Aster vs Axiom

Aster

Those are the Crypto General rates at VIP 1, where a new account starts. Maker orders have been free on every order-book market since February 2026. The taker rate falls with VIP tier, and a tier needs both 14-day volume and an average ASTER balance, so volume alone does not lower your fee. Group B pairs pay more, stock and commodity perpetuals pay a flat 0.0125%, and the 1001x and Shield modes have their own fee models.

Axiom

Every spot trade pays 1% to Axiom, on every supported chain, before cashback: the SOL rebate runs from 0.05% of trade value at the entry tier to 0.25% at the top, so the net fee is 0.95% to 0.75%, and a referral signup takes a further 10% off. Solana priority fees and bribes, or gas on the other chains, come on top. Perps on Hyperliquid pay 0.01% per transaction plus Hyperliquid's fee and funding. The Terms let fees change without notice and treat the quoted cost as an estimate.

Aster

You sign in with a wallet (Rabby, MetaMask, Binance Wallet, or anything on WalletConnect) or with an email address, and neither flow includes an identity check. The Terms, last updated February 25, 2026, say Aster may run limited identity verification to comply with regulations and may refuse or limit service to anyone who does not comply, but they do not say what triggers a check. You also warrant that your stated location is accurate and agree not to use any means to get around the location restrictions.

Axiom

You sign up with an email code, a Google account, or a Phantom wallet, set a password, and are shown a recovery phrase. No identity document is asked for, and the wallet keys are yours to export. Buying SOL by debit card or Apple Pay through Coinbase inside the app needs no KYC up to $500 a week, according to Axiom's FAQ, while the MoonPay route verifies identity under MoonPay's rules. The Terms, dated February 26, 2026, reserve the right to run KYC and anti-money-laundering checks at Axiom's discretion, naming passports, driving licences, and utility bills as examples, and the Privacy Policy says wallet addresses are screened for illicit activity.

Aster

The Terms, last updated February 25, 2026, name eleven prohibited jurisdictions: the US, Canada, the UK, China, North Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and Syria, plus any territory under comprehensive sanctions or a terrorist-supporting designation and anyone on a US, EU, or UK sanctions list. The test is where you live, are located, or are incorporated. Aster's separate prediction market rejects orders from a longer list of 34 countries that adds Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and others.

Axiom

The Terms, dated February 26, 2026, name no country. They bar anyone on a US, EU, or UK sanctions list, anyone located in, resident in, or organized in a jurisdiction under comprehensive sanctions or designated as terrorist-supporting by the UN, EU, UK, or US, and anyone under 18, and they let Axiom restrict any person or region at its discretion. Using a VPN to get around a restriction is a breach. The previous Terms, dated February 26, 2025, named the United States, China, Singapore, and sixteen other countries and regions. The current version carries no such list.

Aster

On the order book each market has its own cap, shown in the trading panel, and you can choose any lower level. The docs do not publish the full table, but stock perpetuals go to 50x, pre-IPO markets to 10x or 20x, and new community-listed markets start at 3x. Cross margin is the default and isolated is available, but Multi-Asset Mode is cross only. The separate 1001x mode offers up to 1001x on BTC, 250x on ETH, 75x on other coins, and 200x on forex, with every position isolated and no adding margin at 500x or above. Shield Mode runs from 20x to 1001x.

Axiom

Perps run on Hyperliquid, so each market's maximum leverage is Hyperliquid's: a whole number up to a per-asset cap that tops out at 40x on BTC and steps down on large positions, under Hyperliquid's margin rules and hourly funding. Axiom's own perps page, last updated in April 2025, still says up to 50x, but the venue's current cap governs. Open positions show entry, mark, and liquidation prices and take-profit and stop-loss levels in Axiom's perps portfolio.

Aster

The public market list carried 584 live perpetuals on September 25, 2026: about 450 crypto pairs and about 130 real-world-asset markets, among them 115 US, Hong Kong, and Korean stocks, 14 ETFs and indexes, and 11 commodities such as gold, silver, and oil, plus pre-IPO markets for OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX and a few pre-launch tokens. Most are quoted in USDT, and a handful settle in USD1. Shield Mode adds EUR and GBP forex, and there is a spot order book. Order types: market, limit, stop-limit, stop-market, trailing stop, TWAP, scaled, chase, and grid strategies, with post-only, reduce-only, hidden, and immediate-or-cancel options.

