# How we rate the venues in this guide

Updated: 24 September 2026; The Switch Guide editors

Every ranking on this site uses one set of weights, fixed on 22 September 2026 before a
single venue here was scored. A page condition — an exchange you are leaving, a market you need, a cost you
will not go above — decides which venues appear and which number puts them in order. It never changes the
weights, and it never changes a venue's score: a venue carries the same figure on every page of this guide.

Scores run from 0 to 30 and are rounded to 1 decimal place.
Each criterion is worked out on a scale of ten first, then weighted and stretched onto the site's own scale,
which is why a venue can score well on five criteria and still sit mid-table.

## Step 1 — What each criterion counts

| Criterion | Weight | What is counted | How it turns into points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book depth we measured | 28 | What is resting on both sides of the BTC perpetual book inside 10 basis points of the mid, in dollars, taken as the median of our own readings at one every 10 minutes. | Ten thousand dollars resting in the book is the floor and earns nothing; a thinner book earns nothing either. Above the floor every tenfold step up pays two more points — a hundred thousand two, a million four, ten million six — and the ladder stops paying at ten. |
| Who holds the collateral | 22 | Four questions put to a venue's own documentation — what reaches a chain, whether you can get out when the operator will not help, whether the contract holding collateral has been audited, and whether a signature stands in for an account. | every trade, or the proof of a batch of them, written to a chain, 4; position snapshots written to a chain now and then, and nothing more, 2; a route out that works when the operator does not, set out step by step, 3; the contract that holds the collateral has been audited, 2; you sign with a wallet instead of opening an account, 1 |
| Cost of a round trip | 18 | What getting into a BTC perpetual and back out of it once costs at the rate a new account pays, in basis points — the taker fee twice over. | Two basis points for the pair of fills, or anything under it, is worth the full ten. Each further basis point knocks off half a point, which leaves nothing at all by twenty-two. |
| Markets on offer | 14 | How much of a watchlist survives the move — perpetual markets counted in the venue's own trading terms and documentation on 18 September 2026, and the asset classes it lists outside crypto. | Five hundred perpetual markets is what the six-point ceiling costs, and a shorter list climbs towards it on a curve that hands most of its points out early. Each asset class beyond crypto adds a point on top of that, and four is as many as count. |
| Record so far | 12 | What somebody outside the venue has checked, and what the past 24 months show — published audit reports, a bug bounty page, and the public incident record. | published security audits, two points each, two of them counted, 4; a bug bounty programme anyone can read, 3; the last 24 months passed with user money intact, 3 |
| Whether the door opens | 6 | Whether a trader gets in without paperwork — what the documentation says about identity checks, how a trader signs in, and how wide the list of places the terms will not serve. Counted out of five, then doubled. | no identity check stands between a wallet and a trade, 2; you sign with a wallet instead of opening an account, 1; terms that turn away sanctioned jurisdictions and not much more, 2; terms that turn away a longer list than that, 1 |


Two of the criteria need a word of explanation. **Whether the door opens** is counted out of five and
then doubled, so that it sits on the same ten-point scale as the rest. **Markets on offer** adds two
things together: a curve for the number of perpetual markets, where five hundred markets reaches the
six-point ceiling and fifty earns a little under four, plus one point for each asset class beyond
crypto — shares, currencies, commodities, indices, pre-IPO contracts — up to four.

## Step 2 — The cost criterion, worked out loud

Take the cost criterion. A venue charging 0.045% to take liquidity pays that twice on
a round trip, which is nine basis points. Ten points would need two basis points or less, and every
further basis point costs half a point, so seven basis points above the floor take three and a half
points off: the venue scores 6.5 out of 10 on cost. On a $10,000 position those nine basis points are
$9.00, which is the figure the pages print beside the score.

The same arithmetic run on a venue that charges nothing gives the full ten points and a round trip of
$0.00, and a venue at 0.080% lands on 3.0 and $16.00.

## Step 3 — What the six criteria came to

Rebuilt from the inputs below with the rules above, using documentation read on 18 September 2026 and
order books read in the hours between 07:10 and 23:58 UTC on 22 September 2026. It comes in two halves, because fifteen columns side by side are read by
nobody. The first holds the arithmetic: what each venue earned out of ten on each criterion, and the
weighted total those six figures produce.

