Bitget vs Kucoin | What Exchange Is Best For Retail Users?

When it comes to trading fees, Bitget and Kucoin both offer competitive rates.

Bitget charges a spot maker fee of 0.1% and a spot taker fee of 0.1%. For futures trading, the maker fee is 0.02% and the taker fee is 0.06%.

These fees can be further lowered on Bitget if monthly trade volumes exceed $1,000,000 or if users hold over $50,000 in assets on the exchange.

On the other hand, Kucoin charges the same spot maker and taker fees as Bitget (0.1%) and the same futures fees for makers (0.02%) and takers (0.06%).

Similar to Bitget, Kucoin also offers the opportunity for high volume traders to lower trading fees for both spot and futures trading once monthly trade volumes exceed 50 Bitcoins or if the user holds at least 1000 KCS tokens.

Bitget and Kucoin thus both offer competitive trading fees that are in the same range as the likes of Binance, OKX and Phemex.

When it comes to buying and trading cryptocurrencies, one of the most important things to consider is the ease of depositing funds into an exchange. Bitget and Kucoin are two exchanges that have different offerings in this regard.

Starting with Bitget, unfortunately, fiat deposits are not available on the platform. As for available deposit methods, Bitget only offers the option to deposit funds via cryptocurrencies.

Bitget does however offer the option for users to buy cryptocurrencies with over 40 fiat currencies via third party providers such as Simplex, Mercuryo and others. The only problem with this option is that it comes with high commissions that we would recommend users try and avoid if possible.

On the other hand, Kucoin offers the deposit of fiat currencies for 28 different currencies such as EUR, AUD, CHF, GBP, RUB and SEK.

However, almost all fiat deposit options on Kucoin are limited to Visa and Mastercard, and they charge a high deposit fee of 3.8%. Kucoin does however also offer a few low cost options like EUR deposit via bank transfer for a low 1 EUR fee.

And similar to Bitget, Kucoin also works with third-party providers like Banxa that let's users buy and sell cryptocurrencies with their credit or debit cards. But it ain't cheap. This means that neither Bitget nor Kucoin are great venues for cheaply depositing fiat currencies.

The best option is to deposit cryptocurrencies on their exchanges and then leverage their infrastructure to buy and sell other cryptocurrencies or trade cheaply.

Similar to deposits, Bitget does not offer fiat withdrawals which means that users can only withdraw cryptocurrencies from the exchange.

However, their withdrawal fees are quite low. Withdrawing Bitcoin comes with a low 0.0005 BTC fee, for Ethereum it's 0.0006 ETH, 0.0074 SOL for Solana and 3 USDT per withdrawal for ERC-20 Tether USD. These are low and competitive withdrawal fees, nice!

On the other hand, Kucoin offers fiat withdrawals for EUR via SEPA. However, there is a 5 EUR fee for withdrawing via SEPA. While the withdrawal fee is on the high end if you compare with exchanges like Kraken and Binance, at least it's an available options which is good.

In terms of fees for withdrawing cryptocurrencies, Kucoin is on the higher end. For those that wish to withdraw Bitcoin, that comes with a 0.001 BTC fee. For Ethereum, the withdrawal fees is 0.01 ETH. Again, on the higher end.

While Bitget and Kucoin were founded in 2018 and 2017 respectively, they have quickly amassed an impressive userbase of 9 and 20 million users respectively.

The are multiple reasons for this. To begin, neither exchange forces KYC verification for users who only want to deposit cryptocurrencies and use their trading services. KYC is only required for those that want to deposit fiat currencies or get access to higher limits of sorts.

Besides that, both Bitget and Kucoin offer a wide range of over 450 and 700 cryptocurrencies which makes both these exchanges altcoin heavens for retail users who want to ape into the next new shiny coin or token.

In terms of trading fees, both Bitget and Kucoin are very competitive with more or less the same fee structure and low spot fees of 0.1% for makers and takers.

The main weaknesses of these two exchanges are when it comes to depositing and withdrawing fiat currencies or buying and selling cryptocurrencies with card.

The are few options (if any) to deposit fiat currencies and the few available options are expensive. As so is buying cryptocurrencies with card via third-party providers.

But overall, both Bitget and Kucoin are great destination for users comfortable navigating cryptocurrencies exchanges to buy and sell spot or trade futures with leverage.

For those who wish to get started today, the signup process is quick with both exchanges and you can deposit cryptocurrencies right away after to begin trading.