Axiom

Spot trading covers tokens on Solana, where the terminal started, with pump.fun launches, tokens nearing migration, and fresh Raydium pairs surfaced in Pulse, plus the other chains the app lists: BNB Chain (added October 23, 2025), Ethereum, Base, Robinhood Chain, Ink, Arc, and HyperEVM, as shown in the app's chain selector on September 26, 2026. Spot order types are market orders, limit orders, buy-on-migration and sell-on-migration snipes, and auto-strategies that place a buy and its limit orders in one click. The Perpetuals tab opens long or short positions on Hyperliquid's markets.

Aster

Connect a wallet on BNB Chain, Ethereum, Arbitrum, or Solana and deposit into the trading account through Aster's own bridge contracts, which are published along with a Sui address. USDT is the settlement asset and works from every chain. With Multi-Asset Mode on, USDC on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Solana, SOL and JLP on Solana, and BTC, ETH, BNB, USD1, USDF, asBNB, and ASTER on BNB Chain also count as margin at a haircut. A BNB Chain wallet needs at least 0.001 BNB. Email sign-in accepts only USDT on Arbitrum. Deposits carry no Aster fee and usually land in one to five minutes. The docs do not publish minimums.

Axiom

The Axiom wallet is created at signup, so funding it means sending SOL, or tokens on another supported chain, to the address the app shows. Inside the app, Buy opens Coinbase's checkout for a debit card or Apple Pay purchase of SOL, which Axiom's FAQ says needs no KYC up to $500 a week. Coinbase's own developer docs say its hosted guest checkout was discontinued on June 30, 2026, and Axiom's FAQ still shows the $500 figure. MoonPay has been a second route since October 2025, taking cards, bank transfers, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and Venmo under MoonPay's identity checks. Perps collateral is separate: you convert SOL into USDC on Hyperliquid from the wallet menu, which takes about five minutes.

Aster

Choose the network, token, and amount. The destination chain's gas is deducted from the withdrawal, and Aster says the minimum fee can be as low as 1 USDT, and the withdrawal screen shows the exact amount. Withdrawals from Aster Chain are batched, need two of three validators to sign, and take about 30 seconds, longer to Ethereum. Any negative balance must be settled first with Rebalance. Profits older than 24 hours can be withdrawn in full, while same-day profits are capped by a daily limit the docs do not state.

Axiom

There is no withdrawal step. The Axiom wallet is yours, so leaving means sending SOL or tokens to any address and paying the network fee, or importing the recovery phrase into Phantom, Solflare, or Rabby, which Axiom's own signup guide recommends so you always have direct access. Axiom publishes no withdrawal fee of its own. Perps collateral comes back by converting USDC on Hyperliquid to USDC on Solana from the wallet menu, in about five minutes. The axiSOL staking pool charges 0.1% on withdrawals, and yield balances at Marginfi are advertised as instantly withdrawable.

Aster

The referrer earns 10% of a referred user's perpetual trading fees and chooses how much of that to pass back as a discount, from nothing to the full 10%. Only new sign-ups qualify, the relationship lasts 365 days by default, liquidation fees and zero-fee volume do not count, and rebates are paid in the asset the fee was paid in. No ChainScouter code is active.

Axiom

Signing up through another user's link takes 10% off trading fees on every trade. The referrer earns 30% of Axiom's net fee on trades by the people they referred directly, 3% on the next level, and 2% on the level after that, on Solana, BNB Chain, and Ethereum trading, with some tokens excluded. Trading itself earns SOL cashback by tier and points toward a leaderboard. The Terms let Axiom change, pause, or withhold rewards before they are claimed. No ChainScouter code is active.

Aster

The web app at asterdex.com is the main interface, with Pro, Shield, 1001x, and Spot as separate views. Aster Mobile is on Google Play under the Aster DEX developer account. The iOS build is distributed through TestFlight, and the docs still call the mobile app a beta. There is also a trading API with up to 30 keys per account.

Axiom

Axiom is a browser terminal at axiom.trade built for a desktop screen: a chart with the order box beside it, one-click and hotkey buys and sells, limit orders you can drag on the chart, the Pulse feed of new launches and migrations, a wallet tracker, an X account monitor, several wallets under one login, and a Perpetuals tab. You sign in with an email code, Google, or Phantom plus a password. The site ships a web manifest, so on a phone it installs to the home screen as an app. No native iOS or Android app is documented, and Axiom's site links to no app store listing. Support runs through a Discord ticket channel and the X account.