What Is Binance Futures?
Binance Futures launched in 2019 as Binance's derivatives arm. Traders use its contracts to bet on rising prices by going long or falling prices by going short, without holding the underlying asset. Perpetual futures, which have no expiry date, account for most of its volume. Our guide to perpetual versus spot trading explains the distinction.
USDⓈ-M contracts are priced and settled in USDT or USDC stablecoins, with profit and loss counted in dollars. COIN-M contracts settle in the underlying cryptocurrency. A Bitcoin contract, for example, pays out in BTC.
With $9.34 trillion in derivatives volume during the first half of 2026, Binance Futures is the largest crypto derivatives market. That represented a 26.6% share in CoinGlass's semi-annual report. Daily open interest, the value of contracts still open, averaged $24.01 billion, compared with $13.55 billion at CME, the Chicago futures exchange.
Our October 4, 2026 check of CoinGecko's Binance Futures listing counted 799 perpetual and 21 dated contracts. Open interest was $30.75 billion, with $63.8 billion traded over 24 hours. Across all products, Binance says it has more than 300 million registered users. We assess the wider platform in our full Binance review.
CoinMarketCap, owned by Binance since 2020, bought CoinGlass on September 25, 2026. We therefore cross-check CoinGlass rankings of Binance against CoinGecko wherever both publish the same metric.
What Changed on Binance Futures This Year
A new regulator oversees Binance Futures this year. Its contract range has expanded, while fewer countries have access than in January.
- Abu Dhabi rulebook: Since January 5, 2026, Nest Exchange Limited has matched futures orders on Binance.com, with Nest Clearing and Custody Limited handling clearing. Both fall under the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), which authorized Binance's global platform in December 2025.
- TradFi perpetuals: USDT-settled gold and silver perpetuals arrived in January, followed by US stocks and exchange-traded funds. Binance's first currency contract tracks the US dollar against the Brazilian real and went live on September 21.
- Pre-IPO contracts: In May, Binance introduced perpetuals tied to private companies' expected public valuations, starting with SpaceX, followed by OpenAI.
- EU exit: On June 24, Binance withdrew its Greek application for a license under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). It stopped providing crypto services to EU residents from July 1.
- Emergency fund in Bitcoin: Binance converted its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) into 15,000 BTC in February. The reserve covers user losses after a breach. Binance has committed to replenishing it to $1 billion if its value falls below $800 million.
- Crash post-mortem: Binance's January account of the October 10, 2025 crash acknowledged two platform failures and put total compensation above $328 million.
Types of Futures Contracts on Binance
Binance groups contracts by their settlement asset, expiry structure, and underlying market. The last two categories below were added this year.
1. USDⓈ-M Perpetual Futures
USDⓈ-M perpetuals stay open as long as the account has enough margin, the collateral posted against a position. If that margin runs short, Binance forcibly closes the position through liquidation. BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT were the busiest contracts when we checked, with respective 24-hour volumes of $13.5 billion and $8.8 billion.
Without an expiry date to bring the contract price back toward the underlying coin, perpetuals rely on funding payments. At set intervals, traders on the more crowded side pay those on the other side, pulling the contract toward the spot price.
2. COIN-M Perpetual Futures
A COIN-M perpetual such as BTCUSD is quoted in dollars but uses BTC for margin and for settling profit or loss. Holders can hedge or add exposure without first selling their coins for stablecoins.
That also means the collateral moves with the market. A Bitcoin price decline reduces both the value of a long position and the BTC backing it. Our guide to inverse perpetual contract exchanges compares venues offering this contract style.
3. Delivery Futures
Delivery futures expire on a fixed date and carry no funding payments. CoinGecko's listing includes coin-settled quarterly contracts for BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, and XRP, alongside USDT-settled BTC and ETH quarterlies with three-month and six-month expiries.
Open positions close automatically at expiry. Binance uses a settlement price averaged over the final 30 minutes and charges a settlement fee equal to the taker fee. These contracts suit traders looking to lock in the gap between futures and spot prices for a known period.
4. TradFi Perpetual Contracts
TradFi perpetuals track traditional financial assets, including gold, silver, US stocks, exchange-traded funds, and one currency pair so far. Trading runs around the clock, with USDT settlement and the same margin and liquidation rules used for crypto perpetuals. The contracts provide no ownership of the underlying asset or entitlement to dividends or voting rights.
