Crypto Funding Intervals: Why the Same 0.01% Can Cost 8× More (1h vs 4h vs 8h)

Funding is the periodic payment between longs and shorts that keeps a perpetual close to spot. The classic interval is 8 hours — but exchanges have quietly moved hundreds of contracts to 4-hour and even 1-hour funding, and a rate that looks identical on screen can cost eight times more.

The same number, very different cost

• 0.01% every 8 hours ≈ 10.9% per year.
• 0.01% every 4 hours ≈ 21.9% per year.
• 0.01% every hour ≈ 87.6% per year.

Exchanges shorten the interval on volatile contracts — often when the rate hits its cap — and the change applies per contract, not per exchange. So two coins showing “0.01%” side by side can differ eightfold in what the position actually costs to hold.

Where screeners mislead

Most free screeners display the raw rate without the interval. Two strategies break on this: funding carry (you rank coins by raw rate and pick the wrong ones) and holding through a weekend (you expect three 8-hour payments and get dozens of hourly ones instead).

The API trap

On Binance the non-standard intervals come from a separate endpoint (fundingInfo) that only lists exceptions — silence means 8 hours. Many libraries hard-code 8 hours everywhere, so even bots get it wrong. Always check the contract specification, not the ticker.

How to compare correctly

Annualize every rate: rate × (24 / interval hours) × 365. Or use a screener that normalizes funding to a single interval across exchanges — AggPro brings every exchange’s rate to 8 hours in the free screener and weights the aggregate by each exchange’s open interest. The spread between venues is a signal of its own: when one exchange pays several times more than the rest, positioning there is skewed.