10 Best Coinbase Alternatives for 2023

Coinbase is the starting point for many crypto traders — and with good reason. As the world’s largest publicly traded exchange, Coinbase has earned a reputation for transparency through its public filings and boasts over 250 cryptos to trade. But with hundreds of crypto trading platforms around the globe, traders also have some other great options. So, what are the best Coinbase alternatives?

In this roundup, we’ll review the 10 best alternatives to Coinbase, weighing the pros and cons of each and how they compare. Let’s see what the other top crypto trading platforms have to offer.

The Top Coinbase Alternatives

1. eToro – Beginner-Friendly Crypto Broker With Copy Trading and a Demo Account
2. Kraken – Low-Cost Crypto Exchange with 250+ Cryptocurrencies and Proof of Reserves
3. Binance – Low-Fee Platform With 350+ Cryptos and Futures Trading
4. Bitstamp – No-Fee Crypto Trading for Traders With Low Monthly Volume
5. Uphold – Easy-to-use Platform with 250+ Cryptos and 30+ Crypto Staking Options
6. Gemini – Well-Regulated Exchange With 100+ Cryptos
7. Robinhood – Beginner-Friendly Stock and Crypto Platform With No-Commission Trades
8. Kucoin – Powerful Trading Platform With 700+ Cryptocurrencies
9. OKX – Low-Cost Exchange With Demo Account and 350+ Cryptos
10. Pionex – Lowest Cost Crypto Exchange With 16+ Free Trading Bots

The Best Alternatives to Coinbase Reviewed

With 24-hour trading volume on the exchange often approaching $1 billion USD, Coinbase remains a popular choice, but it’s not the only game in town. Several competitors bring some interesting advantages, including social trading, lower fees, and a wider selection of cryptocurrencies.

1. eToro – Beginner-Friendly Crypto Broker With Copy Trading and a Demo Account

You may have watched eToro’s Super Bowl commercial or seen ads online touting the investment app’s unique blend of stocks, crypto, and social investing. Like Coinbase, eToro offers crypto trading but with a few twists that can be especially beneficial for newer investors.

Three key trading tools set eToro apart from Coinbase as well as most other crypto trading platforms.

• Copy Trading
• Smart Portfolios
• Virtual Portfolio

Here’s how it all works.

Copy Trading

Let’s face it. We aren’t all technical trading gurus. With Copy Trading, you don’t need to be a crypto-trading wizard. You can follow one instead.

eToro’s Copy Trading feature lets you identify successful traders, analyze their past trading performance, and copy their future moves with just a few clicks. You allocate a fixed amount to the Copy Trade, and you can set a floor on each Copy Trade to protect your downside if the market gets bumpy.

Copy trading requires a $200 minimum investment in the trade.

Smart Portfolios

Smart Portfolios: If you have a bigger budget ($500 minimum trade), eToro also offers Smart Portfolios (formerly CopyPortfolios). The new branding offers a better description of what’s on tap. You’ll find ETF-style portfolios built around crypto themes.

For example, the Big-Crypto smart portfolio shows year-to-date gains of nearly 34%. The two-click investment delivers a mix of cryptos, with about 60% invested in BTC and ETH. The balance goes to hand-picked cryptos, including Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Chainlink.

Smart portfolios give you diversified exposure to the crypto market or the ability to invest in tightly grouped cryptocurrencies, like the DeFiPortfolio, which invests in top decentralized finance cryptocurrencies. Asset allocation varies by locale.

Virtual Portfolio

Learning to trade is often better described as learning what not to do. What if you had $100,000 to play with and could trade with no risk while you learn? That’s eToro’s Virtual Portfolio, a well-funded demo account that lets you trade crypto, stocks, or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) without any risk of losing real money. It’s a perfect testbed for newer traders and a great way to test out your latest strategy.

