Polymarket Perps Fees Explained: Full Schedule + Worked Examples (2026)

Polymarket Perps use a completely different fee model from Polymarket's prediction markets — and if you size positions with leverage, small-looking percentages multiply in ways worth understanding before your first fill. Here is every cost, from the official fee documentation as of September 2026, with worked examples. Parameters are per-market and can change; confirm in the app.

The three costs

A Perps position can cost you money three ways, all denominated in pUSD:

Trading fees — charged per fill on notional (price × quantity).

Funding — settled hourly between longs and shorts; you pay or receive depending on which side you hold and where the perp trades against its index.

Liquidation fees — only if the liquidation engine closes you out: those fills pay the normal rate plus a per-market liquidation fee.

The full fee schedule

Tiered by your trailing 30-day volume, recalibrated daily:

| Trailing 30-day volume | Taker | Maker | |---|---|---| | $0+ | 0.0400% | 0.0125% | | $1M+ | 0.0370% | 0.0100% | | $5M+ | 0.0350% | 0.0080% | | $25M+ | 0.0300% | 0.0050% | | $100M+ | 0.0270% | 0.0020% | | $500M+ | 0.0250% | 0.0000% | | $1B+ | 0.0200% | -0.0050% (rebate) |

Fee = |price × quantity| × rate. Takers cross the spread (market orders and aggressive limits); makers post resting orders that get filled. Most retail flow is taker flow — budget with the taker column.

Worked examples (base tier)

Unleveraged round trip. Buy and sell $1,000 notional as a taker: $1,000 × 0.0400% × 2 = $0.80. Genuinely cheap.

The same math at leverage — this is the one to internalize. Fees charge on *notional*, but you experience them against *equity*:

10x: deposit 100 pUSD, control 1,000 pUSD notional. Taker round trip = 0.04% × 2 × 10 = 0.8% of your equity.

20x: same 100 pUSD controls 2,000 pUSD. Taker round trip = 0.04% × 2 × 20 = 1.6% of your equity — before the price moves at all.

High-leverage scalping starts every trade meaningfully behind. If a 1.6% round trip changes whether the trade makes sense, the trade was too thin.

Maker discipline pays. The same 20x round trip filled entirely as a maker: 0.0125% × 2 × 20 = 0.5% of equity — less than a third of the taker cost. Patience with limit orders is a real edge at leverage.

Funding: the hourly line item

Funding settles every hour, computed from how far the perp trades from its index price (order-book sampling every 5 seconds averaged over the hour, plus a small fixed interest leg of 0.01% per 8 hours, halved for non-crypto assets, capped at ±4%/hour). Perp above index → longs pay shorts; below → shorts pay longs. The transfer is trader-to-trader — the protocol takes no cut, and it is not part of the trading-fee schedule above.

Scale intuition, using 2,000 pUSD notional on 100 pUSD equity (20x) at a modest 0.01%/hour rate: 0.20 pUSD/hour ≈ 4.8% of equity per day if the rate persists and you're on the paying side. You can also be on the *receiving* side — check the current rate and direction before holding overnight. Full mechanics in our risk math guide.

Liquidation fees: paying extra at the worst moment

If equity falls below maintenance margin, the engine closes your position with reduce-only orders — and each of those fills pays the normal trading fee plus a per-market liquidation fee. Liquidation is not a guaranteed stop-loss: in fast markets it can exhaust your entire deposited collateral. The cheapest liquidation fee is the one you never pay; size so a normal daily move can't reach your liquidation price.

How this differs from prediction-market fees

Polymarket's prediction markets use an unrelated per-share model (roughly $1.00–$1.75 per 100 shares depending on price and rate) — about 25–40× more fee per dollar of exposure than Perps' basis-point model. The flip side: predictions have no funding, no liquidation and no leverage. Fee-per-trade favors Perps; total risk profile is a different conversation — see Perps vs Predictions.

Cutting your fee bill

Post maker orders when you don't need immediacy — 3× cheaper at every tier.

Mind the tier clock — tiers key off trailing 30-day volume and recalibrate daily.

Don't churn at high leverage — the equity-relative round-trip cost above is the quiet killer.

Watch funding direction — holding the paying side of a persistent rate can cost more than your trading fees.

Ready to see live fee quotes on real markets? Open Polymarket Perps — eligible regions only; start small, prefer isolated margin while learning. New to the product? Start with the complete tutorial.

Eligibility note: Polymarket blocks Perps order placement in the United States and Canada (per its official documentation as of September 2026), and the main platform carries separate restrictions in the UK, Australia and elsewhere. If you're in a restricted region, Perps won't be tradable for you — and circumventing geo-restrictions violates Polymarket's terms.

Risk notice: Perps are leveraged derivatives. Funding costs accrue hourly, liquidation can close your position automatically, and you can lose your entire deposit — liquidation is not a guaranteed stop-loss. Nothing here is investment advice. Fee schedule and formulas cited from docs.polymarket.com/perps as of September 2026 and may change. We may earn a commission when you sign up through links on this site — this never affects our coverage.