Binance's index follows third-party data vendors during regular market hours. On weekends and holidays, it uses a smoothed average of prices from its own order book, with limits on how far the contract can drift.
Binance accounted for $666.34 billion in first-half TradFi contract volume, a 55.5% share, according to CoinGlass. For equity exposure, our review of tokenized stock trading exchanges compares the available venues.
5. Pre-IPO Perpetual Contracts
Pre-IPO perpetuals track a private company's expected public market valuation before it lists. Binance launched SpaceX and OpenAI contracts in May; its September data release also cites an Anthropic contract. Our SpaceX IPO explainer and guide to trading Anthropic pre-IPO futures provide background on those two companies.
These contracts carry the platform's highest risk. With no live share price to anchor them, pricing relies on announced valuation ranges and IPO pricing data. Binance says that if a listing is postponed or cancelled, it will give notice before delisting the contract and settling open positions.
Binance Futures Leverage and Supported Markets
The contract and position value determine how much leverage Binance Futures allows. BTCUSDT offers up to 125x for the smallest positions, with progressively lower caps as positions grow. At 125x, posted margin covers just 0.8% of the position. An adverse price move of less than 1% therefore triggers liquidation.
Smaller and newer markets have lower limits. Equity perpetuals listed in late September were capped at 20x, compared with 100x for the dollar-real currency contract. New accounts face a separate ceiling under a policy dating to 2021, when Binance limited new futures users to 20x.
Two further settings affect positions and collateral:
- Position mode: One-Way Mode maintains a single net position per contract. With Hedge Mode, a trader can hold a long and a short on the same contract simultaneously.
- Multi-Assets Mode: A shared pool of several supported assets can back all USDⓈ-M positions. Any asset other than the settlement stablecoin is valued at a discount to its market price.
Binance Futures Fees and Funding Rates
Binance charges trading fees when a futures position opens and closes. Perpetual positions also incur funding payments while they remain open.
Trading Fees
Under Binance's maker and taker pricing, maker orders wait on the order book and add depth, while taker orders execute immediately against existing orders. Its fee documentation quotes regular-user rates of 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker for both USDⓈ-M and COIN-M contracts.
Opening a $10,000 position with a market order costs $5, as does closing it with one. Resting limit orders cost $2 each way. Because fees apply to the full position value, a $10 round trip at 20x leverage consumes 2% of the $500 margin posted.
Discounts and VIP Tiers
The base rate can change through discounts, VIP status, or a contract's separate fee schedule:
- BNB payment: Paying USDⓈ-M fees in Binance's exchange token, BNB, reduces them by 10%. The BNB must be in the futures wallet. Once that balance runs out, fees revert to the full rate in USDT.
- VIP tiers: Spot VIP levels carry over to futures, while qualifying through futures requires five times the spot volume. Each threshold appears in our breakdown of Binance VIP levels.
- Separate schedules: USDC-margined perpetuals use a promotional schedule. TradFi perpetuals have their own fee table, so check the relevant schedule before assuming standard rates apply.
Funding Rates
Traders pay funding to one another; Binance does not retain it. Longs pay shorts when the rate is positive, and shorts pay longs when it is negative. Binance's funding formula adds a premium measuring the contract's distance from spot to a fixed interest component of 0.01% per eight-hour interval.
A $10,000 long pays $1 every eight hours at the baseline 0.01% rate, equivalent to about 11% a year. Rates can run several times higher in crowded markets. Binance may also shorten a contract's funding interval when the rate hits its cap. Those caps vary by market, from 0.375% per interval on the currency contract to 2% on recent equity listings.
Our funding rates tracker shows live rates across exchanges to help compare where to hold a position for more than a few days.
Margin, Liquidation, and Risk Controls
Binance's process for closing losing positions matters more than any fee. It determines when liquidation occurs and who absorbs a loss if a position cannot be closed in time.
Margin Modes
Cross Margin draws on the entire futures wallet balance to support open positions. That can delay liquidation on an individual trade, but a large loss can drain the collateral supporting the others. Isolated Margin limits one position to a fixed allocation, capping its loss at that amount.
Larger accounts can use Portfolio Margin, which assesses futures, margin trading, and options together. Offsetting positions reduce the total collateral required.
Mark Price and Liquidation
Liquidation is based on the mark price, Binance's estimate of fair value derived from an index of spot prices across exchanges. Using this instead of the last traded price protects positions from liquidation caused by a brief spike on Binance's own order book. The process begins when the margin balance falls below maintenance margin, the minimum collateral required to keep a position open.
