or BNB held | Spot (maker/taker) | Futures (maker/taker) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular | Under $1M or under 25 BNB | 0.1000% / 0.1000% | 0.0200% / 0.0500% |
| VIP 1 | Over $1M or 25+ BNB | 0.0900% / 0.1000% | 0.0160% / 0.0400% |
| VIP 2 | Over $5M or 100+ BNB | 0.0800% / 0.1000% | 0.0140% / 0.0350% |
| VIP 3 | Over $20M or 250+ BNB | 0.0700% / 0.0900% | 0.0120% / 0.0320% |
| VIP 9 | Over $4B or 5,500+ BNB | 0.0110% / 0.0230% | 0.0000% / 0.0170% |
Fees and trading costs
Binance is a spot exchange: no spread in the CFD sense and no swap. You pay a maker or taker percentage on each fill, plus a network fee on withdrawal. We tested this across more than 80 trades in early 2026.
Spot and futures fees
The base rate is 0.1% for both maker and taker. Buying $500 of BTC with a market order, we paid $0.50; the same $500 as a limit order also cost $0.50. Paying fees in BNB cut both by 10%, to $0.45.
Futures pricing is 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker. On a $2,000 position in the BTC/USDT perpetual, using 10x leverage on $200 of margin, the taker fee came to $1.00. It falls with VIP level and reaches zero on the maker side at VIP 9.
P2P, deposit and withdrawal costs
P2P is free for takers; advertisers pay 0.15% to 0.35% depending on currency and region. Buying USDT we paid no trading fee, but the price sat around 0.3% above the global market rate — the seller’s margin, and the real cost of the route.
Withdrawal fees depend entirely on the network, and the spread between choices is large. BTC over the Bitcoin network cost roughly 0.0002 BTC, about $12 at the time of testing; over Lightning, 0.000001 BTC. USDT over TRC20 cost $1; over ERC20, $5 or more depending on Ethereum congestion. ETH over Ethereum cost around 0.003 ETH. Crypto deposits are free, card deposits carry 1.8% to 2%, and bank transfers are free or near-free.
There is no inactivity fee. The weakest point is withdrawal cost on expensive networks; route deliberately — TRC20 for USDT, BEP20 for BNB, Lightning for BTC where supported.
| Item | Binance | Bybit | OKX | Coinbase Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spot, base tier (maker/taker) | 0.10% / 0.10% | 0.10% / 0.10% | 0.08% / 0.10% | 0.60% / 1.20% |
| Futures, base tier (maker/taker) | 0.02% / 0.05% | 0.02% / 0.055% | 0.02% / 0.05% | Not offered |
| BTC withdrawal (Bitcoin network) | 0.0002 BTC | 0.0002 BTC | 0.0002 BTC | Dynamic (network) |
| ETH withdrawal (Ethereum network) | 0.003 ETH | 0.003 ETH | 0.002 ETH | Dynamic (network) |
| USDT withdrawal (TRC20) | $1 | $1 | $0.8 | Not offered |
| Platform token discount | 10% (BNB) | No direct discount | Up to 40% (OKB) | None |
| Inactivity fee | None | None | None | None |
All figures above were measured in February 2026 at base tier without VIP discounts, and exchange pricing changes.
Desktop platforms
We spent a week on desktop in January 2026, across the browser interface and the Windows application. Binance offers three interfaces: Classic, Advanced and the simplified Convert. Advanced took most of our time — TradingView charting with more than 100 indicators, a real-time order book, and no perceptible lag even during high market activity.
The complexity is a cost, not a quirk. The main menu carries more than 15 sections — spot, futures, margin, P2P, Earn, Launchpad, NFT and others — each opening onto dozens of sub-options, and a new trader will feel lost for days. Coinbase is far simpler; OKX is better organised at comparable depth.
Convert is the counterweight: one-click trading with a quoted price locked for five seconds. The gap against the open market was under 0.05% on most major pairs, a reasonable beginner option rather than a trap.
The desktop application runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, adds native notifications, and uses around 150 MB installed and 300 to 500 MB of RAM. On the REST and WebSocket API we measured responses under 10 milliseconds, with a 1,200-request-per-minute limit on verified accounts.
Mobile apps
We tested the app on an iPhone 15 Pro and a Samsung Galaxy S24 during February 2026. It holds 4.6 on the App Store and 4.5 on Google Play across more than a million reviews, unusually high for a trading application.
