Arcus Fees Explained (2026): Maker, Taker, Tiers and the Referral Discount

Arcus has four kinds of cost, and only one of them is a trading fee you can shrink by trading more. Perpetual futures pay maker and taker fees on a volume tier schedule, which is cheap right now because of a beta discount. Stock Token spot trades carry no Arcus fee, so the cost sits in the quote. Deposits and withdrawals are free on Arcus's side, though card payments and bridges are not. And funding, which feels like a fee, is a payment between traders.

The live numbers in this guide come from the Arcus fee-tier API, queried on October 2, 2026, cross-checked against the Arcus Help Center.

All Arcus fees at a glance

Cost	What you pay	Who charges it
Perp taker fee	0.0225% at base tier (beta); 0.045% standard	Arcus
Perp maker fee	0% at tiers 0 to 4 (beta); rebates at tiers 5 and 6	Arcus
Stock Token spot	0% Arcus fee; cost is the spread in the quote	Market makers (spread)
Gas	None for placing or cancelling perp orders; most spot swaps gasless	Robinhood Chain (when charged)
Deposits and withdrawals	No Arcus fee; third-party costs shown before you confirm	Fun, card networks, bridges
Funding	Paid or received hourly between longs and shorts	Other traders
pTokens	0.25% deposit fee on five older vaults, 0 on the rest	Vault
Liquidation	Unclear (conflicting official statements)	n/a

Arcus perp fee tiers (live beta and standard)

Arcus charges perps on a seven-tier maker/taker schedule based on your rolling 30-day perp volume. The fee-tier API returns rates in parts per million: Base came back as "maker_fee_ppm":0,"taker_fee_ppm":225, and 225 ppm is 0.0225%. Volume thresholds are in units of 1e-9 USD, so 5000000000000000 means $5M.

Sources: live values from api.arcus.xyz/v1/feetiers (October 2, 2026); standard rates from the Help Center; tier names from Arcus's referral post.

The beta discount came in two steps. Arcus halved taker fees at every tier on July 20, 2026, and set maker fees to zero for tiers 0 to 4 on August 4. Rebates at tiers 5 and 6 did not change.

How the tiers work

• Rolling 30-day window. Your tier is set by perp volume across all markets over the last 30 days, and it moves automatically with no application (Help Center). Arcus widened the window from 14 to 30 days on July 22, 2026 (changelog).
• Sub-accounts add up. Volume across the sub-accounts of one master wallet counts together (Help Center). Each wallet can have up to 10 sub-accounts, created through the API rather than the web app (docs).
• Spot volume does not set your fee tier. The schedule is defined on perp volume. (Spot volume does count toward the perps waitlist and points, which are separate systems.)
• Rebates are paid per fill. At VIP and Max, maker rebates "accrue on each qualifying fill and are credited to your collateral balance" (Help Center). No epochs, no claiming.
• No gas per action. Placing and cancelling perp orders does not cost gas (Help Center).

When does the beta end?

Arcus has not said. Its Help Center says that when beta ends, "you'll hear about it in advance through @Arcus_xyz and the Arcus website." Plan your costs on the standard column if you are setting up a strategy that will run for months.

Worked examples

Perp fees are a percentage of the trade's notional value (size times price), not of your margin. All examples use a BTC perp and assume the fee rate stays where it was on October 2, 2026.

1. A $10,000 market order at Base tier, beta. $10,000 × 0.0225% = $10,000 × 0.000225 = $2.25.

2. The same order with the referral discount. Arcus says referred users get "5% off on all trading fees" (in-app copy; API changelog, July 22, 2026: "5% referral fee discount for referred users"). $2.25 × (1 − 0.05) = $2.25 × 0.95 = $2.1375, about $2.14.

3. The same order as a resting limit (maker) order, beta. $10,000 × 0% = $0.

4. Opening and closing with market orders. Two taker fills of $10,000 each: 2 × $2.25 = $4.50 for the round trip during beta, or 2 × $4.50 = $9.00 at standard rates.

5. Leverage does not change the fee rate. $1,000 of margin at 10x opens a $10,000 position, so the fee is still $2.25. Measured against your margin, that is 0.225%, which is why fees matter more at higher leverage.

6. Post-beta, Base tier. Taker: $10,000 × 0.045% = $4.50. Maker: $10,000 × 0.015% = $1.50. With the 5% discount: $4.275 and $1.425.

7. A VIP maker rebate. $1,000,000 of maker fills at −0.002% = −$20, meaning $20 is credited to you.

Run your own numbers in the Arcus fee calculator.

The referral discount

Arcus states that traders who join through a referral code get 5% off trading fees. The figure is Arcus's own: the referral badge in the app reads "Receive 5% off on all trading fees," and the API changelog for July 22, 2026 lists a "5% referral fee discount for referred users." I have not seen Arcus publish a fill-level example, so treat 5% as Arcus's stated rate.

