Crypto Funding Rate Tracker

What Are Perpetual Futures Funding Rates?

Funding rates are periodic payments exchanged between long and short traders on perpetual futures contracts. When the rate is positive, longs pay shorts, indicating bullish sentiment. When negative, shorts pay longs. Sharpe Terminal tracks funding rates in real time across 13+ exchanges including Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit, and Hyperliquid, covering over 5,000 individual rates per update cycle.

How to Use Funding Rates for Trading

Funding rate data is essential for basis trading (cash-and-carry arbitrage), where traders go long spot and short perps to collect positive funding. Extreme funding rates often signal overleveraged positioning and potential mean reversion. Compare rates across exchanges to identify arbitrage opportunities where the same asset pays different rates on different venues. Historical funding rate charts reveal seasonal patterns and can confirm or contradict directional bias from other indicators.

Cross-Exchange Rate Comparison

Different exchanges settle funding at different intervals — Binance and Bybit use 8-hour intervals, while Hyperliquid settles every hour. Sharpe Terminal normalizes all rates to annualized percentages for direct comparison. The accumulated funding view shows cumulative payments over time, helping traders evaluate the true cost of holding leveraged positions across venues.

BTC OI-Weighted Funding Rate

The OI-weighted funding rate for Bitcoin aggregates funding across every exchange weighted by open interest share. It's the most representative single number for BTC leverage cost — a venue with $10B in BTC perp open interest contributes 10× more to the weighted rate than one with $1B. Use the OI-weighted BTC funding rate to gauge overall market positioning rather than one venue's skew. Track the live BTC OI-weighted rate alongside ETH on /funding-rates.

ETH OI-Weighted Funding Rate

The ETH OI-weighted funding rate aggregates Ethereum perp funding across Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit, Hyperliquid, Bitget, and 7 more exchanges. It smooths retail-heavy venue skew against institutional volume, delivering a single benchmark for ETH leverage cost. ETH funding often diverges from BTC during sector rotations (AI, DeFi, restaking narratives) — cross-check BTC vs ETH weighted funding to spot when the ETH leg of positioning heats up independently.

Highest Funding Rate Today

The highest funding rate live leaderboard shows which perps are paying the most — typically short-tail altcoin pairs during narrative rallies or momentum pumps. Sorted descending by annualized APR with open-interest context to filter thin liquidity. Useful for finding basis-trade opportunities (long spot + short perp) and spotting overcrowded long positioning. View the live leaderboard at /funding-rates/highest-lowest.

Lowest Funding Rate Today

The lowest funding rate live leaderboard surfaces perps with the deepest negative funding — where shorts are paying longs. Persistent deeply-negative funding is one of the cleanest structural shorting signals in crypto derivatives, often pre-dating moves by days. See /insider-selling for Sharpe's 0-10 composite score that ranks coins by persistent negative funding across exchanges.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a funding rate in crypto?

A funding rate is a periodic payment exchanged directly between traders who hold perpetual futures positions — longs pay shorts when the rate is positive, shorts pay longs when negative. The rate exists to keep the perpetual contract's price anchored to the spot index: when perps trade at a premium, funding pushes positive to incentivize shorts; when perps trade at a discount, funding pushes negative. Most exchanges settle every 8 hours; Hyperliquid settles every hour. Sharpe Terminal tracks rates across 13 exchanges for 100+ coins in real time.

What does a negative funding rate mean?

A negative funding rate means shorts are paying longs — signaling the perpetual contract is trading at a discount to spot and shorts are over-positioned. Deep negative funding often precedes short squeezes because an imbalanced short book becomes fuel for a rapid price rally. It is also the condition for the 'reverse basis' trade (long perp + short spot) to collect negative funding as income.

Is a high funding rate bullish or bearish?

Neither cleanly — a high funding rate indicates longs are paying shorts heavily, which reflects crowded bullish positioning. In the short term, extremely high funding (above ~50% annualized) often precedes corrections as over-leveraged longs get liquidated. In the medium term, sustained positive funding can coincide with continued uptrends. Use funding rate as a positioning signal alongside price action and open interest, not as a standalone directional bet.

How often is funding rate paid?

Most major perpetual exchanges — Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit, Bitget, MEXC, Gate, KuCoin — settle funding every 8 hours (typically 00:00, 08:00, 16:00 UTC). Hyperliquid settles every hour. dYdX settles continuously (once per block). The settlement cadence affects annualized APR calculation — an 8-hour rate of 0.01% annualizes to ~10.95%, while Hyperliquid's hourly rate of 0.00125% annualizes to the same ~10.95%.

How do I calculate annualized funding rate?

Annualized APR = per-period rate × number of periods per year. For an 8-hour exchange: APR = rate × 3 × 365 = rate × 1,095. For Hyperliquid (1-hour): APR = rate × 24 × 365 = rate × 8,760. A 0.01% 8-hour rate annualizes to 10.95% APR. Sharpe's funding rate table shows both the raw per-period rate and the annualized APR so you can compare venues with different settlement cadences on a like-for-like basis.

What is funding rate arbitrage?

Funding rate arbitrage is the strategy of capturing the funding payment by hedging out directional exposure. The core trade is 'basis': long spot + short perpetual captures positive funding without directional risk (you earn the funding, pay the cost of shorting spot roughly zero). The reverse — short spot + long perp — captures negative funding. The trade scales by concentrating on the highest-APR rates across exchanges. Sharpe's Arbitrage scanner (/arbitrage) surfaces live spot-perp funding arbitrage opportunities.

What is a good funding rate for basis trading?

Annualized funding rates above 10-15% are generally attractive for basis trades (long spot, short perp). However, extremely high rates (above 50% annualized) often precede sharp corrections as positions unwind — exit risk is the main consideration. A 20-30% APR basis trade on a blue-chip coin with 6+ month settlement history is the sweet spot: high enough to be worth the capital, not so high that it's symptomatic of a crowded long book.

Why do funding rates differ across exchanges?

Each exchange has its own user base, liquidity profile, market-maker composition, and settlement cadence. Retail-heavy exchanges (Bybit, Gate, MEXC) tend to have more directional positioning and higher funding rates; institutional venues (Deribit, Binance) often show more balanced order flow and tighter rates. Cross-exchange funding spreads are the foundation of cross-exchange basis arbitrage — collect the high positive rate on one venue, hedge on another.

How is Hyperliquid funding different from Binance?

Hyperliquid settles funding every 1 hour and is fully on-chain (transparent to every user). Binance settles every 8 hours via an internal mechanism. Hyperliquid's hourly cadence produces the same annualized APR as Binance's 8-hour rate for the same positioning, but makes funding more sensitive to short-term price moves — a 10-minute volatility burst can invert hourly funding quickly. Sharpe normalizes both to APR so you can compare venues on an equivalent basis.

Can negative funding rates be profitable?

Yes. When funding is deeply negative, short sellers pay long holders. Traders go long perps and short spot (reverse basis trade) to collect the negative funding as income. This is common during market downturns when shorts are overcrowded. Sharpe's Insider Selling Pressure product (/insider-selling) uses persistent negative funding across multiple exchanges as an institutional signal — when funding stays negative while price rises, it often precedes a rally.

How often are funding rates updated on Sharpe Terminal?

Funding rates fetch directly from exchange APIs. Sharpe's cron refreshes snapshots every 30 minutes — displayed rates are near-live with respect to the underlying settlement cadence. Live exchange endpoints supply Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit, Hyperliquid, Bitget, MEXC, Gate.io, KuCoin, HTX, BingX, CoinEx, and BitMEX.