Hyperliquid vs Lighter vs Aster: Fees, OI & Liquidity (2026)

The short version: in our snapshot of 3 November 2026 (08:06 UTC), Hyperliquid had the most open interest on all four majors we checked (BTC $3.06B vs $488M on Aster and $344M on Lighter) and the most 24h volume. Lighter is the cheapest place to take liquidity, with 0% maker and taker fees on its default Standard account in exchange for 300 ms of taker latency. Aster charges 0% maker and 0.04% taker at the base tier, and Hyperliquid 0.015% maker and 0.045% taker. Funding on BTC was almost identical on all three, about 11% APR. Which venue is "best" depends on whether you care more about fees, depth or where the open interest is.

Hyperliquid, Lighter and Aster are the three on-chain perpetual exchanges traders compare most in 2026. All three run a central limit order book, all three let you trade BTC, ETH, SOL and HYPE perps, and all three publish their market data through public APIs. That last point means you don't have to rely on marketing pages: you can pull the same numbers yourself and compare them like for like. This guide does exactly that, with a dated snapshot, the official fee schedules and the Python script we used.

The three venues in one paragraph each

• Hyperliquid runs its order book on its own layer-1 chain. Perps funding is paid every hour. Base-tier fees are 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker on perps, with lower rates as your 14-day volume grows. Details in our Hyperliquid fees guide.
• Lighter runs its order book as a zero-knowledge rollup. Its default Standard account pays 0% maker and 0% taker on regular perp and spot orders (TWAP/advanced orders and RFQ pay 1 bp), with 300 ms taker latency. The opt-in Premium account removes most of the latency but pays 0.004% maker and 0.028% taker at zero staked LIT, discounted up to 30% by staking LIT. Funding is paid hourly.
• Aster is a perp DEX available on several chains. On general crypto pairs the base tier pays 0% maker and 0.04% taker, with lower taker fees for VIP tiers that need both 14-day volume and an ASTER balance. In our snapshot BTC, ETH and SOL funding settled every 8 hours and HYPE every 4 hours.

Fees compared

These are the published base-tier rates as of 3 November 2026 (Hyperliquid perps, Lighter trading fees page, Aster "Crypto, General" pairs). Fees are charged on notional, not on margin.

Venue / account	Maker	Taker	$10k taker round trip	$1M taker volume
Hyperliquid (base tier)	0.015%	0.045%	$9.00	$450
Hyperliquid with code HYPERFOLIO (4% off)	0.0144%	0.0432%	$8.64	$432
Aster (base tier, general pairs)	0%	0.04%	$8.00	$400
Lighter Premium (0 LIT staked)	0.004%	0.028%	$5.60	$280
Lighter Standard (default)	0%	0%	$0	$0

Two caveats. First, Lighter's zero fees come with a 300 ms delay on taker orders and on cancels and modifications for Standard accounts, which matters for fast strategies and not much for someone opening a swing position. Second, the fee is only part of your cost: spread, slippage and funding often add more than the fee itself on a large order. That is why the liquidity and funding sections below matter as much as this table.

Volume and open interest: where the positions actually are

Snapshot taken on 3 November 2026 at 08:06 UTC from each venue's public API. Volume is rolling 24h notional; open interest is in USD at mark price.

Market	Hyperliquid vol / OI	Lighter vol / OI	Aster vol / OI
BTC	$2,680M / $3,065M	$1,142M / $344M	$356M / $488M
ETH	$930M / $2,194M	$360M / $148M	$364M / $194M
SOL	$269M / $514M	$59M / $29M	$48M / $142M
HYPE	$658M / $1,871M	$66M / $33M	$25M / $7M

What stands out:

• Hyperliquid holds most of the open interest. On BTC it had roughly 6x Aster's and 9x Lighter's OI. On HYPE, its home market, the gap is far bigger: $1,871M against $33M and $7M.
• Lighter turns over its positions much faster. Its BTC volume was 3.3 times its open interest, against 0.87 on Hyperliquid and 0.73 on Aster. A high volume-to-OI ratio usually means short holding periods and active trading, which is what you would expect on a venue where taking liquidity is free.
• Volume alone can mislead. If you only compared 24h volume you would underestimate how concentrated positioning is on Hyperliquid. Our trading volume guide and open interest guide explain how to read each metric.