Our Bitcoin liquidation heatmap maps price levels with the greatest concentration of leveraged positions and, consequently, forced selling.
Insurance Fund and Auto-Deleveraging
The Futures Insurance Fund covers the shortfall when a liquidated position closes at a price worse than its collateral can absorb. If the fund is insufficient, Binance uses auto-deleveraging (ADL) to partially close the most profitable and most leveraged positions on the opposite side.
A winning trade can therefore be cut short without the trader's consent. Each position has an indicator showing its place in the ADL queue. Our explainer on auto-deleveraging covers how that ranking works.
Lessons From the October 10 Crash
On October 10, 2025, USDe, BNSOL, and WBETH traded far below their values elsewhere on Binance. All three were accepted as collateral, and accounts using them were liquidated. Within a day, Binance paid about $283 million to affected users. A later review found that transfers between Spot, Earn, and Futures accounts had also slowed for 33 minutes.
Binance has since revised its pricing for those three assets. Traders should still hold spare margin inside the futures wallet, rather than count on transferring it during a sell-off. Avoid using yield-paying tokens to back leveraged positions. Our October 10 crash explainer sets out the full timeline.
Order Types and Self-Imposed Limits
Available orders include limit, market, stop, take-profit, and trailing-stop orders. A reduce-only setting prevents an order from increasing a position, while stop orders can use either the last price or the mark price as their trigger.
On the Responsible Trading page, a cooling-off function blocks futures trading for a chosen period. Activating it after liquidation helps prevent impulsive attempts to win back losses.
Security, Reserves, and Regulation
Binance holds futures collateral, making its security record and reserves relevant to every trader. Its most serious breach occurred in May 2019, when attackers withdrew 7,000 BTC from an internet-connected hot wallet. SAFU covered the loss without reducing user balances. The fund now holds 15,000 BTC, and its dollar value fluctuates with Bitcoin's price.
Users can confirm that their balances form part of Binance's stated liabilities through its cryptographic Proof of Reserves. CoinGlass's first-half report valued Binance's user assets at $150.21 billion, representing 64.4% of the total across 16 sampled exchanges. Proof of Reserves confirms the existence of assets but does not audit the company's other debts.
Under the Abu Dhabi structure, Binance.com operates through an exchange, a clearing house, and a broker-dealer, each supervised by the FSRA. This provides firmer legal footing after a difficult regulatory record. Binance agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement with US authorities in 2023 over anti-money-laundering failures.
Australia's Federal Court fined Binance Australia Derivatives AUD 10 million in March 2026 for incorrectly classifying 524 retail clients as wholesale investors.
Binance Futures Country Restrictions
Futures access is more restricted than Binance spot trading, with further limits introduced this year.
- European Union: Binance has provided no crypto services to EU residents since July 1, 2026. ESMA, the EU securities regulator, instructed unlicensed firms to stop onboarding EU clients and restrict activity to closing positions and withdrawals. Binance says it will reapply in another member state.
- United Kingdom: UK retail accounts cannot trade futures because the Financial Conduct Authority has banned the sale of crypto derivatives to retail consumers since January 2021.
- United States: Binance.com does not serve US residents. The separate Binance.US company offers no perpetual futures, though it has said it plans to apply to the CFTC, the US derivatives regulator, for an exchange license.
- Australia: The local entity no longer offers futures after Binance's Australian derivatives license was cancelled in April 2023.
- Canada: Binance left the Canadian market in 2023.
The full list is tracked on our Binance restricted countries page. Our guide to MiCA-licensed crypto exchanges compares licensed alternatives for EU readers.
How to Start Trading on Binance Futures
You need a verified Binance account to open a futures account. Complete the steps below in order:
- Check eligibility: Before depositing, confirm that derivatives are available in your country of residence. Access to spot trading does not guarantee futures access.
- Verify your identity: Complete Know Your Customer (KYC) checks using a government ID and a facial scan.
- Open the Futures account: Activate futures in the trading menu and pass Binance's knowledge quiz to enable leverage.
- Practice first: Binance Demo Trading mirrors live markets and gives futures users $16,800 in virtual funds.
- Transfer collateral: Send USDT, USDC, or a supported coin from the Spot wallet to the Futures wallet.
- Choose the contract and margin mode: Select USDⓈ-M or COIN-M, then choose Cross or Isolated Margin before opening a position.
- Set leverage and place the order: Begin below 5x and enter a stop-loss alongside the entry order.
