Best Zero-Fee DEX for Crypto Trading
No decentralized exchange is free, but one comes close. A trade matched on the XRP Ledger’s own order book pays no trading fee at all, only a network fee of 0.000012 XRP, $0.000016 right now. The bigger costs, on every chain, are the trading fee a pool or app takes and the price you move by trading.
The network fee, now
Every chain charges a fee to process a transaction. On the XRP Ledger it is tiny and fixed in XRP, and it is destroyed rather than paid to anyone: “the XRP is irrevocably destroyed” (xrpl.org). Right now a swap on Ethereum costs 936× as much in network fee, and a Solana transaction 33×.
On every one of these chains the network fee is now small next to the trading fee. Comparisons that quote tens of dollars for an Ethereum swap describe gas prices from earlier years.
The costs a fee table leaves out
- The trading fee. On the XRP Ledger, an order matched on the order book pays none. A trade through a pool pays the pool’s fee, set by its liquidity providers’ vote and capped at 1% (xrpl.org). On Uniswap the standard pool fees are 0.05%, 0.30% and 1% (Uniswap docs).
- The app’s fee. Wallets and websites often add their own charge to a swap: xrpl.to adds 0.4%, shown before you sign, and Xaman 0.8% (Xaman’s fees).
- The token’s own fee. An XRP Ledger token can carry a transfer fee set by its issuer, from 0% up to 100%, taken each time the token moves between two holders (xrpl.org). Check it before you buy: a token page on xrpl.to shows the fee whenever the token has one.
- Price impact. A large order in a thin market moves the price against you, and on a small token that can cost far more than every fee combined (reading order book depth).
When the network is busy
XRP Ledger fees are not fixed: the 10-drop minimum “sometimes increases due to higher than usual load”, and a transaction that does not pay the higher cost waits in a queue for a following ledger (xrpl.org). Even then, the extra is destroyed.
What a higher fee cannot buy is a position inside a ledger. The order transactions run in is shuffled using the ledger’s own contents, so a bot cannot pay to trade just before you, as it can by bidding for position on Ethereum or by paying a priority fee on Solana (how front-running works on the XRP Ledger).
What you can trade there
The XRP Ledger’s exchange trades tokens issued on the XRP Ledger: XRP, RLUSD and other stablecoins, meme coins and tokenized real-world assets. It cannot trade an Ethereum or Solana token directly; those reach the XRP Ledger only through a bridge. It has no perpetual futures either: every trade is a spot trade.
Questions
- Is there a DEX with zero fees?
- No exchange is free, but the XRP Ledger’s order book comes closest: a trade matched there pays no trading fee, only the network fee of 0.000012 XRP. Pools on the same ledger charge a trading fee of up to 1%, and wallets and websites may add their own.
- What is the cheapest DEX to trade on?
- By network fee, the XRP Ledger: $0.000016 per transaction right now, against about $0.00052 on Solana and $0.015 for a swap on Ethereum. The trading fee usually matters more than the network fee.
- Do XRP Ledger fees rise when the network is busy?
- Yes. The minimum is 10 drops, and it rises under unusually high load. The extra is destroyed like the rest of the fee; it does not buy a better position inside a ledger.
- Are DEX fees lower than exchange (CEX) fees?
- Often, but not always: a centralised exchange charges a trading fee and no network fee, while a DEX trade pays a network fee plus whatever the pool, app or token charges. Compare the total for the trade you plan to make.