Fees
Verus v1: zero protocol fee
Verus does not charge a fee on your perp trades in v1. There is no protocol fee, no spread, no markup on the price you get, and no deposit fee. We are using this period to build a dataset of the savings best execution actually generates for different traders, on different markets, at different sizes.
This page covers perps. Copy trading is a separate product with its own costs. See Copy trading fees.
Venue trading fees
Every cost below is charged by the venue, not by Verus. Verus prices all of them for your exact trade before routing, so the venue with the lowest sticker fee is not automatically the one you land on.
Order book venues
| Venue | Maker | Taker |
|---|---|---|
| Hyperliquid | 1.5 bps | 4.5 bps |
| Lighter | 0 | 0 |
| Orderly | -0.1 bps (a rebate paid to you) | 2.5 bps |
- Hyperliquid. The table shows the base tier. Your live Hyperliquid tier applies and gets lower with volume or staking: Verus reads your actual tier rather than assuming the sticker rate.
- Lighter. Standard accounts pay no maker or taker fee at all.
- Orderly. Fees on Orderly are set per broker, and these are the numbers for the Verus broker (see below). When your order adds liquidity to the book, the venue pays you 0.1 bps.
Pool-based perp venues
GMX and Ostium have no maker and taker split. You pay an opening fee plus the on-chain execution cost:
| Venue | Opening fee | Closing fee | Also priced in |
|---|---|---|---|
| GMX | Dynamic, set per market | Same fee again on close | Price impact, plus keeper and relay gas billed in USDC on each leg |
| Ostium | 3 to 10 bps, set per market | None | A $0.10 oracle fee on open, refunded when you fully close, plus relay gas billed in USDC on each leg |
On Ostium, real-world asset markets (forex, indices, commodities, stocks) sit at the low end of that range and crypto pairs at the high end.
Venue fee schedules are set by the venues and can change at any time. The numbers above are accurate as of August 2026. The app always prices your trade against the live schedule, so treat this table as a reference, not a quote.
Orderly: Verus runs its own broker
Orderly’s fee schedule is set per broker, and Verus operates its own broker rather than trading under someone else’s. That means the schedule your trades get is under Verus’s control and is insulated from other brokers or front ends changing theirs. Verus charges nothing additional on top of Orderly’s base fee: the maker rebate and taker fee in the table above are the whole cost of trading there. It is also why the Orderly maker fee is a rebate: when your order adds liquidity to the book, you receive 0.1 bps rather than paying it.
Deposit and withdrawal costs
Moving collateral to a venue and back is a real cost, so Verus counts it in the routing decision. Order book venues have a deposit minimum, a withdrawal fee, and a minimum amount you can pull back at once:
| Venue | Deposit minimum | Withdrawal fee | Minimum freed balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperliquid | $5 | $1 | $5 |
| Lighter | $5 | $3 | $5 |
| Orderly | $10 | $1 | $5 |
| GMX | No separate deposit | No withdrawal step | Not applicable |
| Ostium | No separate deposit | No withdrawal step | Not applicable |
On GMX and Ostium your collateral rides the order itself, so there is no separate deposit or withdrawal step and no venue withdrawal fee. You still pay the on-chain execution cost on each leg, in USDC. See Deposits & withdrawals for how the two withdrawal stages work.
Funding and carry
Funding is only paid while a position is open, so it depends on how long you hold. Each venue handles it differently:
| Venue | Carry model |
|---|---|
| Hyperliquid | Funding, paid hourly. |
| Lighter | Funding, paid hourly. |
| Orderly | Funding, settled every 8 hours on most markets. |
| GMX | Net carry (funding minus borrowing), accrues continuously. |
| Ostium | Rollover fee only, accrues continuously. No funding. |
If you enter an expected hold time, Verus adds the expected carry on each venue to the cost comparison. Leave it out and carry is excluded from the routing decision, though you still pay it while the position is open.
What best execution optimizes
Even with no Verus fee, perpetual trading has real costs. Verus models all of them when it routes so you pay the lowest total:
- Venue trading fees, at your actual tier per venue rather than a sticker rate.
- Slippage, on both entry and exit, benchmarked across venues so the comparison is fair. See Best execution for the detail.
- Funding or carry, if you supply an expected hold time.
- Deposit and withdrawal cost, per venue.
- Gas, on the venues where an on-chain action is part of the trade.
The point of best execution is to optimize the whole picture, not just the sticker fee. A venue with a slightly higher taker fee but much better depth can still be the cheapest place to land your trade.
Gas
Verus uses the Circle Paymaster (with a Pimlico bundler) so you pay gas in USDC rather than ETH. A small USDC amount (typically a few cents) is deducted per on-chain action to cover the actual gas cost, capped at 1 USDC per operation, and unused USDC is refunded. You only need Arbitrum USDC. See Deposits & withdrawals for the mechanism.
Realized savings
After a trade closes, the Savings tab shows your realized savings: what you actually saved versus the alternative venues, based on the trade that really happened, not just the pre-trade simulation.