Paying to pay
Most stablecoin payments to merchants start with a withdrawal from a crypto exchange. Orbital Research priced 24.8 million of them: every USDT and USDC withdrawal from 11 major exchanges in October 2026. The exchange a customer uses matters. The network a merchant accepts matters more.
Binance was cheapest. Crypto.com was dearest. Tron is where the money goes.
We matched every USDT and USDC withdrawal that left 11 major exchanges in October 2026 with the fee each exchange listed for that coin and network on 3 November. One fee changed while we were writing: on 1 November Binance raised its Tron fee from $1.50 to $4. We price its October withdrawals at $1.50 and show the effect of the rise separately.
In Orbital’s own payment data, about 70% of stablecoin payments made between August and October 2026 came straight from an exchange account rather than a self-custody wallet. For most merchants, these fees are part of the cost of getting paid, even though the customer pays them.
Key takeaways
How we did this →Which exchange is cheapest to withdraw from?
Binance, in October. Its withdrawals cost an average of 55 cents each, helped by a 1-cent default network. Bybit came next at 70 cents. Crypto.com averaged $4.62, more than eight times Binance. At Binance’s new Tron fee, Bybit would be cheapest and Binance fifth.
Where does the money go?
Tron. It carries 39% of exchange withdrawals and 83% of the fees. BNB Chain carries almost as many withdrawals, 37%, and collects 2.6% of the fees.
Could customers pay less?
Almost always. Had every withdrawal used the cheapest network its exchange offered for that coin, the monthly bill would fall from $17.3 million to $0.34 million. Whether a customer can do that depends on the networks the merchant accepts.
Do fees matter on small payments?
Yes. Fees are flat, and half of all withdrawals were under $100. On a $20 payment, every Tron fee in our sample is bigger than what a US merchant pays to take a card. At the median Tron fee, $1.50, the customer loses 7.5%. At Binance’s new $4 fee, it is 20%.
Are fees stable?
No. Of 201 routes we could compare with January, 53 went up and 59 came down. On 1 November, as we were writing, Binance raised its Tron fee from $1.50 to $4. On 3 November, 70 of the 385 routes listed, 18%, were paused.
What October’s 24.8 million exchange withdrawals cost customers in fees. At that pace, more than $200 million a year, paid before a merchant sees a cent. At Binance’s new Tron fee, the same month would cost $28.7m.
of all those fees come from a single route: USDT on Tron from Binance, at $1.50 a withdrawal in October. It carried 18% of withdrawals. Binance now charges $4.
of fees are paid on BNB Chain, which carried 37% of withdrawals. Its median USDT fee is 8 cents. Four of the 12 exchanges don’t offer it for USDT.
Where the money goes
Biggest routes by fees, October 2026Three decisions, one fee
A stablecoin payment from an exchange passes through three decisions. The customer chooses where to keep their coins. The exchange sets a flat fee for each network it supports. The merchant chooses which networks its checkout accepts. The customer pays the cheapest fee that all three allow, if they notice it.
Every fee in this report is a flat amount per withdrawal, from the exchange’s own published schedule or, where we couldn’t read one, a third-party tracker. We count one USDT or USDC as one dollar. We price October’s withdrawals at the fees listed on 3 November, except Binance’s Tron fee, which we take at its October level. The totals are an estimate of what October’s activity cost: other fees may also have moved during the month.
Where the coins are
Pick an exchange and a coin. The customer wants to pay you 100.
What each network costs
Flat fees on the networks Orbital supports for this coin, as listed on 3 November. Greyed out: not offered, paused, or not accepted by the merchant.
Which networks you accept
Toggle the networks Orbital supports for this coin. Many checkouts accept only Tron and Ethereum.
Networks Orbital supports: USDT on Tron, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Polygon and TON; USDC on Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain and Polygon. Fees in US dollars per withdrawal; Kraken, Bybit, Gate.io, MEXC and BingX fees are from a third-party tracker. KuCoin charges 0.2% on Ethereum, at least $5.50; we show the minimum.
Binance was the cheapest exchange to leave in October. Crypto.com cost eight times as much.
We ranked seven exchanges by the average fee on their own customers’ withdrawals, network by network. That is a different test from comparing fee menus. A cheap network that nobody uses does nothing for an exchange’s ranking. An expensive one that everybody uses hurts it.
† Fees from a third-party tracker, yieldo.me, rather than from the exchange itself. Kraken’s were also checked in its app. Every other fee comes from the exchange’s own API or fee page.