Combined with easy-to-understand trading fees, these three trading tools help make eToro a safer place to start if you’re new to crypto, a place to call home if you trade more often, and the best alternative to Coinbase for many traders.

eToro vs Coinbase Compared

2. Kraken – Low-Cost Crypto Exchange with 250+ Cryptocurrencies and Proof of Reserves

Like Coinbase, Kraken offers a simple trading platform paired with an advanced trading platform (Kraken Pro). The exchanges even offer a similar number of cryptocurrencies from which to choose, both in the 250 range.

But Kraken brings a few other goodies to the table that may make it the best Coinbase alternative for some investors.

• Lower fees for advanced trades
• Proof of reserves
• Leverage and futures trading

Lower Fees

Coinbase Advanced offers lower fees compared to simple trades on Coinbase, but Kraken Pro comes in at a fraction of the cost. Lower trading volumes earn 0.06% fees on limit Coinbase limit orders and 0.8% on market orders. By comparison, Kraken Pro charges just 0.16% for limit orders and 0.26% for market orders. If you trade often or trade larger amounts, the savings add up quickly.

Proof of Reserves (PoR)

Following the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange, it’s valid to question whether your exchange actually has the crypto in your account. Kraken was among the first to offer proof of reserves, a blockchain-based way to prove the exchange has the crypto that shows in your account. No more wondering.

Leverage Trading and Futures

Availability varies based on location, but in many areas, Kraken offers futures trading that lets you bet on the future price of top cryptocurrencies. You can also bet with more than you have. Kraken supports using leverage of up to 5x for qualified accounts.

Kraken vs Coinbase Compared

3. Binance – Low-Fee Platform With 350+ Cryptos and Futures Trading

Binance is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of the crypto exchange world. Along with the largest trading volume on earth, which provides more liquidity when you need to buy or sell, Binance offers a host of advanced trading features that aren’t available on Coinbase. Features include crypto loans, automatic trading bots, and perpetual futures that let you bet on the future price of supported cryptos without ever owning the asset.

But Binance isn’t just for advanced traders; newer traders can use simple trades and enjoy lower fees compared to Coinbase. Advanced trading brings even more savings on fees.

Binance Instant Buy/Sell

Binance uses a base fee, which for many popular assets like BTC is just 0.1%. If you use Binance Advanced Trade, you’ll see this low fee. Where many crypto trading platforms can get expensive is when traders use the simple trade boxes available on many exchanges. These newbie-friendly widgets often use a “display fee,” which is only shown when you’re making a trade. Alternatively, they may use a complicated fee structure that’s difficult to follow.

Binance keeps simple trading easy to understand and easy on your wallet, adding a 0.5% fee to its easy-to-use Instant Buy/Sell trades.

At 0.6% total for simple trades, Binance’s trading costs come in at the same cost as using Coinbase Advanced — and you won’t need a finance degree to use the interface.

Binance vs Coinbase Compared

4. Bitstamp – No-Fee Crypto Trading for Traders With Low Monthly Volume

If you enjoy trading with no fees, Bitstamp deserves a closer look. Traders with under $1,000 in monthly trades don’t pay a trading fee when using the Pro trading platform. Bitstamp considers your prior 30-day trading volume to determine your fee. When your 30-day trading volume crosses the $1,000 threshold, you pay a fee — but it’s low compared to Coinbase.

Limit orders pay just 0.3%, and market orders pay 0.4%, with additional discounts available as trading volume increases. By comparison, this is half what Coinbase charges at 0.6% and 0.8%, respectively.

Like Coinbase, Bitstamp offers a Basic trading interface as well, and also like Coinbase, there are ways to spend more than you might realize on fees using simple trades. Bitstamp charges a 4% fee for what it calls Instant Purchases, including those made with Apple Pay, Google Pay, debit cards, credit cards, or PayPal.

The path to low fees (or no fees) is to deposit through a bank account and then use the Bistamp Pro platform to make trades.

Fortunately, Bitstamp’s Pro trading platform is well laid out and inviting to use. A learning center accessible from the home page walks you through trade types found on advanced crypto trading platforms so you can brush up on the difference between limit orders and market orders before you start trading.

