The offer, taken apart
What a referral code actually does to your fees
Every site with a code tells you it saves you money. Almost none of them tell you how much, or that it does nothing at all to three of the four costs of a purchase. Here is the arithmetic, including the parts that make it look small.
- It reduces one thing: the exchange's trading fee, by up to 20%.
- It does not touch: the deposit fee, the spread, or the network fee — often the larger costs.
- On current terms it does not add to what you pay, and it cannot be added after the account exists.
- At beginner volumes it is worth a small amount of money. Worth taking, not worth choosing a platform over.
This is the page where a site that runs on referral income explains its own offer. So the useful thing to do is put the unflattering numbers first: at the volumes a first-time buyer trades, the discount is worth a small amount of money, and three of the four costs of a purchase are completely untouched by it.
It is still worth taking. It just is not the thing that decides anything.
What the code mechanically does
A referral code is entered once, in a collapsed field on the sign-up form. From then on it does two things and no others:
- It applies a standing discount to the exchange's trading fee on your account. The headline is “up to 20% off”. Binance sets the actual rate, can change it, and shows the current figure on the sign-up page — whatever is displayed when you register is what applies to you.
- It credits the code owner with a share of the fees you do pay. That is us. It comes out of the exchange's side, not yours.
That is the entire mechanism. It does not link the accounts in any other way, does not let the code owner see your balance or trades, and does not give them any ability to act on your account.
What it does not touch
This is the part that referral pages leave out, and it matters more than the discount does.
A purchase has four separate costs. The code applies to exactly one:
| Cost | Discount applies? | Typical size for a beginner |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit fee (card markup) | No | Often the largest single cost |
| Exchange trading fee | Yes | Usually the smallest of the four |
| The spread | No | Large if you use the simplified widget |
| Network fee (if you withdraw) | No | Fixed, so brutal on small amounts |
So the honest summary is: the code discounts the cost that was already smallest, and leaves the two that are usually biggest completely alone. Anyone presenting a referral code as a way to “save on fees” without saying that is selling you something.
Roughly what it is worth
Real numbers depend on the fee tier in force, so what follows is arithmetic on a simple model rather than quoted rates: a 0.1% trading fee with a 20% discount, i.e. an effective 0.08%. Read your own rate off the published fee schedule and redo it if you want precision.
| Total you trade | Fee at 0.1% | Fee at 0.08% | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| $200 (one first purchase) | $0.20 | $0.16 | $0.04 |
| $1,000 | $1.00 | $0.80 | $0.20 |
| $5,000 | $5.00 | $4.00 | $1.00 |
| $25,000 | $25.00 | $20.00 | $5.00 |
| $100,000 | $100.00 | $80.00 | $20.00 |
On a single first purchase the discount is worth a few cents. That is the truthful answer, and it is why nobody publishes this table.
It becomes real money only with volume — and volume is exactly what a first-time buyer should not be manufacturing. Which leads to the one thing worth saying loudly:
A 20% discount on a fee is still a fee. Every extra trade costs you 0.08% to save 0.02%. If a promotion ever asks you to hit a volume target to unlock something, the volume costs more than the something. This applies to every referral scheme, ours included.
When it is worth precisely nothing
Two situations, and both are common for a first purchase:
You buy through peer-to-peer. Taking an existing advert on the full peer-to-peer order book generally carries no exchange trading fee for the buyer — you pay through the rate in the advertisement instead. The simplified “quick buy” front end to that same market is the exception and does charge, and posting your own advert makes you the maker, who also pays. In none of those cases is there an ordinary trading fee for a discount to reduce, so the code sits on your account doing nothing until you trade on the exchange itself. The fee impact table carries the current published figures, with the date they were read.
You buy once and never trade again. If you make a single purchase and hold, your lifetime saving is the few cents in the top row of that table. Nothing wrong with that outcome — it is just not a reason to have chosen anything.
How to check it actually applied
Worth doing once, because a code that silently failed to register looks identical to one that worked.
- Open the fee or commission section of your account settings, usually under the account or dashboard menu.
- Look for the current maker and taker rates shown for your account, not the general schedule.
- Compare them to the standard rates for the lowest tier on the published schedule.
- If yours are lower, the discount is active. Many accounts also show the referral relationship somewhere in the same area.
If it did not apply, there is generally nothing to be done: the field only accepts a code at sign-up, and there is no settings page to attach one afterwards. Opening a second account to fix it is a bad trade — one account per person is the rule almost everywhere, and having two is a much more expensive problem than a missing discount.
Our code, and why we are showing you the small numbers
This site is paid for by the code below. We could have written this page the way most referral pages are written — “save up to 20% on every trade!” — and it would have converted better.
The reason not to is straightforward. If you enter the code expecting meaningful savings and later work out it was worth four cents, the useful thing you learn is that this site overstates things. The table above costs us conversions and buys the only thing that matters over more than a month.
Applies up to 20% off trading fees* on your account, for as long as the exchange keeps the arrangement in place.
* Binance sets the rate and can change or withdraw it. Whatever their sign-up page shows at the moment you register is what applies. On those terms, entering a code does not increase what you pay.
The link below is a promotional link, going to Binance's own sign-up page with our code already filled in. The full arrangement behind it is on our how we make money page. If you would rather use the site without it, go to Binance directly and leave the referral field blank — everything here works the same either way.
If you are not at the sign-up stage yet, the more useful page is the full walkthrough, which covers all seven steps in order and where this one fits.
Questions people actually ask
Does using a referral code cost me anything?
No. It reduces the exchange's trading fee on your own account and pays the code owner a share of what you still pay, out of the exchange's side. Your costs go down or stay the same; they cannot go up.
Can I add a code to an account I already have?
Generally no. The field appears only during registration and there is no settings page to attach one later. Opening a second account to get it is worse than missing the discount, since multiple accounts per person are usually against the terms.
Is 20% off fees a lot?
Not at beginner volumes. On a single small purchase it is worth a few cents, because it discounts the trading fee — usually the smallest of the four costs — and leaves the deposit fee, spread and network fee untouched. It becomes real money only at trading volumes a first-time buyer has no reason to reach.
Does the discount apply to peer-to-peer trades?
Generally not. Taking an existing advert on the full peer-to-peer book usually carries no exchange trading fee to begin with, so there is nothing for a discount to reduce — the cost sits in the advertised rate instead. The simplified quick-buy version of that market does charge its own fee, but that is not the trading fee the discount applies to either. The discount starts mattering once you trade on the exchange itself.
How do I know whether it worked?
Check the fee or commission section of your account settings and compare the maker and taker rates shown for your account against the standard lowest-tier rates on the published schedule. Lower rates mean the discount is active.