The order owes more to where each exchange’s customers send money than to the fees on its menu. Binance charges 1 cent on BNB Chain, its default network, where 54% of its withdrawals go. In October it charged $1.50 on Tron, where 32% go, and Tron made up 87% of its fee total.
That lead didn’t last. On 1 November, as we were writing this report, Binance raised its Tron fee to $4. Had October’s customers paid that, Binance’s average would have been $1.35, fifth of the seven, and Bybit would top the table at 70 cents. The switch above the table shows both.
OKX doesn’t offer BNB Chain, so two thirds of its withdrawals go over Tron at $1.50, although most of its other networks cost a few cents or less. Kraken has the lowest Tron fee in our sample, $1, and no BNB Chain either. KuCoin charges more than most on every major network: $1.99 on Tron, $1 on BNB Chain and at least $5.50 on Ethereum. Crypto.com offers neither Tron nor BNB Chain for USDT, and charges $10 on Ethereum, where 42% of its withdrawals go.
A fee menu tells you what an exchange charges. Its customers’ habits tell you what it costs.
Tron carries 39% of withdrawals and 83% of the fees
Exchange customers send stablecoins over two networks above all others, Tron and BNB Chain, in similar numbers. They pay for them very differently.
In October, 9.8 million withdrawals left our 11 exchanges over Tron and 9.1 million over BNB Chain. In fees, the Tron withdrawals cost customers $14.4 million and the BNB Chain withdrawals $450,000. The average Tron withdrawal cost $1.47. The average BNB Chain withdrawal cost 5 cents.
Some of the gap is the network itself. Sending USDT on Tron uses ‘energy’. Paid for by burning TRX, that energy costs about 6.4 TRX, or $2.07, for a transfer to an address that already holds USDT, and about twice that for one that doesn’t. Exchanges that stake TRX or rent energy pay less. On 3 November their fees ran from $1 at Kraken to $4 at Binance.
Ethereum is the opposite case. On 3 November a USDT transfer used about 1 to 2 cents of gas. Exchanges charged between 30 cents and $10 for it.
Gas prices move by the minute; this is one reading. Coinbase doesn’t publish its Ethereum fee.
The higher figure applies when the recipient has never held USDT. Exchanges that stake TRX or rent energy pay less than the burn price. Coinbase and Crypto.com don’t offer USDT on Tron.
On Ethereum, the network is cheap and the exchanges aren’t. On Tron, both cost real money.
Leaving the same exchange can cost 1 cent or $4
Every exchange in our sample offers a network that costs well under a dollar, and eleven of the twelve offer one for 4 cents or less. All but Coinbase also list one that costs a dollar or more. Which one a customer uses depends on what the merchant accepts and, often, on what the exchange suggests.
Defaults matter because many customers accept them. Binance pre-selects BNB Chain for both coins, one of the cheapest routes anywhere at 1 cent or less. Its dearest open USDT route, Tron, costs 400 times as much since the 1 November rise, up from 150 times. Coinbase pre-selects Ethereum for USDC. It is the only network on which Coinbase doesn’t list USDC withdrawals as free: Base, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and ten others cost nothing.
For a merchant, the spread is the opportunity. Accept a cheap network that the customer’s exchange supports and the fee all but disappears. Accept only an expensive one and the customer pays the top of the range, or doesn’t pay at all.
The cheap route is usually there. The checkout decides whether the customer can use it.
On a $20 payment, every Tron fee in our sample costs more than a card
Withdrawal fees are flat. $1.50 is noise on a $5,000 transfer and a real cost on a $20 basket. Half of all exchange withdrawals in October were for less than $100, and more than a third were under $50.
USDT fees, or USDC where an exchange publishes no USDT fee. Hollow markers: the payment is below that network’s minimum withdrawal, so the customer can’t send it at all. Arrows: off the scale. Card benchmark: Stripe’s standard pricing for US domestic cards, paid by the merchant.
On a $50 payment, the cheapest open network costs less than 1% at every exchange. Tron costs 2% to 4% at nine of the ten exchanges that offer it, and Ethereum 0.6% to 20%. A US card payment costs the merchant 3.5%. At $20 the card costs 4.4%, and every Tron fee in our sample costs more: 5% at Kraken and 7.5% at the median exchange.
Binance is the outlier since 1 November. Its new $4 Tron fee takes 8% of a $50 payment and 20% of a $20 one. In October, at $1.50, those figures were 3% and 7.5%.
The two fees fall on different people. A card fee comes out of the merchant’s revenue. An exit fee comes out of the customer’s pocket before the payment even starts, which makes it easy for a merchant to miss and hard for a customer to ignore.
