Lighter vs GMGN

Lighter

A Standard account, the default, pays no maker or taker fee on perpetuals or spot. The trade-off is speed: Standard orders wait 300 ms before they reach the book, and the Premium account that removes most of that delay pays 0.028% taker and 0.004% maker before staking discounts. Plus accounts pay 0.005% for higher API rate limits. Advanced order types cost 0.01% on a Standard account.

GMGN

Every spot trade pays GMGN a flat 1% of its value on every chain, and copied trades and automated orders pay the same. Network costs come on top: gas plus the priority fee and tip you set on Solana, and gas on the EVM chains. Launchpad fees and token taxes apply where a token has them. The perps beta charges 0.015% maker and 0.045% taker. The Terms let GMGN change fees at any time, effective when posted, and authorize it to take fees straight from your wallet.

Lighter

You connect a wallet and sign, with no identity check in the official interface. The Terms say the interface logs IP addresses only to enforce the access restrictions and collects no other personal data. The app applies the country list by IP: from a restricted location it shows a restricted-jurisdiction notice and marks the session geo-blocked.

GMGN

You sign up with Google, an email code, Telegram, or a browser wallet such as Phantom or MetaMask, with an optional invite code, and no identity document is asked for. The Terms and the Privacy Policy, both dated December 6, 2024, reserve no identity check. The policy lists wallet addresses, public on-chain data, a Telegram handle, contact details you choose to give, and usage data down to country-level location. Withdrawals need two-factor authentication, an account-security step rather than an identity check. Card purchases run through MoonPay or Onramper under those providers' own rules.

Lighter

The Terms, last updated December 29, 2025, name fourteen excluded countries: the US, Canada, the UK, China, North Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Sudan, Belarus, Myanmar, and Syria, plus any jurisdiction under comprehensive sanctions and anyone on a sanctions list. The interface applies the list by IP address. The separate Lighter on Robinhood Chain deployment also excludes Singapore, Switzerland, the UAE, and South Sudan.

GMGN

The Terms, dated December 6, 2024, bar anyone in, under the control of, or a national or resident of Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, or Syria, and anyone on the UN, US OFAC, or EU sanctions lists, and require users to be 18. They say GMGN runs the service from the British Virgin Islands, that users anywhere else are responsible for their own local law, and that GMGN may suspend anyone for any reason. The terms linked from the iOS app's store listing, dated January 1, 2025, name the same five countries. Neither version mentions the perps beta.

Lighter

Maximum leverage is set per market: 50x for BTC and ETH, 25x for SOL, 20x for XRP, HYPE, and BNB, 15x for ARB and OP, 10x or less for most other coins, and 3x for the newest listings. Major FX pairs run up to 25x, gold 15x, silver 10x. You can lower the leverage on any market. Positions are cross-margined unless you set a market to isolated. Pre-launch markets are isolated only. With a Unified Trading Account, ETH and XAUT count as margin at a haircut.

GMGN

The perps beta, open since September 21, 2026, sets a cap per market in GMGN's published risk table. BTC goes to 40x, and ETH, gold, silver, and the QQQ and SPY funds to 25x. SOL, XRP, Brent oil, and stocks such as Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla go to 20x, most other markets to 10x, and six others to 5x. Each cap steps down as a position grows, so BTC drops to 20x above 12 million USDC of notional. Spot trading has no leverage.

Lighter

The contract specifications list about 100 crypto perpetuals, and the RWA specifications add roughly 70 more that trade around the clock: gold, silver, copper, oil, gas, FX pairs, US and Asian stocks, ETFs and indexes, and pre-IPO names such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Pre-IPO and pre-launch markets are isolated-margin only, and pre-IPO prices come from Lighter's own pricing mechanism rather than a market feed. A small spot book trades ETH, LIT, and a few other tokens against USDC. Order types: market, limit, stop-loss and take-profit in market or limit form, TWAP, chase limit, atomic basket orders, and RFQ for size, with post-only, reduce-only, good-til-time, and immediate-or-cancel options.

GMGN

Spot trading covers tokens on Solana, BNB Chain, Robinhood Chain, Base, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Stable, Arc, X Layer, HyperEVM, MegaETH, Monad, and Tron, as listed in the chain selector on September 26, 2026. The Trenches view follows new launches on launchpads such as Pump.fun, letsbonk, and Four.meme from creation through migration. Spot orders include market buys and sells, limit orders that expire after 1 hour, 24 hours, or 3 days, take-profit and stop-loss with trailing versions, buys and sells triggered by a migration, sells triggered by the developer selling, and wallet copy trading. The docs describe copy trading and auto-buy for Solana only. The perps beta lists 57 USDC-margined markets in GMGN's market data on September 26, 2026: 24 crypto, 30 stocks and ETFs, and gold, silver, and Brent oil.

