Funding rate on crypto futures: how much it really costs
Funding is small on one payment and easy to ignore — until you hold positions for days. Here is how it is calculated and how to see what it took from your results.
What funding is
Perpetual futures never expire, so exchanges use funding to keep their price close to the spot price. Every funding interval longs and shorts pay each other:
- Positive rate — longs pay shorts (usually when the futures price is above spot).
- Negative rate — shorts pay longs.
The exchange does not keep it; it is a transfer between traders. Only positions that are open at the funding time pay or receive it.
How a payment is calculated
Funding payment = position value × funding rate. Position value is the size times the mark price, not your margin — leverage makes funding feel much bigger relative to the money you put in.
Example: a 10,000 USDT long, rate +0.01% → you pay 1 USDT. With 10× leverage your margin is 1,000 USDT, so that single payment is 0.1% of it.
How often
On most exchanges funding is charged every 8 hours (three times a day). Some coins on some exchanges switch to every 4 hours or every hour when the market is volatile, and Hyperliquid charges funding every hour. Check the countdown next to the funding rate on the trading screen.
See these numbers for your own trades
Connect an exchange and your trades load automatically — PnL, fees and funding per trade. The demo works without signing up.
What it costs over time
At the “neutral” 0.01% every 8 hours, holding a long costs about 0.03% of position value a day, ~0.21% a week and roughly 11% a year. In a hyped market rates of 0.05–0.1% per interval happen — then a week of holding a leveraged long can cost several percent of the margin. That is why funding matters most for positions held for days, and much less for scalps that close within minutes.
How to see it in your history
Exchanges report funding differently: Bybit, OKX, Bitget, MEXC and Gate.io already include it in the closed position’s result; Binance and Hyperliquid record it as separate payments. CheckMyProfit attaches funding to the trade during which it was charged, so the result of each trade already includes it.