First launch presents Lite Mode — buy, sell and convert with prices for major coins. Pro Mode exposes almost everything the web platform does, and switching was seamless with no reload. RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands and moving averages are legible on a small screen, though drawing trend lines by finger is less precise.
Performance held on both handsets: roughly three seconds to load, instant execution, no crashes across two weeks. Price alerts run to 200 per account, and biometric login worked smoothly.
Trading tools
Binance offers the widest selection of any major exchange: more than 500 cryptocurrencies for spot trading across more than 1,500 pairs. It is also usually first to list promising new tokens, helped by Launchpad and Launchpool.
Perpetual futures cover more than 300 pairs, split between USDT-margined and COIN-margined contracts, with maximum leverage of 125x on BTC/USDT. We would strongly advise against anything above 10x even for experienced traders: at 5x and 10x we found execution instant and liquidity deep, which is precisely what makes overleveraging easy and expensive. Margin trading offers cross and isolated margin up to 10x; on isolated ETH/USDT the platform gave clear notifications as the liquidation level approached.
Binance Earn spans flexible savings with daily yield, locked savings paying more for a fixed term, staking and DeFi products; in February 2026 flexible USDT savings paid around 3% annually. Auto-Invest handles recurring purchases daily, weekly or monthly.
| Category | Approximate count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cryptocurrencies (spot) | 500+ | Widest selection in the market |
| Spot trading pairs | 1,500+ | USDT, BTC, BNB and other quote currencies |
| Perpetual futures (USDT-M) | 250+ | Leverage to 125x on BTC |
| Perpetual futures (COIN-M) | 50+ | Margined in the underlying coin |
| Options | BTC and ETH | European-style |
| Earn products | 100+ coins | Flexible, locked and staking |
| Launchpad / Launchpool | Variable | Periodic new project launches |
Order execution
We placed 50 measured trades on a live account during the second week of February 2026. On spot, average market-order execution came in under 100 milliseconds on BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT, and slippage was effectively absent below $5,000 — on one $3,000 BTC/USDT order we measured 0.01%. Market, limit, stop-loss, stop-limit, OCO and trailing-stop orders all behaved as documented.
Futures execution was faster: across 20 trades on the BTC/USDT perpetual, average execution was under 50 milliseconds. During a volatility spike around a US economic data release, it stretched to roughly 200 milliseconds with slippage of 0.05%. We saw no rejected orders and no matching-engine outages; Binance states its engine handles more than 1.4 million orders per second, and nothing in our testing contradicted that.
One complaint we could not test but should not omit: premature liquidation. Trader forums carry reports of futures positions liquidated at prices other venues did not reach. This is a known issue across futures venues generally rather than one specific to Binance, but it deserves attention from anyone using high leverage.
Deposits
We tested four funding routes in January 2026. Crypto transfer from an external wallet is simplest: USDT over TRC20 landed in three minutes after one network confirmation, free from Binance’s side — you pay only the sending network’s fee.
Card purchase was the most expensive: $200 on a Visa card went through instantly after 3D Secure but cost around 1.8%, or $3.60. One warning matters more than the fee: some banks refuse transactions to crypto platforms, so this should never be your only funding route.
P2P was the most practical: $500 of USDT by local bank transfer to a seller on the marketplace, in about 20 minutes end to end at no fee to the buyer, though the price sat roughly 0.3% above the global market. Escrow holds the seller’s USDT until the buyer confirms payment. We did not test SWIFT directly.
| Method | Currencies | Fee | Arrival | Minimum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cryptocurrency | All supported coins | Free | Minutes, network dependent | Varies by coin |
| Credit / debit card | USD, EUR and others | 1.8% – 2% | Instant | Around $15 |
| P2P marketplace | Local fiat currencies | 0% for the buyer | 10 – 30 minutes | Set by advertiser |
| Bank transfer (SWIFT) | USD, EUR | Bank charges | 1 – 5 business days | $50+ |
Withdrawals
We tested three withdrawal routes in February 2026. Withdrawing 200 USDT over TRC20 completed in five minutes after two-factor and email confirmation, at a fee of $1 — the cheapest and fastest route we found. Withdrawing 0.005 BTC over the Bitcoin network cost 0.0002 BTC, about $12 at the time, and arrived within 30 minutes after one confirmation. Selling through P2P into local currency took around 25 minutes from posting the advertisement to funds landing in a bank account, at 0.15% to 0.35%.