Withdrawals over BNB Chain are smaller than those over Tron. The median BNB Chain USDT withdrawal was $54; the median Tron withdrawal was $200. That fits customers sending small amounts over cheap networks when they can, and saving the expensive one for larger transfers.
Minimums shut out the smallest payments
Exchanges also set a minimum withdrawal for each network. A customer with $25 at KuCoin can’t send it over Ethereum at all: the minimum is 30 USDT. Binance and OKX won’t send less than 10 USDT over Tron, and Crypto.com won’t send less than 20 over Ethereum.
| Exchange | Tron | BNB Chain | Ethereum | Solana |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Binance | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| OKX | 10 | 2 | 2 | |
| Bybit† | 2.6 | 10 | 6 | 10 |
| KuCoin | 4 | 10 | 30 | 3 |
| Bitget | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Gate.io† | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Kraken† | 6 | 0.89 | 1.15 | |
| HTX | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Crypto.com | 20 | 1.68 |
Minimum withdrawal in USDT, 3 November 2026. † From a third-party tracker. Blank: not offered.
A flat fee is a tax on small baskets.
Since January, more than half the fees we could compare have changed
We compared the 201 routes listed in both our January and November 2026 snapshots. 53 got more expensive, 59 got cheaper and 89 stayed the same. The biggest rise was on the route that collects the most money.
Tron fees rose at four of the seven exchanges we could compare. Binance’s went from $1 in January to $1.50 in October, then to $4 on 1 November. Ethereum fees for USDT rose at four of eight, even though Ethereum gas was cheap: Bitget’s went from 15 cents to $2. Others moved the other way. HTX cut its Ethereum USDT fee from $2.97 to 30 cents, and Bybit cut its from $3 to 80 cents.
That last rise came while we were writing this report. At October’s volumes it would add about $11.4 million a month, two thirds as much again as the $17.3 million we count across all 11 exchanges, if Binance’s customers keep using Tron. They may not: Binance’s default network, BNB Chain, costs 1 cent. Changes like this are one reason to give customers more than one way to pay.
On the day we collected fees, 70 of the 385 routes listed were paused, including 29 of Binance’s 42. Some pauses last hours, others longer. A customer who reaches a checkout during one can’t pay on that network, and a merchant that accepts only one or two networks has nothing else to offer.
A fee table is a snapshot. Build the checkout for the next one.
Choose networks for volume, reach and price. You need all three.
No single network does everything. Tron has the volume and the highest fees. Ethereum reaches every exchange but costs more than it needs to. BNB Chain is busy and cheap, but four exchanges don’t offer it for USDT. A good checkout blends the three.
Volume: where customers already are
Tron, BNB Chain and Ethereum carried 87% of exchange withdrawals in October. Leave one out and a large share of customers has to switch network, or give up.
Reach: what every exchange can send
USDT and USDC on Ethereum, and USDC on Solana, are open at all 12 exchanges. They are the fallback for customers whose exchange lacks the cheap options.
Price: at least one that costs pennies
BNB Chain (median USDT fee 8 cents), Polygon (7 cents for USDT, 12 for USDC) and TON (15 cents for USDT) give most customers a route for under a quarter. Coinbase charges nothing for USDC on Solana or Polygon.
Average customer: each exchange’s October withdrawals in each coin, priced at the cheapest route you accept for that coin, at 3 November fees. Coins with no route you accept are left out of the average and flagged in the table. Coinbase doesn’t publish USDT fees. Only routes Orbital supports are shown.
Our suggested starting point is the nine routes Orbital supports: USDT on Tron, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Polygon and TON, and USDC on Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain and Polygon. Together they carried 94% of October’s exchange withdrawals, and customers at all 12 exchanges can use at least one of them in the coin they hold. If each customer took the cheapest, the average fee would be about 3 cents. Tron and Ethereum alone cover 51% of withdrawals and cost the average customer 72 cents.
We keep these suggestions to networks Orbital supports. Others, such as Arbitrum and Base, are also cheap and widely offered; the data tables at the end of this report include them.
