Lighter vs GMX

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.

GMX

The position fee is charged on position size each time you open, close, increase, or partly close: 0.04% when the trade brings long and short open interest closer together and 0.06% when it widens the gap. Gold, silver, oil, and index markets have their own rates, which change with market hours. Price impact, borrowing, funding, and the keeper's network fee are separate, so the position fee on its own understates the cost of a trade.

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.

GMX

You connect a wallet (MetaMask, WalletConnect, Coinbase Wallet, and others) or log in with an email address, a social account, or a passkey, which creates an embedded wallet for you. Neither path includes an identity check. The Terms, last modified August 20, 2026, have no identity-verification clause and say GMX does not collect personal data. Buying crypto with a card inside the app goes through a third-party provider with its own rules, where available.

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.

GMX

The Terms, last modified August 20, 2026, require that you are not a U.S. Person and, citing the Commodity Exchange Act, say no U.S. Person may enter into perpetual contracts through the interface. They also exclude residents, nationals, and agents of any country embargoed or similarly sanctioned by the US, the UK, or the EU, without naming those countries, and anyone on a US, UK, EU, or UN sanctions list. You promise not to use a VPN or any other tool to get around the restrictions.

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.

GMX

The headline cap is 100x. Each market's own cap is derived from its collateral factors, rounded down to a 5x step, and falls as the pool's open interest grows, so thinner markets allow less. Gold, silver, WTI, and Brent allow 100x during market hours and 25x off-hours, QQQ and SPY 50x and 25x, natural gas 40x and 20x, and the SpaceX market 10x. Each position is margined on its own collateral, in a stablecoin or the market's own token, and you can add or withdraw collateral, including a deposit that triggers at a price you set. A position is liquidated when its remaining collateral falls below 0.25% to 1% of size, and the liquidation fee is 0.2% to 0.45% of size.

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.

GMX

The Oracle API listed 108 perpetual markets on Arbitrum on September 25, 2026: about 100 crypto assets and eight TradFi markets (gold, silver, WTI and Brent crude, natural gas, the QQQ and SPY index ETFs, and a SpaceX stock market), several with more than one pool to choose from. Avalanche had 12 markets and MegaETH 4. TradFi markets trade around the clock with tighter risk limits outside market hours. Spot swaps run through the same pools, with KyberSwap routing when it pays more. Order types: market, limit, stop market, TWAP in 2 to 30 parts, and take-profit and stop-loss, plus conditional margin deposits. Limit and trigger orders execute against the Chainlink oracle price when it reaches your level and do not rest in a book.

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.

GMX

There is no exchange balance to fund for direct trading: connect a wallet on Arbitrum, Avalanche, or MegaETH, and the tokens in it (USDC, USDT, ETH, BTC, and each pool's other collateral tokens) serve as margin. From Ethereum, Base, or BNB Chain you deposit USDC, USDT, or ETH into a GMX Account, a separate trading balance on Arbitrum that Stargate and LayerZero bridge for you. It is not available on Avalanche or MegaETH, and bridging is limited by Stargate's liquidity caps. The app's Receive flow can also buy crypto with a card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay through a third-party provider where available. Classic mode needs ETH or AVAX for gas, while Express mode lets you pay gas in USDC.

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.

GMX

When you trade from your wallet there is nothing to withdraw: closing a position returns the collateral and any profit to the wallet, less the position fee, price impact, and the keeper's network fee. A GMX Account balance can be withdrawn as USDC, USDT, or ETH to Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, or BNB Chain, whichever chain you deposited from. The docs do not publish the bridge cost, and transfers depend on Stargate liquidity.

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.

GMX

A referral code takes 5% off opening and closing fees with a Tier 1 code and 10% with a Tier 2 or Tier 3 code, and the referrer earns 5% to 15% of those fees. Borrow and funding fees are not discounted. Without a code, GMX assigns an automatic 5% discount at $50M of lifetime volume on Arbitrum and 10% at $250M. A code stops paying its referrer after 12 months or $20,000 in rewards, but your discount carries on. 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.

GMX

The official interface is the web app at app.gmx.io, built as a progressive web app you can add to a phone's home screen. The docs list no native iOS or Android app. There are three trading modes. In Classic, your wallet signs every transaction. In Express, you sign messages and GMX's own relay submits them. Express with One-Click Trading adds a sub-account key, stored in your browser, that signs for you up to a limit you set. Developers get a public API, a TypeScript SDK, and published skills for AI agents.