All three completed without obstruction, subject to three caveats: verification is mandatory before any withdrawal; large withdrawals, above a threshold set by your verification level, can trigger manual review; and a previously unused address triggers a 24-hour hold.
The Trustpilot complaints about delayed or refused withdrawals mostly trace back to verification problems or activity flagged by automated monitoring, though a small number appear to be genuine unexplained delays. We hit none of this ourselves — the limit of our evidence rather than a rebuttal of theirs. Daily limits scale with verification: 2 BTC equivalent at KYC Level 1, rising to 100 BTC at Level 2 with proof of address.
Customer support
We contacted support five times during February 2026 — four by live chat, once by email. Those contacts were made in Arabic, so the wait times below include routing to a language-specific agent.
A question about withdrawal fees opened with a triage chatbot; a human took over after about four minutes and resolved it in around 12 minutes. A second contact, about a verification problem, took roughly eight minutes to reach a human who was less confident on the technical detail — a useful answer took about 20 minutes.
The third, placed at 2am local time to test the round-the-clock claim, got an instant bot reply but took 15 minutes to reach a human — the longest wait we recorded. By email, a detailed question about withdrawal limits was answered in 18 hours, slower than OKX’s six hours in earlier testing.
Binance also runs a Support Center knowledge base with hundreds of articles. Our support score is 3.5 out of 5: it runs around the clock and resolves things, but agent quality is inconsistent and the bot-first design will frustrate anyone who wants a person immediately.
Research and education
Binance Academy is one of the strongest learning resources in crypto, spanning blockchain fundamentals, trading strategy, decentralised finance and digital security. It runs structured courses with interactive quizzes; the introductory trading course is well pitched for beginners, and some pay small crypto rewards on completion.
The separate Research section publishes reports on new projects ahead of listing, covering team, technology and tokenomics. Binance Academy also ran an in-person programme in Dubai in 2026 with more than 500 participants. Against Bybit and OKX it leads clearly on volume and variety.
Fund safety and protections
Start with the worst event in the platform’s history. In May 2019, Binance was breached and 7,000 bitcoin — worth roughly $40 million at the time — were stolen from the hot wallet, in an attack combining social engineering with malware that harvested API keys and two-factor codes from a number of users. Binance covered every loss from the SAFU fund and no user lost a cent, but the breach happened at all.
SAFU — the Secure Asset Fund for Users — is the main line of defence, funded by 10% of all trading fees. In January 2026 Binance announced it was converting the fund’s $1 billion balance from stablecoins into Bitcoin, and in February 2026 on-chain analysts identified the first associated purchase: $100.7 million, or 1,315 BTC. Holding it in Bitcoin means its value can fall if Bitcoin falls, and some analysts called that a risky decision.
The technical security stack is solid: two-factor authentication by app, SMS or physical key; a withdrawal address whitelist; email confirmation on withdrawals; a 24-hour hold on new addresses; and continuous AI monitoring. Logging in from a new device triggered an immediate email alert and a two-factor challenge, and with the whitelist enabled a withdrawal to an unregistered address was refused.
Binance has published Merkle-tree proof-of-reserves attestations since the FTX collapse in 2022, and any user can verify their balance is included. We checked ours and it matched. The caveat is what a Merkle proof shows: that assets existed at a point in time, not that they will remain or that there are no hidden liabilities.
The structural gap is regulatory. There is no investor compensation scheme comparable to the Cypriot ICF (up to €20,000) or the UK FSCS (up to £85,000), so if Binance were to fail — unlikely, but not impossible — no government guarantee sits behind your balance. SAFU protects against hacking, not insolvency. So do not hold large amounts on any centralised exchange for long periods; use a hardware wallet such as a Ledger or Trezor for assets you do not intend to trade soon.
Verdict
After more than five weeks of testing in the first quarter of 2026, Binance is the largest and most capable crypto exchange in the world — and largest does not mean best for everyone. It leads on liquidity, coin selection and cost, and is held back by interface complexity, a troubling security history and inconsistent support. We rate it 7.4 out of 10. It suits intermediate to advanced traders who want the widest toolset at the lowest cost; beginners will have an easier time elsewhere.