A caveat for merchants in the EU. USDT isn’t compliant with MiCA, the EU’s crypto-asset rules, so EU-regulated providers, Orbital’s among them, don’t offer it to EU customers. USDC on Ethereum and Solana, both supported by Orbital, is open at all 12 exchanges in our sample.
| Network | Share of withdrawals | Open, USDT | Open, USDC | Median fee, USDT | Median fee, USDC | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tron | 39.5% | 10 of 12 | $1.50 | Volume | ||
| BNB Chain | 36.6% | 8 of 12 | 7 of 12 | $0.08 | $0.10 | Volume Price |
| Ethereum | 11.2% | 12 of 12 | 12 of 12 | $0.80 | $1.00 | Volume Reach |
| Polygon | 4.2% | 10 of 12 | 9 of 12 | $0.07 | $0.12 | Price |
| Solana | 3.8% | 12 of 12 | $0.50 | Reach | ||
| TON | 0.9% | 9 of 12 | $0.15 | Price |
The fee a customer can skip
One kind of payment avoids the exit fee altogether. Payment products run by exchanges, such as Binance Pay, move money inside the exchange’s own ledger. Nothing leaves the exchange, so there is no withdrawal fee for the customer to pay. For a merchant with many Binance customers, it is worth offering alongside the on-chain networks.
Accept the networks your customers use, and at least one that costs them pennies.
Five questions to ask before you choose networks
Which exchanges do my customers pay from?
It decides everything else. Binance customers have a 1-cent route on BNB Chain. Customers of OKX, Kraken, Coinbase and Crypto.com can’t send USDT over BNB Chain at all.
Do I accept BNB Chain?
It carried 37% of exchange withdrawals in October, at a median USDT fee of 8 cents. A checkout without it pushes those customers onto dearer networks.
Can the customer see the cheapest way to pay?
Customers can’t choose a cheap route they don’t know about. List cheap networks first, and say what each one costs at the exchanges your customers use.
What happens when a network is paused?
On 3 November, 18% of routes were. With several networks accepted, a pause costs the customer a choice, not you a sale.
Who absorbs the fee when a payment arrives short?
Some exchanges take the fee out of the amount sent, so a customer who types the invoice total arrives a few dollars light. Decide in advance whether you tolerate small shortfalls, ask for the difference or show the fee up front.
None of this argues against accepting stablecoins, which Orbital’s business depends on. It argues for choosing networks with the customer’s fee in mind.
Which exchanges do your customers pay from?
Orbital can run this analysis on your own payment flows: where your customers send from, which networks they use and what it costs them. Orbital’s payment pages accept USDT on Tron, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Polygon and TON, USDC on Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain and Polygon, and Binance Pay.
How we did this
- The fees
-
On 3 November 2026 we recorded the withdrawal fee and status for USDT and USDC on every network listed by 12 exchanges: Binance, Bitget, BingX, Bybit, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gate.io, HTX, Kraken, KuCoin, MEXC and OKX. That is 387 combinations of exchange, coin and network across 56 networks. 385 were listed: 315 open and 70 paused.
Fees for Binance, Bitget, Coinbase, Crypto.com, HTX, KuCoin and OKX come from the exchanges’ own public APIs and fee pages. Fees for Bybit, Gate.io, Kraken, MEXC and BingX come from a third-party tracker, yieldo.me. Crypto.com’s Exchange figures match its published fee schedule for the Crypto.com App, and Kraken’s tracker figures match the Kraken app, both checked on 3 November. Fees are flat amounts in the coin withdrawn. KuCoin charges 0.2% on Ethereum, at least $5.50 and at most $36; we use the minimum.
- The withdrawals
-
We counted transfers of USDT or USDC worth $1 or more from exchange hot wallets to addresses outside the exchange, on 18 networks, from 1 to 31 October 2026 (UTC). Transfer data comes from Allium. Wallet labels come from Artemis, with Tron wallets added from public TronScan tags. That gives 24.8 million withdrawals worth $184.7 billion from 11 exchanges. We found no labelled wallets for BingX, and too few for HTX to rank it.
- The pricing
-
Each exchange’s withdrawals on each coin and network are multiplied by that route’s 3 November fee, with one exception. Binance raised its USDT fee on Tron from $1.50 to $4 on 1 November, so we price its October Tron withdrawals at $1.50 and show the effect of the $4 fee separately. Routes paused on 3 November are priced at their listed fee. Withdrawals on routes with no published fee, mainly Coinbase’s USDT and its USDC on Ethereum, are left out of fee totals and averages, so 97.2% of withdrawals are priced.
The comparison in the short version prices each withdrawal at the cheapest open route its exchange offers for the same coin. The league table ranks the seven exchanges whose main networks our wallet labels cover. Averages are per withdrawal, weighted by each exchange’s own mix of networks.