| Venue | Score of 30 | Book depth we measured | Who holds the collateral | Cost of a round trip | Markets on offer | Record so far | Whether the door opens | 
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lighter | 25.3 | 6.5 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 9.2 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 
| edgeX | 23.2 | 6.9 | 10.0 | 6.5 | 8.0 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 
| Extended | 23.1 | 5.8 | 7.0 | 8.5 | 9.6 | 10.0 | 8.0 | 
| Aster | 23.0 | 6.3 | 7.0 | 7.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 8.0 | 
| ApeX Omni | 21.2 | 4.5 | 10.0 | 6.0 | 7.7 | 7.0 | 10.0 | 
| Hyperliquid | 21.0 | 5.9 | 7.0 | 6.5 | 9.6 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 
| EVEDEX | 19.6 | 6.6 | 5.0 | 6.5 | 7.8 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 
| Paradex | 18.0 | 0.0 | 7.0 | 10.0 | 7.0 | 10.0 | 8.0 | 
| dYdX | 17.2 | 3.9 | 7.0 | 6.0 | 5.2 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 
| Aevo | 16.4 | 4.4 | 7.0 | 3.0 | 8.5 | 4.0 | 8.0 | 


The second half is what those points were read from. Round trip is twice the entry-tier taker fee on a
$10,000 position; depth is the median of our own readings within 10 basis points of the mid price;
the four columns after them are the lines in each venue's documentation that the custody and record
criteria turn on.

| Venue | Round trip | Depth | Settled | Exit without the operator | Audits | Bounty | Loss in 24 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lighter | $0.00 | $17.4 million | every trade | yes | 9 | no | no |
| edgeX | $9.00 | $29.1 million | every trade | yes | 6 | no | no |
| Extended | $5.00 | $7.7 million | every trade | no | 2 | yes | no |
| Aster | $8.00 | $14.8 million | every trade | no | 7 | yes | no |
| ApeX Omni | $10.00 | $1.8 million | every trade | yes | 4 | no | no |
| Hyperliquid | $9.00 | $8.5 million | every trade | no | 2 | yes | yes |
| EVEDEX | $9.00 | $18.9 million | periodic | no | 2 | no | no |
| Paradex | $0.00 | $703.00 | every trade | no | 5 | yes | no |
| dYdX | $10.00 | $845,469 | every trade | no | 6 | yes | yes |
| Aevo | $16.00 | $1.7 million | every trade | no | 5 | no | yes |


Audit counts are the number of published reports we could open, and only the first two earn points. A
venue with nine reports and one with two therefore score the same on that line.

## Step 4 — The line between a liquidation and a loss

Money taken out of user accounts by an exploit, lost in a venue-run vault through manipulation, or lost because the venue itself stopped working, and not paid back in full. A liquidation caused by the market moving is not a loss under this definition, however painful it was.


This matters because the two are easy to confuse. A venue whose users were liquidated in a crash has
not lost user money under this definition. A venue whose own vault was drained, or whose chain stopped
and left stale prices behind, has.

## Step 5 — Which venues are scored at all

Venues that keep a central limit order book a trader can reach from a wallet, whether the book is matched off-chain, inside a rollup or by validators. Venues that price a trade from an oracle and a liquidity pool are described on these pages but carry no score, because the heaviest criterion here reads a book of resting orders that they do not keep.


Centralised exchanges are read the same way and appear on the [home page](/) as a yardstick, but they
are not scored: this guide is about where a trader is going, and scoring the place they are leaving
would only pad the table.

## Step 6 — Which number orders each page

| Page | Put in order by |
|---|---|
| Home, MEXC alternatives in score order, Bitget alternatives, KuCoin alternatives, CEX alternatives compared | What the six criteria come to once they are weighted |
| Bybit alternatives | How much BTC is resting within 10 basis points of the mid when you arrive |
| OKX alternatives | What one trip in and back out on $10,000 costs at the rate a new account pays |
| Binance alternatives at the door | How much a venue writes down about the checks it runs before it credits a deposit |


Where a page is sequenced by a single measurement, the overall score still prints in the table and
settles anything that comes out level. What never moves between pages is the rest of it: the six
criteria, their weights, and the figure each venue ends up carrying.

## Step 7 — Level finishes, and when a page is read again

Venues that finish on the same figure after rounding share a place, and the pages mark them as tied. Inside a shared place the order is alphabetical and means nothing.

Every page on this site is read again once a month, and sooner if a venue moves its fees, rewrites
its leverage ladder or changes its terms. When the method itself changes it takes a new version number
and a new date at the top of this page, and every table on the site is scored again under it from
scratch, so no page is left carrying figures from the version before.

Scores on this site run from 0 to 30 on one set of weights, fixed 22 September 2026 before a venue was scored.

The Switch Guide editors, 24 September 2026. Corrections, say which step it is on and what the venue actually publishes: editorial@doliacats.com

This guide is paid to publish, and a venue you are being walked towards may be the one who bought the walkthrough.