The rules that matter:

• Add it early. You can join under a code only while your rolling 30-day volume is under about $1M, and once linked you cannot change or remove your referrer.
• It applies to fees. On 0% Stock Token spot trades there is no fee to discount, so the saving shows up on perps.
• It does not unlock perps. Perps access needs an invite code or a waitlist slot. See our invite code and waitlist guide.

ArcusGuide's code is ARCUSGUIDE. Use this link or enter it under Rewards, then Referrals, in the app. ArcusGuide earns a share of the trading fees of traders who join with it. The referral page explains how it works.

Spot fees: 0% Arcus fee, plus the spread

Arcus charges no trading fee on Stock Token spot trades (homepage: "No Fees. Period."). You still pay something on each trade:

• Spread. Spot trades fill against firm quotes from market makers and pools via the Arcus Spot Router. The quote price includes the maker's spread, which widens when US markets are closed (Arcus blog). Compare the quote with the underlying share price before you confirm.
• Gas. Official sources differ here. The safe reading: spot trades carry no Arcus fee; most token-to-token swaps are gasless, and you should keep a little ETH on Robinhood Chain for some actions (Help Center).
• Order size. Spot orders run from $10 to $1,000,000 each (Help Center).

The swap panel lists Network Fee, Platform Fee and a Quote Slippage setting before you sign, so the full cost of a spot trade is visible up front. Off-hours quotes are wider, so the same trade can cost more on a Sunday than on a Tuesday afternoon.

Deposit and withdrawal costs

Arcus says it charges nothing to deposit or withdraw: "Zero fees on USDG deposits and withdrawals," with any third-party cost shown before you confirm (docs). Deposits and withdrawals run through Fun, and those third parties do charge. Typical fiat on-ramp costs from the Help Center:

A $500 card deposit at about 2.1% costs roughly $10.50, which is more than four $10,000 taker trades at the beta rate. If you can use SEPA, the same $500 costs about $2.50. An FX spread applies only on KES, RWF, ZMW, ZAR, NGN and INR (Help Center). Crypto deposits have a minimum of about $3 on most chains, higher on Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Collateral on Arcus is USDG. Withdrawing from perps is two steps: "Withdraw from Perps" moves funds to your Spot balance in the same wallet for free, then "Withdraw from Spot" bridges to another chain or asset, with the fee shown first (Help Center). The deposit and withdrawal guide walks through each route.

Funding is not a fee

Funding moves money between longs and shorts to keep the perp price near the index. Arcus does not keep it. Per the funding docs:

• Charged every hour.
• Crypto base rate: 0.01% per 8 hours, which is 0.00125% per hour. The markets API showed BTC at 0.0000125 per hour on October 2, 2026.
• Stock, index and commodity perps: a base rate of SOFR plus 0.5% a year. Outside US market hours, funding on these markets locks to that rate.
• Premium: one-eighth of the impact-price premium per hour, capped at ±4% per hour.

At the crypto base rate, a $10,000 BTC long pays $10,000 × 0.00125% = $0.125 an hour, or $3.00 a day, to shorts. Rates change hourly, so check live values on our funding rates tool before holding a position for days.

pTokens

pTokens are Arcus's tokenized leveraged positions. Five of the older vaults (pBTC, pBTC3x, pHOOD3x, sBTC and sBTC3x) charge a 0.25% deposit fee, and the others charge none, per the vaults API on October 2, 2026. Profit share is zero on all of them. Funding and rebalancing costs come out of each token's net asset value rather than as a separate charge (Arcus). More in Arcus pTokens explained.

Liquidation fee: unclear

Arcus's own sources disagree. The Help Center says no fee is charged to traders on liquidation orders, and that positions taken over by the backstop are "zeroed out for the trader." An API changelog entry refers to "the liquidation penalty included in fee." The markets API returned a null liquidationFeePpm for all 67 markets on October 2, 2026. Until Arcus settles it, assume a liquidation will cost you more than a normal close, and keep enough margin to avoid one. If you think a liquidation was wrong, Arcus handles disputes through support@arcus.xyz.

How Arcus fees compare

At the base tier, Arcus's beta taker fee is half of Hyperliquid's and below dYdX Chain's. Lighter's Standard accounts pay nothing in exchange for order delays, and its paid Plus tier (0.005% each way) also undercuts Arcus's beta taker:

Exchange	Base taker	Base maker
Arcus (beta)	0.0225%	0%
Hyperliquid	0.045%	0.015%
dYdX Chain	0.050%	0.010%
Lighter on Robinhood Chain (Standard)	0% (with order delays)	0%

After beta, Arcus's 0.045% and 0.015% match Hyperliquid's base tier. The trade-offs behind each row are in Arcus vs Hyperliquid, Arcus vs Lighter and Arcus vs dYdX Chain.