- Network costs
-
Ethereum: gas price of 0.144 gwei and ETH at $2,262.30 from Etherscan at 12:02 UTC on 3 November, for a USDT transfer using 45,000 to 65,000 gas. Tron: energy price of 100 sun from TronScan chain parameters and TRX at $0.3226. A USDT transfer uses about 64,285 energy to an address that already holds USDT and 130,285 to one that doesn’t.
- Benchmarks
-
Cards: Stripe’s standard pricing for US domestic cards, 2.9% + 30¢, from stripe.com on 3 November 2026. January 2026: fees for 201 of the same routes from Orbital’s earlier research. We leave out Gate.io, whose January figures from a third-party tracker look unreliable; some other January figures also came from trackers. Binance’s October Tron fee of $1.50 was checked by Orbital and matches third-party fee trackers on 29 October. The $4 fee took effect on 1 November.
Orbital’s payment data: the 70% figure is the share of stablecoin pay-ins to Orbital merchants, by number of payments, from August to October 2026, that came directly from an exchange account rather than a self-custody wallet.
- What this data can’t tell you
-
Exactly what customers paid. Apart from Binance’s Tron fee, we price October’s activity at the fees listed on 3 November. Other fees may have changed during October, and customers may switch networks when fees change.
Which withdrawals were payments. Many go to the customer’s own wallet, another exchange or a trading platform. We use all of them as a guide to how exchange customers move stablecoins.
Every exchange wallet. Exchanges run many wallets, and labels are better on some networks than others, so some withdrawals are missing, more for some exchanges than others.
Transfers inside an exchange. Payments through products such as Binance Pay, and transfers between customers of the same exchange, don’t touch a blockchain and don’t appear here.
How this compares with the Stablecoin Index. Orbital’s Stablecoin Index counts exchange deposits and withdrawals together. This report counts withdrawals only, so the totals differ.
- Orbital’s interest
-
Orbital builds stablecoin payments infrastructure, so it has a commercial interest in this market. We name exchanges because their fees are public, priced every exchange on the same basis, and didn’t remove findings that are unflattering to any exchange, any network or stablecoin payments. The suggestions for merchants, and the checkout calculators, use only the networks Orbital supports.
This report is published for information. It is not investment, legal or tax advice, not an offer to deal, and not a recommendation of any exchange, asset, network or route. Fees and availability change often and can differ by region, account type and app; check with the exchange before withdrawing. Exchange names are trademarks of their owners and are used for identification only. Orbital is not affiliated with the exchanges named. Stablecoins carry risks related to issuer solvency, reserve adequacy and evolving regulation. USDT is not supported by Orbital’s EU-regulated service providers servicing EU customers. Fees collected 3 November 2026; withdrawals from October 2026. Published November 2026 by Orbital Research. Reproduction with attribution is welcome.
Stablecoin withdrawal fees: common questions
Short answers from the data in this report. Unless stated, fees are flat amounts per withdrawal listed on 3 November 2026, and withdrawal counts are from October 2026.
Which crypto exchange has the lowest stablecoin withdrawal fees?
Measured by what its customers paid in October 2026, Binance. Orbital Research priced every USDT and USDC withdrawal made from seven major exchanges that month at the fees each listed on 3 November 2026, using Binance’s October Tron fee of $1.50. Binance averaged 55 cents per withdrawal, Bybit 70 cents, Gate.io 79 cents, Kraken 83 cents, OKX $1.12, KuCoin $1.74 and Crypto.com $4.62. Binance raised its Tron fee to $4 on 1 November. At that fee its average would be $1.35, and Bybit would be cheapest. The order depends mostly on how much each exchange charges on Tron and how many of its customers use it.
How much does it cost to withdraw USDT from Binance?
It depends on the network. On 3 November 2026 Binance charged 1 cent on BNB Chain, its default network, 4 cents on Avalanche and Optimism, 30 cents on Arbitrum and TON, 60 cents on Ethereum, 70 cents on Solana and $4 on Tron. Its Tron fee was $1 in January 2026 and $1.50 through October, before rising to $4 on 1 November. The minimum withdrawal was 10 USDT on Tron and 5 USDT on BNB Chain, Ethereum and Solana. Several other networks, including Polygon, were paused.
Why are Tron (TRC-20) USDT withdrawal fees so high?
Sending USDT on Tron uses ‘energy’, which costs real money unless the sender has staked TRX for it. On 3 November 2026, buying that energy by burning TRX cost about $2.07 for a transfer to an address that already held USDT, and about $4.20 to a new one. Exchanges that stake or rent energy pay less. Their fees ranged from $1 at Kraken to $4 at Binance, with a median of $1.50 across the ten exchanges that offer it. Tron carried 39% of exchange withdrawals in October 2026 and 83% of the fees.
