Bybit vs Exness: One Lets You Withdraw Coins, the Other Sells CFDs, and a $10,000 BTC Trade Breaks Even at an $82 Spread

What you are actually buying

The two names turn up in the same search because both offer leverage on bitcoin, but the products differ.

Bybit's numbers come from its fee structure page, updated November 5, and its public instrument API, read this morning. Exness blocked our direct requests with a 403, so we read dated public archive copies of its own pages. The crypto page is from July 2, and the Standard account page is from October 25.

Bybit's page warns that actual rates can vary by region and tells users to check My Fee Rate after verification. Exness says its displayed spreads are averages and may widen in thin markets. Treat both columns as a starting point, then read the number in your own account.

The $82 test on a $10,000 BTC trade

Here is the arithmetic, so you can rerun it with today's price.

• $10,000 at $74,905 per BTC is about 0.1335 BTC.
• Bybit taker: $10,000 × 0.055% = $5.50 per side, $11 for a round trip.
• $11 ÷ 0.1335 BTC is about $82 per BTC, which is the Exness spread that costs the same.
• With 30% of the fee returned: $11 × 70% = $7.70, or about $58 per BTC.
• Bybit maker: $10,000 × 0.02% = $2 per side, $4 for a round trip, or about $30 per BTC if both orders rest on the book.

A CFD spread is paid once per round trip, because you buy at the ask and sell at the bid. So compare the whole spread with the whole Bybit round trip. Measure it in dollars from the bid and ask on screen. Do not compare "pips" between platforms, because a pip can be defined differently for each instrument.

Time matters as well. Bybit's BTCUSDT funding settles every 480 minutes, according to its instrument API. The last nine settled rates, covering about three days, add up to 0.0553%. A $10,000 long paid about $5.53 over that stretch, and a short collected it. The rate changes every period and can flip sign. Exness's fees page, archived October 25, says you can hold positions overnight with zero swap charges on popular instruments including crypto. Its crypto page also says swap values may be updated daily and refers to triple swaps, so check your symbol before you assume a position costs nothing to hold. If a BTC position lasts weeks, this line can outweigh the entry cost.

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Here the two overlap more directly. Bybit's introduction to CFD lists more than 300 pairs across metals, stocks, indices, forex and commodities through an MT5 CFD account. Crypto is not on that list. So on Bybit you hold BTC exposure in perpetuals and gold in the CFD account, funded separately.

Bybit has two CFD pricing modes. Zero-Fee mode is the default and builds the cost into the spread. Tight-Spread mode needs a manual switch and a minimum cumulative deposit of $3,000, then charges commission. Bybit's CFD fee page lists $6 per lot on forex and metals, $3 on oil and $0.02 per lot on US stock CFDs, with a $0.20 minimum per order. Its margin guide uses a contract size of 100 for XAUUSD, so $6 per lot works out to 6 cents per ounce on top of the raw spread.

Exness's Standard account lists spreads from 0.2 pips, no commission and a 0.01 minimum lot. To compare gold, add 6 cents to Bybit's raw spread and set that beside the Exness gold spread at the same moment. Deposits also work differently: Bybit's MT5 account takes only USDT or BYUSDT from your Bybit account, shown as USDx at 1:1, according to its CFD FAQ. USDx itself cannot be withdrawn on-chain.

Stop-out levels change how a losing trade ends

The two firms close losing positions at different points. Bybit's CFD liquidation guide sets the stop-out at a 50% margin level. Exness's Standard account lists a 60% margin call and a 0% stop-out.

Take a position using $1,000 of margin. On Bybit's CFD account, closing starts once equity falls to $500. On an Exness Standard account, the position can run until equity is close to zero. A lower stop-out gives a position more room, and it also lets you lose the entire balance before anything closes. Exness advertises negative balance protection on top of that. The 1:Unlimited label deserves the same care, since Exness also states that crypto margin requirements are fixed per instrument whatever leverage your account shows.