Bistamp vs Coinbase Compared

5. Uphold – Easy-to-use Platform with 250+ Cryptos and 30+ Crypto Staking Options

Uphold’s Anything to Anything trades are the platform’s standout feature and help make Uphold one of the best alternatives to Coinbase. Want to trade MATIC for BTC? It just takes a few clicks (and one trade) on Uphold. On other platforms, you’ll likely have to sell MATIC first and then buy BTC in a separate trade.

However, the platform is better suited to trades of $100 or more due to a $0.99 exchange fee on orders under $500. This translates to about 1% on a $100 trade, 0.5% on a $200 trade, or 0.33% on a $300 trade.

And like other platforms, including Coinbase, you’ll pay about 4% for debit-card-funded transactions. Cash is king when it comes to lower-cost crypto trading.

There’s no Pro or Advanced platform to get new users confused. Uphold’s interface is designed with ease-of-use in mind. This also means there’s a spread included in the price. On top assets, like BTC, expect competitive pricing. If you’re trading a lower-volume crypto, however, check the price before you complete the transaction.

Uphold also offers crypto staking for several cryptos that can be tough to find elsewhere, many of which can be even tougher to stake.

Earn an extra yield on your crypto holdings with over 30 crypto assets available for staking on Uphold.

Although Uphold no longer supports staking in the US, traders in the US and over 180 other countries can trade 250+ cryptocurrencies on this beginner-friendly platform.

Uphold vs Coinbase Compared

6. Gemini – Well-Regulated Exchange With 100+ Cryptos

Gemini offers lower fees compared to Coinbase, but the key to lower fees is found in Gemini’s advanced trading platform, called Active Trader. Click on the Account icon to switch between Gemini (basic trading) and Active Trader.

Here’s how the Gemini Active Trader trading fees compare to Coinbase Advanced fees for traders at the lowest trading volume tier.

Gemini Active Trader:

• Limit order: 0.2%
• Market order: 0.4%

Coinbase Advanced:

• Limit order: 0.6%
• Market order: 0.8%

On limit orders, trading fees on Gemini are a third of what you’d pay for the same trade on Coinbase.

However, like Coinbase and other platforms, basic trades can be pricey. As shown below, a purchase of $100 worth of Bitcoin costs about 3% in trading fees. Using PayPal to fund the transaction adds 2.5% in processing fees to the cost.

By comparison, Active Trader would cost $0.40 for this trade using a market order and a bank transfer rather than PayPal. It’s worth noting that we weren’t able to execute a limit order with the advertised 0.2% trading fee. The fee shown was ~0.4% for both limit and market orders.

Gemini offers over 100 cryptocurrencies for spot trading. Traders in supported countries can also trade derivatives, including perpetual futures. Also called “Perps,” perpetual futures are a derivative trading option that allows you to bet on the future price of cryptocurrencies without ever buying the asset.

Gemini vs Coinbase Compared

7. Robinhood – Beginner-Friendly Stock and Crypto Platform With No-Commission Trades

If you prefer to keep crypto trading simple, Robinhood competes with eToro as the best Coinbase alternative for newer traders and people who appreciate simplicity. Robinhood brings commission-free trading to 15 popular cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH, meme coins like DOGE and SHIB, and DeFi favorites such as AAVE and UNI.

You can start trading with just $1, and as on eToro, you can choose to invest in crypto or stocks (or both).

While Robinhood offers commission-free trades for crypto, similar to other simple-trade platforms, you’ll pay a spread. Robinhood keeps a percentage of the difference between the bid price (highest-priced buy order) and the ask price (the lowest-price sell order). In the example below, you’ll see a $0.35 fee for our $100 Bitcoin order. This cost is included in your BTC price quote, so there are no surprises.

By comparison, Coinbase’s simple trades would cost $3.84 in trading fees (plus a spread) for the same order.