What is the cheapest network for sending USDT from an exchange?
Among widely used networks, BNB Chain. Its median USDT fee across the eight exchanges that offer it was 8 cents, and four of them charged 1 cent. Polygon’s median was 7 cents and Avalanche’s 4 cents, but far fewer customers use them. Availability matters as much as price: OKX, Kraken, Coinbase and Crypto.com don’t offer USDT on BNB Chain. For USDC, Coinbase charges nothing on 14 networks, including Base, Solana, Polygon and Arbitrum.
Which blockchain networks should a merchant accept for stablecoin payments?
A blend of three kinds. Networks with volume, where exchange customers already send: Tron, BNB Chain and Ethereum carried 87% of exchange withdrawals in October 2026. Networks with reach: USDT and USDC on Ethereum, and USDC on Solana, are open at all 12 exchanges in our sample. And at least one cheap network, such as BNB Chain or Polygon. The nine routes Orbital supports, USDT on Tron, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Polygon and TON and USDC on Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain and Polygon, together covered 94% of withdrawals and gave customers at every exchange a route, at an average cheapest fee of about 3 cents.
How much do exchange customers pay in stablecoin withdrawal fees?
The 24.8 million USDT and USDC withdrawals made from 11 major exchanges in October 2026 cost customers about $17.3 million in fees, an average of 72 cents each, or more than $200 million a year at the same pace. 83% of that was paid on Tron, and 40% on a single route: USDT on Tron from Binance. At Binance’s new $4 Tron fee, from 1 November, the same month would cost $28.7 million.
Why does one exchange charge such different fees on different networks?
Partly because networks cost different amounts to use, and partly because exchanges set flat fees that don’t track those costs closely. On 3 November 2026 an Ethereum USDT transfer used about 1 to 2 cents of gas, but exchanges charged between 30 cents and $10 for it. On Binance, the dearest open USDT route, Tron, cost 400 times the cheapest, BNB Chain, after its Tron fee rose on 1 November.
Do exchanges take the withdrawal fee out of the amount sent?
Some do. On those exchanges, a customer who enters the exact invoice amount sends that amount minus the fee, so the payment arrives short. Merchants should decide in advance whether to accept small shortfalls, ask for the difference or show the fee before the customer pays.
Do withdrawal fees change often?
Yes. Of 201 routes Orbital Research could compare between January and November 2026, 53 got more expensive, 59 got cheaper and 89 didn’t change. Tron fees rose at four of the seven exchanges we could compare, and Binance raised its Tron USDT fee from $1.50 to $4 on 1 November. On 3 November, 70 of 385 listed routes were paused, including 29 of Binance’s 42.
Why isn’t Coinbase in the league table?
Coinbase doesn’t publish a fixed fee for USDT on any network, or for USDC on Ethereum, its default USDC network. Those routes carry 60% of its withdrawals, so we can’t calculate a reliable average. Coinbase lists USDC withdrawals on its 14 other networks as free.
How did Orbital Research collect this data?
On 3 November 2026 we recorded the USDT and USDC withdrawal fee and status on every network listed by 12 exchanges, from the exchanges’ own APIs and fee pages where available and from a third-party tracker otherwise. We then counted 24.8 million withdrawals from labelled exchange hot wallets in October 2026, using Allium transfer data with Artemis and TronScan wallet labels, and priced each one at its route’s November fee, except Binance’s Tron USDT route, which we price at its October fee of $1.50 because it rose to $4 on 1 November. The figures estimate what October’s activity cost; other fees may also have moved during the month.
The numbers behind the charts
Every chart in this report as a table. Fees are flat amounts per withdrawal in US dollars, listed on 3 November 2026. Withdrawals are October 2026. † Fee from a third-party tracker.