Liquidity: spread and depth within 0.1%

For the same snapshot we measured the top-of-book spread and the dollar value of bids plus asks resting within ±0.1% of the mid price. This is a single moment, books change every second, so treat it as an illustration rather than a ranking.

Market	Hyperliquid spread / depth	Lighter spread / depth	Aster spread / depth
BTC	0.13 bps / $69.7M	0.63 bps / at least $13.1M*	0.01 bps / $14.0M
ETH	0.44 bps / $20.7M	0.40 bps / $12.2M	0.04 bps / $16.1M
SOL	0.11 bps / $5.9M	0.54 bps / $3.2M	1.09 bps / $2.5M
HYPE	0.12 bps / $0.90M	0.95 bps / $1.49M	0.12 bps / $1.15M

*Lighter's API returned 250 orders per side, which did not reach the full ±0.1% band on BTC, so that figure is a lower bound. Hyperliquid's book was read grouped to 4 significant figures so that its 20 levels cover the band.

On BTC and ETH all three books were tight, well under 1 basis point. BTC depth near the mid was clearly deepest on Hyperliquid in this snapshot. HYPE was the surprise: Hyperliquid had by far the most HYPE open interest but not the most HYPE depth within 0.1%, so a large HYPE market order could have cost less in slippage elsewhere at that moment. If you place big orders, check the book at the time you trade, as explained in our slippage and price impact guide.

Funding rates

Converted to an hourly rate and annualized (hourly × 24 × 365), funding in the snapshot was:

Market	Hyperliquid	Lighter	Aster
BTC	+11.0% APR	+10.5% APR	+11.0% APR
ETH	+11.0% APR	+8.8% APR	+11.0% APR
SOL	−4.8% APR	+10.5% APR	+11.0% APR
HYPE	+11.0% APR	+10.5% APR	+11.0% APR

Most markets sat at or near the baseline rate of 0.01% per 8 hours (11.0% a year), so for a typical long the funding cost was about the same everywhere. SOL was the exception: on Hyperliquid shorts were paying longs, while on Lighter and Aster longs were paying shorts. A spread like that is what funding arbitrageurs look for, though it can close within hours; our funding arbitrage guide covers the risks. Remember the payment frequency differs too: Hyperliquid and Lighter pay every hour, while Aster paid every 8 hours on BTC, ETH and SOL and every 4 hours on HYPE.

Which one should you use?

• You want the deepest BTC book and the most open interest: Hyperliquid, which also has the widest choice of markets and the HYPE ecosystem.
• You trade often with market orders and don't need speed: Lighter's Standard account removes the fee entirely, as long as 300 ms of taker latency is acceptable.
• You mostly post limit orders: Aster and Lighter both charge 0% maker at the base tier; Hyperliquid charges 0.015%.
• You want to compare costs on your real trades: pull your fills and funding from each venue and add fees, funding and slippage together. Our real PnL guide shows the method.

Many active traders end up using more than one venue, which is the main reason to have one view of all of them.

Reproduce the comparison in Python

The script below reads the public, keyless APIs of all three exchanges and prints volume, open interest, funding, spread and depth for each market. Run it at different times of day: liquidity and funding change a lot between the Asian and US sessions, as our best time to trade guide showed.

import requests, time
from datetime import datetime, timezone

HL = "https://api.hyperliquid.xyz/info"
ASTER = "https://fapi.asterdex.com/fapi/v1"
LIGHTER = "https://mainnet.zklighter.elliot.ai/api/v1"
COINS = {"BTC": 1, "ETH": 0, "SOL": 2, "HYPE": 24}   # coin -> Lighter market_id
BAND = 0.001                                          # depth within +/-0.1% of mid

def depth(bids, asks):
    """bids/asks: lists of (price, size). Returns spread in bps and $ depth within BAND."""
    bb, ba = max(p for p, _ in bids), min(p for p, _ in asks)
    mid = (bb + ba) / 2
    d = sum(p * s for p, s in bids if p >= mid * (1 - BAND)) + \
        sum(p * s for p, s in asks if p <= mid * (1 + BAND))
    # True only if the returned book actually reaches the band edge on both sides
    full = min(p for p, _ in bids) < mid * (1 - BAND) and max(p for p, _ in asks) > mid * (1 + BAND)
    return (ba - bb) / mid * 1e4, d, full

