Deribit Review: Is 10% Off Trading Fees Worth Signing Up Before 2027?

Deribit is a crypto derivatives exchange that launched in June 2016 as the first platform for bitcoin options, and it still carries most of the world's crypto options volume and open interest. Coinbase completed its purchase of Deribit on 14 August 2025; it now runs as Deribit by Coinbase, with its headquarters in Dubai.

It lists inverse BTC and ETH options, futures and perpetuals settled in coin, USDC-settled options, futures and perpetuals on several other coins, DVOL futures on its own volatility index, and a spot market that includes some yield-bearing assets and gold. Everything is funded in crypto: there are no card or bank deposits.

Deribit runs two entities. Deribit FZE, the exchange itself, is licensed by Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA, licence VL/23/12/002) for exchange and broker-dealer services, limited to spot and exchange-traded derivatives and to crypto-to-crypto transactions, with no fiat deposits or withdrawals. Qualified and institutional investors are onboarded there directly.

Individual retail traders who may trade derivatives are onboarded with DRB Panama Inc, which Deribit describes as a broker that executes orders on the Dubai exchange, under DRB Panama's terms and Panamanian law. That matters here, because the affiliate programme only covers DRB Panama clients. Crypto held on an exchange isn't covered by any deposit-protection scheme, so keep your balance to what you actually trade.

Deribit doesn't serve anyone resident or located in the United States, Canada, Japan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria and several other places on its restricted list, and it takes no retail clients from the UK. In the UAE and Panama, retail investors can trade spot only, which leaves nothing for the discount to apply to.

The affiliate programme adds its own excluded list: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the UAE and the UK. Registration also depends on where you live: for some countries, Deribit now hands sign-ups to Coinbase's onboarding, and because Coinbase runs a separate referral programme, the Deribit discount doesn't come with it. Everyone who stays on Deribit's own sign-up goes through KYC and must turn on two-factor authentication.

Sign up through our link and the affiliate ID 21142.9189 travels with it, so there's no code to type. New users who join through a valid affiliate link get 10% off trading fees for the first six months after signing up. The discount comes off the fee on each trade, and Deribit attaches no deposit, volume or claim step to it.

Spot trades are outside the affiliate programme, so the 10% applies to options, futures and perpetuals only. After six months you pay the normal rate for your fee tier, which you can see on the account settings page.

Disclosure: 21142.9189 is our own affiliate ID, so Deribit pays us a share of the trading fees you pay, 20% for your first six months and 10% after that. Your fees are still 10% lower than they would be without the link.

After the Coinbase merger, Deribit stopped issuing new affiliate links on 9 September 2026 and is winding the old ones down. Registration through existing links stays open until the end of 2026; from 1 January 2027 they redirect to Coinbase's standard registration with no affiliate attribution.

If you sign up by 31 December 2026, you keep the discount for the full six months even though that runs into 2027, because Deribit's terms cover every user onboarded before 1 January 2027. You can only be on one referral track, Deribit's or Coinbase's, so don't register through another route first.

Deribit charges maker and taker fees as a percentage of the underlying. On the standard tier, perpetuals and futures cost 0.015% for makers and 0.035% for takers. Options cost 0.03% of the underlying either way, but never more than 12.5% of the option's price, which protects cheap out-of-the-money options. Spot pairs on Deribit's own book are free, pairs routed to Coinbase Exchange cost 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker, and no spot fee is discounted.

Lower tiers apply automatically. VIP1 needs $100,000 of USDC equity or $250,000 of total equity and cuts futures to 0% maker and 0.03% taker; VIP2 and above need at least $100 million of monthly volume. Option combos with legs in both directions only pay fees on the cheaper side, and futures spreads charge takers for one leg only.

Because the discount is a flat 10% of fees, the maths is simple. On perpetuals at the 0.035% taker rate, $1 million of volume costs $350, so the discount saves $35. Trade that every month for six months and it comes to $210. At $100,000 a month it's $21 in total; at $10 million a month, $2,100. Maker orders, at 0.015%, save less than half as much.

Options savings depend on premiums. A BTC option normally costs 0.0003 BTC per contract, about $24 at $80,240 per bitcoin on 24 October 2026, so 10% off saves about $2.40. On an option priced at 0.0010 BTC the 12.5% cap cuts the fee to 0.000125 BTC and the saving to about $1. Either way, the discount only adds up at volume, and it never justifies a trade on its own.

Delivery fees apply at expiry: 0.025% on BTC and ETH futures and USDC-settled futures, 0.05% on DVOL futures and 0.015% on options, capped at 12.5% of the option's value. Daily options and weekly futures are exempt. Liquidations carry a fixed total fee that ignores any discount: 1% on futures and perpetuals, and up to 0.19% of the underlying on options, capped at 25% of the option's value.

With cross-collateral switched on, one currency balance can go negative while the account stays solvent, and Deribit charges 0.05% a day on that negative balance until you top it up. Deposits are free; withdrawals cost a network fee that varies by coin.

On 24 October 2026 the Deribit app was rated 4.2 from 586 reviews on Google Play, with more than 50,000 downloads. It isn't listed on the US or UK App Store, in line with its restrictions; on the Hong Kong App Store it scores 4.5 from 50 ratings.

The low ratings are about the app rather than the exchange: sessions that drop and force a fresh login, particularly from Asia, an iOS login screen where the button sat out of reach after entering a 2FA code, and lag. The web platform and the API offer the same markets if the app frustrates you.

Open our link, register with email, Google or Apple, choose your country and accept the terms, then verify your email and set up two-factor authentication straight away; Google and Apple sign-ups that skip it can hit a rate limit. KYC needs ID and supporting documents before you trade, and Deribit can ask for source-of-funds documents.

To leave, close your positions and withdraw your crypto to your own wallet, paying the network fee; [email protected] handles account changes. Deribit has no fiat at all, so plan how you'll turn crypto back into money before you deposit.

Use it if you already trade crypto options or futures, live where Deribit takes retail clients and the affiliate programme applies (Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia are on neither list), and can sign up before 31 December 2026. At meaningful volume, six months of 10% off is real money.

Skip it if you only trade spot, if you'd be opening derivatives positions just to use a discount, if you need bank deposits and withdrawals, or if you live in a restricted or excluded country. Leverage can wipe out the collateral behind a position quickly, and no fee discount changes that.