The Arabic original scored Binance 4.2 out of 5 under a seven-category model including a regional-experience category this site does not score. Re-deriving from our six weighted categories gives 7.4, and the category that moved it is regulation and licensing: at 25% it carries more weight here, and Binance’s position — mostly tier-three registrations, a settled $4.3 billion enforcement action, market exits from the US, China and the UK, and no investor compensation scheme — is the weakest part of the business. None of the underlying findings changed. The arithmetic did. Our rating methodology sets out the six weights.
Binance belongs on your shortlist if you want the lowest fees and widest selection, but not as the only name on it — spreading assets across platforms protects you better.
Risk warning: trading cryptocurrency carries very high risk, including the loss of your entire capital. Crypto assets are extremely volatile and can lose a substantial part of their value within hours. Do not trade with money you cannot afford to lose. Binance does not provide negative balance protection on futures, so with leverage you can lose more than your initial deposit. This review assesses an exchange; it is not financial advice and not a forecast of any outcome. Source for the negative balance protection point: Binance’s terms of use page, as at March 2026.
Is Binance trustworthy?
Is Binance a scam?
No. Binance is a real company operating since 2017, licensed or registered in more than 18 jurisdictions and serving more than 280 million users. The $4.3 billion US fine and the 2019 breach were real problems, but not evidence of fraud.
Is Binance actually licensed?
Yes, with reservations. Its licences are verifiable across more than 18 jurisdictions, the full VARA VASP licence held by Binance FZE since April 2024 being the strongest. But VASP registration differs fundamentally from a comprehensive operating licence, and the November 2023 US Department of Justice settlement, carrying a $4.3 billion fine, confirms real compliance failures. Changpeng Zhao paid a $50 million personal fine and stepped down as chief executive as part of it.
Can I actually get my money out?
We did, three ways, without obstruction: USDT over TRC20 in five minutes, BTC over the Bitcoin network in 30 minutes, and a P2P sale into local currency in about 25 minutes, all in February 2026. Verification is mandatory first, and a previously unused address triggers a 24-hour hold.
Does Binance offer a swap-free or interest-free account?
No. Spot crypto does not carry the overnight rollover interest a leveraged forex position does, but Earn and Lending pay explicit interest. Spot trading is structurally less problematic than futures or margin. Any religious ruling rests with qualified scholars.
Is Binance available in my country?
Binance serves more than 180 countries but is banned or restricted in several: the United States is served by the separate Binance.US entity, China is closed, and in the United Kingdom its FCA registration was withdrawn. It is not licensed by Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority either, though no explicit CMA prohibition had been issued as at the date of this review. Where there is no local licence, you carry the regulatory risk yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is Binance safe to trade on?
Broadly yes: two-factor authentication, an address whitelist, AI monitoring and the $1 billion SAFU fund. But platform security is not the same as your money being guaranteed, and no government compensation scheme covers you.
What are Binance’s real trading fees?
Base spot trading is 0.1% maker and taker, cut to 0.09% by paying fees in BNB and reduced further by VIP tier. Futures are 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker, and P2P is free for the buyer. Withdrawal fees depend on coin and network — the difference between $1 and $12.
How do I buy crypto with local currency on Binance?
Use the P2P marketplace. Once verified, choose Buy, select the coin and your local currency, then pick a seller from the list — most accept a local bank transfer. Escrow protects both sides. Our own purchase took under 20 minutes.
Can I use Binance without identity verification?
No. Since 2021, Binance has required identity verification from every user; you cannot deposit, withdraw or trade without it. You will need a passport or national ID card and a selfie, and it usually takes under 30 minutes.
What is the difference between Binance and Binance.US?
Binance.US is a separate entity operating only in the United States under US licences. It lists around 160 coins against more than 500, and offers neither futures nor margin trading.
What happens to my money if Binance goes bankrupt?
No government guarantee sits behind user funds at Binance in an insolvency, unlike brokers under tier-one authorities with schemes such as the Cypriot ICF at up to €20,000. SAFU protects against hacking, not insolvency.
Disclaimer: the information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to trade. Trading in cryptocurrency carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Do not trade with money you cannot afford to lose. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Always verify the regulatory status of any platform in your own country before registering.
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