One limitation to using Robinhood is found in its available cryptocurrencies. With just over a dozen tradeable cryptos, your crypto trading choices focus on the top assets. But if you’re primarily interested in BTC, ETH, and similar top names, Robinhood merits consideration as a Coinbase alternative.

Robinhood vs Coinbase Compared

8. Kucoin – Powerful Trading Platform With 700+ Cryptocurrencies

On the other side of the spectrum from Robinhood, you can consider Kucoin, an advanced exchange with over 700 cryptocurrencies available for trading. If you’re looking for a tough-to-find crypto, exchanges with a wide selection like Kucoin, Binance, or OKX may have what you need.

Crypto trading fees on Kucoin parallel those of Binance for low-volume traders (under $50 per month in trading volume) when trading “Class A” cryptos. These include BTC, ETH, and dozens of others. Limit trades for Class A assets cost just 0.1%, 83% lower than trading fees on Coinbase Advanced using a limit order.

Many of Kucoin’s features, like trading bots, futures trading, and leveraged tokens, target advanced traders. If you’re currently using Coinbase Advanced or a similar advanced trading platform, you’ll find more tools available on Kucoin. However, the exchange may not be a perfect fit for beginners.

Kucoin is not available in the US but serves 200+ other countries around the world.

Kucoin vs Coinbase Compared

9. OKX – Low-Cost Exchange With Demo Account and 350+ Cryptos

Similar to Kucoin, OKX provides a myriad of trading tools for advanced traders and offers some of the lowest fees available through any exchange. Limit orders at the low-volume tier cost 0.08%, and fees for market orders are 0.1%.

Traders in over 200 countries can use the main exchange at OKX, whereas people in Canada or the US are directed to OKcoin, an exchange that offers simpler trading options (and slightly higher fees).

OKX offers two standout features: trading bots and a demo account. Trading bots trade automatically according to the rules you define. With trading bots, you can choose from off-the-shelf bots, like dollar-cost averaging (DCA) bots that work to optimize your buying cost as you build a position.

You can also build your own trading bot on OKX, a feature available in both live trading and demo accounts (up next).

OKX provides traders with a demo account that can be used with most of the trading tools on the platform. It’s a great way to learn how to trade with no risk of losing real money.

OKX vs Coinbase Compared

10. Pionex – Lowest Cost Crypto Exchange With 16+ Free Trading Bots

Pionex is one of the top names in crypto bot trading, but the platform offers spot trading as well as leveraged trades and futures. The Pionex exchange also offers the lowest trading fees within our roundup of the best alternatives to Coinbase. Low-volume traders can trade for just 0.05%, whether using limit orders or market orders. As your 30-day trading volume increases, you can save even more on limit orders.

Users in the US can use Pionex.US, which also offers trading bots, but foregoes some other trading tools such as futures and leveraged trades. Fees differ as well, with Pionex.US pricing trading fees at 0.1%, similar to Binance or OKX, but more than 80% lower than any tier on Coinbase.

Pionex’s main exchange supports over 300 cryptocurrencies for trading. The US exchange narrows this list considerably but still offers popular assets like BTC and ETH as well as dozens of others, about 40 in total.

Pionex vs Coinbase Compared

Why Look for an Alternative to Coinbase?

Coinbase is among the most trusted crypto exchanges and is often considered one of the safest places to buy crypto as well. However, there are several reasons traders may want to explore alternatives.

High Trading Fees

The cheapest way to trade on Coinbase is to use the advanced platform. But fees on Coinbase Advanced can be much higher than you’ll find on competing platforms.

Let’s compare fees to purchase $100 worth of Bitcoin with a market order.

When using Coinbase’s simple trades, however, the fee for the same $100 trade skyrockets to $3.84.

Fees of 1% or lower can work for low-volume traders. But when you start trading more frequently or in larger amounts, trading costs can create a strong headwind to overcome.

Limited Trading Tools for Beginners

While Coinbase has a reputation for being a beginner-friendly way to trade crypto, a few trading platforms create a more welcoming environment, and at least one offers better trading tools for newer traders.