| Exchange | Withdrawals | Value | Average fee | Fees per month | On Tron | On BNB Chain | On Ethereum | Cheapest open route | Dearest open route |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Binance | 14,304,861 | $92.4bn | $0.55 | $7.9m | 32% | 54% | 6% | Free USDC on BNB Chain | $4.00 USDT on Tron |
| Bybit† | 3,097,171 | $10.4bn | $0.70 | $2.2m | 45% | 32% | 6% | Free USDT on Berachain | $1.30 USDT on Tron |
| Gate.io† | 667,767 | $5.4bn | $0.79 | $531k | 36% | 31% | 6% | $0.04 USDT on Aptos | $1.50 USDT on Tron |
| Kraken† | 177,535 | $10.0bn | $0.83 | $148k | 46% | 0% | 48% | Free USDT on Ink | $1.50 USDC on Injective |
| OKX | 3,880,478 | $20.3bn | $1.12 | $4.3m | 68% | 0% | 18% | <$0.001 USDT on Plasma | $1.50 USDT on Tron |
| KuCoin | 433,567 | $5.1bn | $1.74 | $756k | 56% | 27% | 4% | $0.21 USDC on Polygon | $5.50 USDT on Ethereum |
| Crypto.com | 128,297 | $1.0bn | $4.62 | $593k | 0% | 0% | 42% | $0.008 USDC on Hedera | $10.00 USDT on Ethereum |
October 2026 withdrawals priced at 3 November 2026 fees, except Binance’s Tron USDT fee, taken at $1.50, its October level. Averages exclude withdrawals on routes with no published fee. Coinbase, MEXC, Bitget, HTX and BingX are not ranked; see the methodology.
| Network | Withdrawals | Share of withdrawals | Share of fees | Average fee | Fees per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tron | 9,785,289 | 39.5% | 83.1% | $1.47 | $14.4m |
| BNB Chain | 9,070,171 | 36.6% | 2.6% | $0.05 | $449k |
| Ethereum | 2,768,021 | 11.2% | 10.9% | $0.90 | $1.9m |
| Polygon | 1,031,570 | 4.2% | 0.4% | $0.07 | $69k |
| Solana | 947,626 | 3.8% | 2.1% | $0.38 | $359k |
| Arbitrum | 427,393 | 1.7% | 0.4% | $0.16 | $67k |
| Plasma | 217,740 | 0.9% | 0.0% | $0.01 | $3k |
| TON | 212,469 | 0.9% | 0.2% | $0.18 | $40k |
| Avalanche | 136,391 | 0.5% | 0.1% | $0.08 | $10k |
| Base | 121,685 | 0.5% | 0.1% | $0.15 | $19k |
| Optimism | 57,037 | 0.2% | 0.0% | $0.08 | $5k |
| Celo | 10,989 | 0.0% | 0.0% | $0.09 | $2k |
Withdrawals from 11 exchanges, October 2026. Share of fees on the same basis as the league table.
| Exchange | Tron USDT | BNB Chain USDT | BNB Chain USDC | Ethereum USDT | Ethereum USDC | Solana USDT | Solana USDC | Polygon USDT | Arbitrum USDT | Arbitrum USDC | Base USDC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Binance | $4.00 | $0.01 | Free | $0.60 | $1.00 | $0.70 | $0.30 | Paused | $0.30 | Paused | Paused |
| BingX† | $1.50 | $0.15 | Free | $1.00 | $1.00 | $1.00 | $1.00 | $0.80 | $0.50 | Paused | $0.02 |
| Bitget | $1.50 | $0.01 | Free | $2.00 | $2.00 | $0.50 | $0.50 | $0.07 | $0.10 | $0.15 | $0.10 |
| Bybit† | $1.30 | $0.15 | $0.20 | $0.80 | $0.80 | $0.50 | $0.30 | $0.07 | $0.10 | $0.20 | $0.25 |
| Coinbase | n/p | n/p | Free | n/p | n/p | Free | Free | ||||
| Crypto.com | $10.00 | $10.00 | $0.84 | $0.75 | $0.80 | $1.18 | $1.00 | $0.03 | |||
| Gate.io† | $1.50 | $0.50 | $0.50 | $1.00 | $1.00 | $0.50 | $0.50 | $0.05 | $0.05 | $0.05 | $0.05 |
| HTX | $1.20 | $0.01 | $0.46 | $0.30 | $1.14 | $0.30 | $0.94 | Paused | Paused | $0.05 | $2.60 |
| Kraken† | $1.00 | $0.65 | $0.76 | $0.95 | $0.96 | $1.00 | $1.00 | $1.00 | $1.00 | ||
| KuCoin | $1.99 | $1.00 | $5.50 | $5.50 | $1.50 | $1.00 | $0.80 | $1.00 | $1.00 | $0.50 | |
| MEXC† | $1.20 | $0.01 | $0.10 | $0.30 | $0.88 | $0.27 | $0.27 | $0.05 | $0.05 | $0.0048 | $0.10 |
| OKX | $1.50 | $0.50 | $0.87 | $0.26 | $0.26 | $0.0095 | $0.0033 | $0.0047 | $0.02 |
Withdrawal fee in US dollars on 3 November 2026. “Paused”: listed but not open for withdrawals. “n/p”: open, fee not published. Blank: not offered. KuCoin’s Ethereum fee is 0.2% of the amount, at least $5.50.