On Bybit's side, 150x is only the maximum the BTCUSDT contract allows in its public instrument data. A 150x long loses its whole margin on a price move of about 0.67% (100 ÷ 150), and BTC moved far more than that in a single five-minute candle this morning. We would not size a trade from either headline figure.

Licences: read the entity, not the brand

Exness's archived regulation page lists separate companies under separate supervisors. Exness (SC) Ltd holds Seychelles FSA licence SD025. Exness B.V. holds licence 0003LSI from the Central Bank of Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Exness (VG) Ltd is authorized in the British Virgin Islands. Exness ZA (PTY) Ltd is listed as FSP 51024 in South Africa. The page says the offshore entities serve selected jurisdictions outside the European Economic Area, and that Exness (MU) Ltd provides no retail services at present. The CySEC register, which we opened this morning, shows Exness (Cy) Ltd under licence 178/12.

Which company you sign with depends on where you live, and the protections follow that company. The same applies to Bybit: our comparison of Bybit and Bybit EU shows they are separate platforms with separate accounts and different fees. Before you deposit anywhere, read the legal entity named in your account agreement.

Verification and moving money

Bybit's KYC FAQ says at least Standard verification is mandatory for all products and services, and its CFD FAQ repeats that for CFD trading. Non-VIP daily withdrawals are capped at 1 million USDT with Standard and 2 million USDT with Advanced. Bybit's general fee page says on-chain deposits are free and that the on-chain withdrawal fee is fixed per coin and chain, shown in the withdrawal window.

Exness says it charges no management fee and that opening an account is free, and it says it pays third-party transaction fees on withdrawals. A footnote on the same page says third-party fees may still apply depending on the payment method. Its crypto page describes a "quick verification process" without listing documents in the part we could read.

Which one fits

• You want to own BTC, ETH or altcoins, or move them to a wallet: Bybit. A CFD account gives you no coins.
• You trade BTC often, in and out: run the $82 test against the live Exness spread at the hours you trade.
• You hold a BTC position for weeks: compare Bybit's funding with whatever swap your Exness account actually shows on that symbol.
• You mainly trade gold and forex and BTC is a side trade: Exness puts them in one account, while Bybit splits them across two.
• You pay perpetual fees in volume: a fee share lowers your cost on every trade, which a spread-only account does not offer through us.

The fee share, and how it compares

Sign up through our Bybit page with code 48553 and our partner data lists a 30% fee share, confirmed October 23. It is a share of the fees you pay, not of the trade size: $11 × 30% = $3.30 back on the round trip above. We could not confirm that MT5 CFD commissions count toward it, so assume they do not until your account shows otherwise.

If perpetual fees are your main cost, our Bitget page shows the larger share in the same data. A $10,000 Bitget futures round trip at 0.06% taker costs $12, and 60% back leaves $4.80, which beats Bybit's $7.70 at base rates. Exness is not in our partner data, so we show no rebate for it.

What we could not verify

• Exness's BTCUSD spread today. The spread table loads inside the page and came back empty in the archive copies. That is why this article gives a break-even spread and no verdict.
• Exness's crypto leverage per symbol, minimum deposit and country list. The minimum deposit field was empty in the archive copy of the Standard account page, and Exness's live pages refused our requests.
• Current Exness terms after each archive date. The crypto page copy is from July and the regulation copy from March, so check both on the live site.
• Your own fee tier on either platform. We did not open a live account or place a trade on either.

Quick answers

Is Exness a crypto exchange?

No. By its own description it offers crypto CFDs, which track price without giving you the coin. You cannot withdraw bitcoin from a CFD position to a wallet.

Does Bybit offer MT5 like Exness?

Yes. Bybit runs an MT5 CFD account for metals, stocks, indices, forex and commodities, opened from the TradFi section and funded with USDT or BYUSDT. Standard verification is required.

Which is cheaper for bitcoin?

It depends on the spread you see. At about $74,905, Exness is cheaper than a Bybit taker round trip below a spread of about $82 per BTC, and cheaper than that round trip with 30% back only below about $58.