Lighter

Collateral is USDC. The direct route is a deposit from Ethereum mainnet into the exchange contract, minimum 1 USDC. Lighter's bridge, run with Fun.xyz, an independent provider, gives you a deposit address that accepts USDC, USDT, ETH, and other tokens from Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, BNB Chain, Solana, HyperEVM, Monad, Tron, and Bitcoin and credits USDC, with a $5 minimum for a new account ($3 from EVM chains and Solana afterwards, $10 from Bitcoin). The app's deposit notice also lists card and Coinbase deposits. ETH and XAUT can be deposited to the spot balance and, with a Unified Trading Account, posted as margin at a haircut.

GMGN

Signing in with Google, email, Telegram, or Phantom gives you GMGN-held wallets on each chain, funded by sending that chain's gas token, such as SOL, ETH, BNB, or TRX, to the address on the Deposit/Withdraw page. A deposit on the wrong network cannot be recovered. With an extension wallet connected, the same page moves funds across in one step, or you can trade from the extension wallet itself without GMGN's automation. The web app's Buy option takes a credit or debit card or Apple Pay through MoonPay, and the mobile app buys SOL, ETH, BNB, or USDC with local currency through Onramper in 59 countries and regions, each under the provider's own fees and checks. Convert moves funds between chains, and stablecoins sent by mistake can be sold for the chain's own token.

Lighter

Two routes. A secure withdrawal is proven to Ethereum and then claimable there. Lighter says it usually claims on your behalf unless gas is high, and the minimum is 1 USDC. A fast withdrawal sends USDC to Arbitrum with a 4 USDC minimum. The docs do not publish the fee for either route, but the withdrawal screen shows it before you confirm.

GMGN

The Telegram bots cannot withdraw and send you to the website instead. You first bind two-factor authentication with Google Authenticator or a passkey, and withdrawals stay locked for 3 hours after binding it, 24 hours after unbinding or re-binding it, and 24 hours after a password reset. Transfers go to a whitelisted address, which takes 3 hours to activate after it is set or changed and then skips the 2FA prompt. A small balance must stay behind for rent and gas, and GMGN publishes no withdrawal fee beyond the network fee. Memecoins leave through the multi-wallet Consolidate and Distribute tools, which also need 2FA and list only tokens worth more than $10. GMGN's docs say the keys of GMGN-created wallets cannot be exported, while the current web app offers a one-time key download from a computer once 2FA is active. Imported wallets are excluded.

Lighter

Joining through a referral link rebates the Premium trading fees you pay in your first week, on up to $10M of volume, paid out weekly. A Standard account pays no trading fee, so the benefit only matters if you opt into Premium. Referrers earn 10% to 30% of their referred users' fees. Rebates are discretionary, and the code cannot be changed after sign-up. No ChainScouter code is active.

GMGN

GMGN pays referrers 10% to 30% of the trading fees of the people they bring in, rising with the volume referred, and a referrer can apply for a higher rate. One code covers the website and every bot, and an invite code entered at signup cannot be changed. Neither the docs nor the Terms publish a fee discount for the person who signs up. The Terms, dated December 6, 2024, limit referral links to people the referrer knows personally, bar posting them on websites, blogs, X, Reddit, or coupon sites, and let GMGN change, suspend, or void rewards at its discretion. No ChainScouter code is active.

Lighter

The web app at app.lighter.xyz is the main interface. Lighter also publishes its own Lighter Mobile app for iOS and Android, linked from the official site. Unified Trading Accounts can only be enabled on the web for now.

GMGN

GMGN runs as a browser terminal at gmgn.ai, as a mobile app listed on the App Store as GMGN - Meme Track (published by GraceMatrix Technologies Limited since June 2025) and on Google Play as GMGN (published by GMGN Labs Limited), with a TestFlight build and a direct APK download also linked from gmgn.ai/app, and as a set of per-chain Telegram trading bots such as @GMGN_sol_bot. The web terminal holds the Trenches launch feed, trending lists, wallet and X trackers, copy trading, a portfolio view, and the perps beta, and an Agent API lets scripts and AI assistants read data and place trades with an API key. Support runs through the official Telegram group and the @gmgnai account on X.