Both Robinhood and eToro excel in ease of use, helping new traders to start trading in just minutes. However, eToro also offers social trading, giving newer traders direction and providing new trading ideas for experienced traders. You’ll also get a demo account.

• Copy trading lets you copy successful traders on the platform. This option can eliminate the need to study charts and indicators. But if you want to, eToro provides TradingView charts with up to 100 trading indicators.
• eToro’s $100,000 demo account lets you learn the platform and test your trading ideas without skinning your knees or breaking your wallet. All accounts get a separate Virtual Portfolio (funded with virtual money) that supports crypto trades, stock trades, and ETF trades.

Coinbase doesn’t offer either option.

Limited Trading Tools for Advanced Traders

Advanced trading platforms like Binance, OKX, Pionex, and Kucoin offer several trading tools not available on Coinbase or only offered in a limited capacity.

For example, all four exchanges offer trading bots, which are useful for tasks like dollar-cost averaging or scooping up profits in a tight trading range. The closest option available through Coinbase is recurring buys, which are only available through the simple trade interface. For smaller purchase amounts common for dollar-cost averaging, the fees can reach 10% or higher. Even at higher trading amounts, the fees for recurring buys approach 4%.

Crypto Selection and Mix Of Assets

Coinbase has over 250 cryptos available for trading. However, with thousands of cryptocurrencies on the market, you might have trouble finding some market favorites. For example, Coinbase doesn’t offer TRON or BNB, both of which are currently in the top 10 cryptocurrencies when measured by market capitalization. Coinbase also delisted XRP, another leading crypto, before relisting XRP again recently.

Even if you use Coinbase, you might find value in using another exchange as well when building a diversified crypto portfolio.

Diversification can help protect against market volatility, and it may make sense to diversify beyond your crypto investments. A platform like eToro lets you invest in crypto alongside stocks and ETFs, or even commodities and foreign currencies in some countries.

Ease of Use

Finally, not everyone wants to use switches and toggles and complex trading platforms to stack some BTC or ETH. Coinbase’s fees for simple trades force cost-conscious investors to use the advanced platform, which can be an unwelcome experience for new traders and even some experienced traders.

Many traders prefer powerful trading platforms. But sometimes a simpler trading experience is a more enjoyable one, and one you’ll be more likely to use to its full potential.

Conclusion

Several crypto trading platforms offer lower fees when compared to Coinbase. Some also offer more advanced trading tools.

But the best Coinbase alternative for the way many traders trade may be eToro. The platform offers more than 80 cryptocurrencies, combined with Copy Trading, so you can simply follow the moves of other profitable crypto traders. eToro’s fees also come in much lower when compared to Coinbase’s simple trades, saving traders 70% or more on trades.

References

• https://www.etoro.com/smartportfolios/big-crypto
• https://www.cnbctv18.com/cryptocurrency/crypto-exchanges-that-have-published-their-proof-of-reserves-and-what-these-audits-tell-us-15357101.htm
• https://www.gemini.com/fees/activetrader-fee-schedule#section-active-trader-fee-schedule
• https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/no-commission-crypto/
• https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/07/13/crypto-exchange-gemini-may-relist-xrp-token-after-court-ruling/
• https://www.fca.org.uk/investsmart/diversification
• https://www.npr.org/2022/11/23/1138881426/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-bankruptcy-crypto-cryptocurrency-collapse

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Eric Huffman

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Eric Huffman

Eric Huffman has a diverse background ranging from business management to insurance and personal finance. In recent years, Eric's interest in finance topics and in making personal finance accessible led to a focus on cryptocurrency topics. Eric specializes in crypto, blockchain, and finance guides that make these important topics easier to understand. Publications include Milk Road, Benzinga, CryptoNews.com, Motor Trend, CoverWallet, and others. Always learning, Eric holds several certifications related to crypto and finance, including certificates from the Blockchain Council, Duke University, and SUNY. When he's not writing, you might find Eric teaching karate or exploring the woods.

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