| Network, coin | Withdrawals | 10th percentile | Median | 90th percentile | Under $50 | Under $100 | Under $1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tron, USDT | 9,785,291 | $19.97 | $199.8 | $2,997.62 | 24% | 37% | 78% |
| BNB Chain, USDT | 8,739,145 | $9.31 | $54.49 | $999.22 | 48% | 63% | 91% |
| Ethereum, USDT | 2,166,539 | $14.25 | $94.12 | $1,503.46 | 37% | 53% | 87% |
| Polygon, USDT | 779,920 | $5.19 | $60.79 | $999.94 | 47% | 59% | 90% |
| Ethereum, USDC | 608,215 | $14.38 | $150.05 | $6,124.27 | 30% | 43% | 78% |
| Solana, USDC | 485,266 | $9.5 | $55.73 | $1,711.21 | 48% | 62% | 87% |
| Solana, USDT | 466,007 | $9.69 | $97.87 | $2,627.62 | 40% | 54% | 84% |
| BNB Chain, USDC | 362,011 | $6.0 | $51.09 | $1,488.33 | 49% | 62% | 88% |
| Arbitrum, USDT | 299,801 | $4.99 | $73.31 | $1,499.63 | 45% | 58% | 87% |
| Polygon, USDC | 254,564 | $5.0 | $49.85 | $1,727.07 | 52% | 64% | 87% |
| Plasma, USDT | 220,579 | $5.0 | $101.46 | $3,051.24 | 39% | 49% | 80% |
| TON, USDT | 213,530 | $4.7 | $39.83 | $536.46 | 55% | 69% | 94% |
| Arbitrum, USDC | 131,871 | $10.0 | $220.4 | $9,996.47 | 27% | 38% | 71% |
| Base, USDC | 127,520 | $4.81 | $99.66 | $9,997.81 | 42% | 52% | 77% |
Withdrawals of $1 or more from 11 exchanges, October 2026.
| Network | Exchange | January 2026 | 3 November 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tron | Binance | $1.00 | $4.00 | +$3.00 |
| Tron | Bitget | $1.60 | $1.50 | -$0.10 |
| Tron | Bybit† | $1.00 | $1.30 | +$0.30 |
| Tron | HTX | $1.50 | $1.20 | -$0.30 |
| Tron | KuCoin | $1.50 | $1.99 | +$0.49 |
| Tron | MEXC† | $1.00 | $1.20 | +$0.20 |
| Tron | OKX | $1.50 | $1.50 | No change |
| Ethereum | Binance | $0.32 | $0.60 | +$0.28 |
| Ethereum | Bitget | $0.15 | $2.00 | +$1.85 |
| Ethereum | Bybit† | $3.00 | $0.80 | -$2.20 |
| Ethereum | Crypto.com | $10.00 | $10.00 | No change |
| Ethereum | HTX | $2.97 | $0.30 | -$2.67 |
| Ethereum | KuCoin | $5.50 | $5.50 | No change |
| Ethereum | MEXC† | $0.15 | $0.30 | +$0.15 |
| Ethereum | OKX | $0.15 | $0.50 | +$0.35 |
| BNB Chain | Binance | $0.01 | $0.01 | No change |
| BNB Chain | Bitget | $1.00 | $0.01 | -$0.99 |
| BNB Chain | Bybit† | $1.00 | $0.15 | -$0.85 |
| BNB Chain | HTX | $1.50 | $0.01 | -$1.49 |
| BNB Chain | KuCoin | $1.00 | $1.00 | No change |
| BNB Chain | MEXC† | $0.01 | $0.01 | No change |
| Solana | Binance | $0.30 | $0.70 | +$0.40 |
| Solana | Bitget | $0.15 | $0.50 | +$0.35 |
| Solana | Bybit† | $1.00 | $0.50 | -$0.50 |
| Solana | Crypto.com | $0.93 | $0.84 | -$0.09 |
| Solana | HTX | $1.24 | $0.30 | -$0.94 |
| Solana | KuCoin | $1.50 | $1.50 | No change |
| Solana | MEXC† | $0.30 | $0.27 | -$0.03 |
| Solana | OKX | $0.43 | $0.26 | -$0.17 |
USDT withdrawal fees on the four busiest networks, for routes listed in both snapshots. Gate.io is left out because its January figures look unreliable.
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