Crypto Funding Rate Explained: How to Read It Across Exchanges

Perpetual futures never expire, so exchanges need another way to keep their price close to spot. That mechanism is funding: a periodic payment between longs and shorts. It is also one of the clearest readings of crowd positioning.

Who pays whom

• Positive funding: the perp trades above spot, longs pay shorts. Leveraged buyers dominate.
• Negative funding: the perp trades below spot, shorts pay longs. Leveraged sellers dominate.
• Payment = position size × rate, usually every 8 hours (some exchanges every hour or every 4 hours).

Why it differs between exchanges

Each exchange computes funding from its own premium and its own traders. A venue full of retail longs can pay far more than one dominated by market makers, and hourly-funding exchanges quote rates eight times smaller per period. Comparing them requires normalizing to the same interval — AggPro shows funding per 8 hours, weighted by each exchange’s open interest, plus the spread between the highest and lowest venue.

How traders use funding

• Crowding: very high positive funding means many leveraged longs — fuel for a long squeeze if price dips.
• Cost of holding: at +0.05% per 8h a long pays about 0.15% a day, roughly 4.5% a month on the position.
• Divergence: price rising while funding falls can mean spot buyers lead, not leveraged speculators.
• Spreads between exchanges show where positioning is concentrated.

Where to see it live

Every coin page under Markets shows the current funding across exchanges, open interest, liquidations and depth; the free screener lists 450+ futures sortable by funding. On the terminal chart, funding and open interest sit under the price.