Crypto Fees Explained: Spread, Platform and Network Costs
Every crypto purchase carries three costs and the advertised fee is only one of them: here is how platform fees, spreads and network charges really work.
TL;DR
- Three costs sit inside every crypto purchase: the platform fee, the spread and the network fee.
- Cards run roughly 3-5% all-in; bank transfers closer to 1%.
- A 0% fee usually means the cost moved into the exchange rate.
- Compare platforms on coins received for the same money at the same moment.
- Educational only; nothing here is financial advice.
Here is a receipt worth reading slowly: £200, paid by card, for bitcoin. The app said the fee was 2%, which sounds like £4, which sounds like you should be holding £196 of coin. Check the wallet and it is £188-something. Nobody lied, exactly, but three different costs took a bite, and only one of them was printed in bold.
This guide runs the autopsy: platform fee, spread, network fee, three layers on every purchase. A costs guide, not financial advice.
Bite one: the platform fee
This is the visible one: it pays the on-ramp, the service converting your money into crypto, for card processing, fraud screening and the compliance staff who keep banks comfortable touching crypto at all. Banxa is one, running this plumbing since 2014 across more than 100 payment methods in the markets it serves.
Your payment method mostly sets the size of this bite. Cards run roughly 3 to 5% all-in, and bank transfers run closer to 1%. The gap is mostly risk: a card payment can come back as a chargeback months later while delivered coins never come back, and the card schemes charge for their part too. A push payment from your banking app arrives and stays arrived, so it prices like it.
Flat minimums deserve their own sentence: a £3 minimum on a £30 buy is 10% gone before anything else happens, which is why small purchases always wear the worst percentages. Ten separate £20 buys pay that toll ten times, one £200 buy pays it once.
Bite two: the spread
Now the quiet one: the spread is the distance between the rate you were quoted and the rate the open market traded at in that same second. Bitcoin changing hands at £50,000 while your quote works out at £51,000 a coin is 2% paid, with no line item and no receipt entry, just fewer coins.
Every platform runs some spread, because whoever fills your order carries price risk while the market moves underneath it. Honest ones cage that risk with a timer: Banxa locks its quoted price for roughly 3 minutes, and the rate you accepted is the rate you settle at. A quote with no expiry on it should make you squint.
Spread explains two famous puzzles, starting with the "0% fee" advert: the fee line went to zero and the rate quietly got worse, so on a £200 buy a rate 2% off market costs £4, a fee with better manners. And stablecoins: a dollar token quoted at $1.02 is a 2% spread in fancy dress.
Bite three: the network fee
The third bite never touches the platform: blockchains charge for space in their ledgers, and the money goes to the machines running the network. You pay it whenever coins move on-chain, including the hop from a platform to your own wallet.
Each chain prices block space its own way. Ethereum calls it gas, repriced in August 2021 by the EIP-1559 upgrade so the base portion of every fee is burned outright. Bitcoin auctions block space by the byte, and the bidding turns feral when everyone wants the same blocks: average fees briefly hit record levels around the 20 April 2024 halving, when the Runes protocol launched the same day. Solana charges a fraction of a cent, and the amount you are moving barely matters, because you are renting room in a block rather than paying a percentage. £10 can cost the same to move as £10,000.
Some platforms print this as its own line, others fold it into the quote. On Banxa card orders delivery is folded in, and coins typically land within about 10 minutes of the issuer approving, so the number on screen is the number that turns up. Know which style you are looking at before comparing anything.
The autopsy, totalled
Back to that £200: a 4% all-in card cost leaves about £192 working, and a 1% spread means the £192 buys about 1% fewer coins than the market rate suggests, call it £190 of value landing. If delivery had been billed separately, the network would have taken a slice on the way out as well. Three bites, one order, one of them in bold type.
The one number that cannot lie
Ignore advertised percentages entirely and price the identical purchase on each platform you are weighing, within a few minutes of each other because quotes pulled twenty minutes apart come from two different markets, then read a single figure: how much crypto you would actually receive. Platform fee, spread and delivery are already inside that number. It cannot hide anything, which is exactly why adverts never lead with it.
One warning about benchmarks: the spot price on a big exchange is not what you would walk away with there either, once its own charges and withdrawal costs land, so compare finished quotes with finished quotes, always.
Keeping the bill down
Nothing clever, just habits.
Unhurried money travels by bank transfer at about 1%, and the card stays in the drawer for days when ten minutes genuinely matters. Small buys get batched, one £200 order instead of ten £20 ones, so flat minimums bite once. Coins move on-chain when there is a reason, because every hop pays the network again, and shuffling coins about for tidiness is paying rent on your own money. And the coins-received figure gets read before every confirm. Twice.
The fees pay for real things, fraud desks and block space among them. Paying all three layers without ever noticing them is the only optional part.
Frequently Asked Questions
Because the quote carries more than the visible fee. The platform fee, the spread and sometimes a delivery cost all sit inside the coins-received figure. If you benchmarked against a bare market price, most of the gap is usually spread. The number to trust is coins received at the moment you buy.
Nearly always, yes. Cards carry chargeback risk and scheme costs, so on-ramps price them at roughly 3-5% all-in against about 1% for a bank transfer. You are paying for speed, which is occasionally worth it. For a purchase that can wait a day, the transfer usually wins.
The gap between the rate a platform quotes you and the open-market rate at that same moment. If the market has Bitcoin at £50,000 and your quote implies £51,000, that is a 2% cost with no line item attached. Every platform runs one; the size is what varies.
The people running the blockchain: miners on Bitcoin, validators on Ethereum and Solana. The platform never sees that money. And since the EIP-1559 upgrade in August 2021, Ethereum burns the base-fee portion of every transaction, so part of it goes to nobody at all.
The fee line is genuinely zero; the cost usually sits in the exchange rate instead. Price the same purchase on a platform with a visible fee at the same moment and count the coins each would hand you. More coins wins, whatever the adverts say.
Flat minimums. A £3 minimum fee is 1% of a £300 purchase and 10% of a £30 one. Percentage charges shrink as the purchase shrinks. Flat minimums just sit there. If you buy little and often, the minimums quietly become your biggest cost.