Crypto exchanges compared on fees, limits and availability
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Quick takeaway: Robinhood does not publish margin rates for cryptocurrency trades because you cannot buy cryptocurrencies on credit on the Robinhood platform at all. If you landed…
Read articleShort version: an on-ramp or brokerage is rarely the cheapest way to hold crypto long-term, but it's often the fastest way to get money into it, and the two labels get used interchangeably when they shouldn't be. Read on if you're choosing where to buy, swap, or hold crypto and want to know what's actually being compared before you hand over a bank login.
This cluster is about the first step: turning currency sitting in a bank account into crypto sitting somewhere you control, or at least somewhere you chose on purpose. That step gets handled by three overlapping categories: pure on-ramps, brokerages, and full exchanges that also happen to offer a simplified buy button.
The guides under this hub walk through specific platforms — fees, limits, verification steps, withdrawal mechanics. This page exists to explain the vocabulary and the comparison points so the platform-specific guides make sense without re-explaining the basics each time. For the compliance side specifically, see Exchange Account Setup & Compliance: Overview. For the deposit mechanics, see On-Ramps & Deposits: How to Compare Them.
Takeaway: this hub is the index; the guides are where the fee numbers actually live.
Marketing copy uses these words loosely, so here's the practical distinction.
An on-ramp is any mechanism that converts fiat into crypto. It can be a standalone widget embedded in a wallet, a bank transfer form on an exchange, or a card-purchase flow. It does one job.
A brokerage sells you crypto directly at a price it sets, similar to how a currency exchange counter works. You're not interacting with other buyers and sellers; you're trading against the platform's own book. Robinhood's crypto product works this way. See Robinhood Crypto On-Ramp: Fees, Limits, Verification (US) for how that pricing shows up in practice.
An exchange runs an order book where your trade gets matched against other users' orders, and the platform charges a maker or taker fee for matching you. Coinbase runs both a brokerage-style simple buy flow and a separate exchange order book, which is why its fee page confuses people. See Buy Bitcoin on Coinbase: Fees, Limits, and Withdrawals for the breakdown.
| Type | How pricing usually works | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Pure on-ramp | Flat fee or percentage on the conversion | Often layered on top of a card network fee |
| Brokerage | Spread built into the quoted price | No visible commission, but the markup is still there |
| Exchange order book | Separate maker/taker fee schedule | Usually cheaper, but requires using the "advanced" interface |
Takeaway: the cheapest route is almost never the big obvious buy button; it's the order-book interface sitting one menu deeper.
Every platform in this space charges in at least one of these spots, and most charge in two or three without saying so on the same screen.
None of this is unusual. It's just rarely shown together on one page, which is the entire reason platform-specific fee breakdowns exist as their own guides rather than as a single universal table.
Takeaway: ask what the deposit costs, what the spread costs, and what the withdrawal costs as three separate questions, because the platform will answer them on three separate pages if it answers them at all.
Two users on the same platform can have wildly different deposit and withdrawal limits depending on what identity documents and proof-of-address they've submitted. Lower-tier accounts typically get small daily or monthly caps and slower withdrawal processing. Higher tiers unlock larger limits but require more documentation, sometimes including a selfie check or a live video step.
Country of residence matters as much as tier. Some platforms restrict certain deposit methods, certain coins, or certain products entirely based on where your account is registered, independent of how verified you are. This is the single most common reason people get stuck mid-signup: they pass identity verification fine and then discover a feature they wanted isn't available in their country at all.
For a structured look at what documents and steps are typically involved, see Exchange Account Setup & Compliance: Overview. If you're still deciding which platform to sign up with in the first place, Compare the Market: Choosing a Crypto Exchange walks through the selection criteria before you commit to one provider's verification process.
Takeaway: check country and product restrictions before you start verification, not after.
An on-ramp's job ends once the crypto lands in your account on that platform. Whether it stays there is a separate decision, and plenty of people never move it, which is fine for small amounts and a different risk calculation for larger ones.
Moving crypto off a platform means sending it to an address you control, paying a network fee to do so, and getting the network and token details right, since sending to the wrong network is a common and often unrecoverable mistake. The mechanics are broadly similar across platforms but the exact screen flow, confirmation requirements, and fee display differ.
Move Crypto Between Wallets and Exchanges: Kraken walks through that process step by step on one platform as a worked example, and the pattern transfers to others with minor variations. If you haven't bought anything yet and want the buying step covered first, How to Buy Bitcoin on Exchanges and On-Ramps is the starting point.
Takeaway: decide where the crypto is going to live before you buy it, not after.
Some brokerages let you borrow against your account to buy more crypto than your cash balance covers. This is marketed as a convenience feature but it's a lending product with its own interest-style charge, and that charge accrues independently of whatever spread or commission you paid to buy the crypto in the first place.
The practical issue is that margin terms tend to sit on a different page than the main fee schedule, so people find out about the borrowing cost after they've already opted in. Robinhood Margin Rates and What They Mean for Crypto covers what that cost structure looks like on one brokerage specifically.
This isn't a trading tip and it isn't a recommendation either way. It's a fee category that's distinct from everything else in this hub and worth treating as its own line item when you're comparing total cost of ownership across platforms.
Takeaway: a margin rate is a borrowing cost, not a discount, and it compounds separately from the on-ramp fee.
Start with On-Ramps & Deposits: How to Compare Them if you haven't funded an account yet and want to know what deposit method to pick. Move to Exchange Account Setup & Compliance: Overview once you've picked a platform and need to get through verification without hitting a limit you didn't expect. Then use the platform-specific guides — Robinhood, Coinbase, Kraken — for the actual fee numbers, since those change by platform and don't belong in a general overview like this one.
If you're still choosing between platforms rather than configuring one, Compare the Market: Choosing a Crypto Exchange is the better starting point than any single platform guide.
Takeaway: this hub tells you what to compare; the linked guides tell you the actual figures for a given platform.