- Monitor and close: Track the margin ratio and liquidation price, along with the funding countdown. Where possible, close with a limit order to pay the maker rate.
Pros and Cons of Binance Futures
Binance Futures combines unmatched market depth and product range with restricted access and platform risk.
Advantages:
- Deepest order books: Binance accounted for 21.3% of average daily open interest across all venues in the first half of 2026. Large orders therefore move prices less than they would elsewhere.
- Widest product range: One futures wallet provides access to crypto, commodities, stocks, currencies, and pre-IPO contracts.
- Competitive fees: At 0.05%, the taker rate matches or beats most large centralized rivals even before BNB and VIP discounts.
- Formal regulatory structure: Exchange, clearing, and custody functions operate within separate FSRA-supervised entities.
- Risk tools: The interface includes Demo Trading and a cooling-off function, alongside ADL indicators.
Drawbacks:
- Shrinking availability: Retail traders in the EU, UK, US, Canada, and Australia cannot use the platform.
- October 2025 failures: Collateral pricing and internal transfers failed under stress. Compensation reached affected users only afterward.
- High leverage ceilings: Some contracts allow 100x or more, leaving almost no margin for error.
- New contract types: TradFi and pre-IPO perpetuals depend on Binance's own pricing when underlying markets are closed.
- Custody exposure: Binance holds the collateral, whereas traders retain control of their funds on decentralized venues.
Binance Futures vs Other Futures Platforms
Binance has the highest open interest, with a decentralized exchange now in second place. Our perpetual futures statistics page tracks changes in those shares. The comparison below uses CoinGecko's derivatives rankings from October 4, 2026, converting Bitcoin-denominated open interest at about $84,500. More venues appear in our ranking of the best crypto futures exchanges.
ExchangeFutures MarketsOpen InterestBase Fees (Maker/Taker)Max LeverageKey FeaturesBinance Futures799 perpetual; 21 dated$30.8B0.02% / 0.05%125xLargest open interest; TradFi perpetualsHyperliquid330 perpetual$16.7B0.015% / 0.045%40xOnchain order book; self-custodyBybit878 perpetual; 80 dated$14.6B0.02% / 0.055%100xMost dated contracts; copy tradingOKX501 perpetual; 14 dated$8.0B0.02% / 0.05%125xUnified account; optionsKraken Futures286 perpetual; 19 dated$0.5B0.02% / 0.05%50xLower leverage cap
Binance Futures vs Bybit
Bybit's 878 perpetuals and 80 dated futures give it more contracts than Binance, though its open interest is about half as large. The base taker fee is 0.055%, slightly above Binance's 0.05%. That difference adds $0.50 for every $10,000 traded.
Traders seeking more expiries or copy trading tools may prefer Bybit. For large orders in major contracts, Binance is the stronger fit. Our Bybit Futures review and Bybit vs Binance comparison examine both in more detail.
Binance Futures vs OKX
Base fees and maximum leverage are the same at OKX and Binance. OKX has fewer contracts and roughly a quarter of Binance's open interest, but offers an established options market and a single account that margins spot, futures, and options together.
Our OKX Futures review covers the platform, while OKX vs Binance compares the two directly.
Binance Futures vs Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid matches orders on its own blockchain, with traders retaining custody of their collateral. The decentralized exchange now has more than half of Binance's open interest. Its base fees, at 0.015% maker and 0.045% taker, are also lower.
Market coverage is narrower, and Bitcoin leverage stops at 40x. Through builders such as Trade.xyz, however, Hyperliquid has become the main challenger in stock and commodity perpetuals. We cover the comparison in Hyperliquid vs Binance and the wider market in our guide to decentralized perpetuals exchanges.
Binance Futures vs Kraken
With less than $1 billion in open interest and a 50x leverage cap, Kraken Futures is much smaller. Its 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker base fees match Binance, although thinner order books mean larger orders move prices more.
Kraken's regulatory standing makes it an alternative in markets Binance has left. Our Kraken vs Binance comparison details which products are available from each exchange by region.
Final Thoughts
Binance Futures retains the deepest order books and broadest contract list in crypto derivatives. This year, it extended that lead into gold, stocks, and currencies. Experienced traders in supported countries will find no other single venue that covers as much.
Its EU exit and public account of the October 2025 failures also show the limits of that offering. Before opening an account, confirm eligibility. Keep leverage low and treat any collateral held on Binance as exposed to the exchange.