def hyperliquid(coin):
    meta, ctxs = requests.post(HL, json={"type": "metaAndAssetCtxs"}, timeout=20).json()
    c = ctxs[[u["name"] for u in meta["universe"]].index(coin)]
    side = lambda lv: [(float(x["px"]), float(x["sz"])) for x in lv]
    book = requests.post(HL, json={"type": "l2Book", "coin": coin}, timeout=20).json()["levels"]
    spread, _, _ = depth(side(book[0]), side(book[1]))          # exact top of book
    # l2Book returns 20 levels per side; group to 4 significant figures so they span +/-0.1%
    agg = requests.post(HL, json={"type": "l2Book", "coin": coin, "nSigFigs": 4}, timeout=20).json()["levels"]
    _, dep, full = depth(side(agg[0]), side(agg[1]))
    mark = float(c["markPx"])
    return dict(vol=float(c["dayNtlVlm"]), oi=float(c["openInterest"]) * mark,
                fund_h=float(c["funding"]), spread=spread, depth=dep, full=full)

def aster(coin):
    s = coin + "USDT"
    t = requests.get(f"{ASTER}/ticker/24hr", params={"symbol": s}, timeout=20).json()
    p = requests.get(f"{ASTER}/premiumIndex", params={"symbol": s}, timeout=20).json()
    oi = requests.get(f"{ASTER}/openInterest", params={"symbol": s}, timeout=20).json()
    info = {x["symbol"]: x for x in requests.get(f"{ASTER}/fundingInfo", timeout=20).json()}
    hours = info.get(s, {}).get("fundingIntervalHours", 8)
    b = requests.get(f"{ASTER}/depth", params={"symbol": s, "limit": 1000}, timeout=20).json()
    side = lambda lv: [(float(px), float(sz)) for px, sz in lv]
    spread, dep, full = depth(side(b["bids"]), side(b["asks"]))
    return dict(vol=float(t["quoteVolume"]), oi=float(oi["openInterest"]) * float(p["markPrice"]),
                fund_h=float(p["lastFundingRate"]) / hours, spread=spread, depth=dep, full=full)

def lighter(coin):
    mid_ = COINS[coin]
    det = next(m for m in requests.get(f"{LIGHTER}/orderBookDetails", timeout=20).json()["order_book_details"]
               if m["market_id"] == mid_)
    now = int(time.time())
    f = requests.get(f"{LIGHTER}/fundings", params={"market_id": mid_, "resolution": "1h",
                     "start_timestamp": now - 3 * 3600, "end_timestamp": now, "count_back": 3}, timeout=20).json()["fundings"][-1]
    rate = float(f["rate"]) / 100 * (1 if f["direction"] == "long" else -1)   # % per hour, sign = who pays
    ob = requests.get(f"{LIGHTER}/orderBookOrders", params={"market_id": mid_, "limit": 250}, timeout=20).json()
    side = lambda lv: [(float(x["price"]), float(x["remaining_base_amount"])) for x in lv]
    spread, dep, full = depth(side(ob["bids"]), side(ob["asks"]))
    return dict(vol=float(det["daily_quote_token_volume"]), oi=float(det["open_interest_usd"]),
                fund_h=rate, spread=spread, depth=dep, full=full)

print("snapshot", datetime.now(timezone.utc).strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M UTC"))
for coin in COINS:
    for name, fn in [("Hyperliquid", hyperliquid), ("Aster", aster), ("Lighter", lighter)]:
        r = fn(coin)
        print(f"{coin:4} {name:11} vol24h ${r['vol']/1e6:8.1f}M  OI ${r['oi']/1e6:7.1f}M  "
              f"funding {r['fund_h']*100:+.4f}%/h ({r['fund_h']*24*365*100:+.1f}% APR)  "
              f"spread {r['spread']:.2f} bps  depth +/-0.1% ${r['depth']/1e6:.2f}M"
              + ("" if r["full"] else " (book truncated)"))

Add symbols to COINS (with their Lighter market id from orderBookDetails) or change BAND to measure depth at 0.5% or 1%.

Track Hyperliquid, Lighter and Aster in one place with Hyperfolio

If you split your trading across venues, checking three dashboards gets old fast. Hyperfolio is a free, read-only PWA: paste your addresses and see positions, PnL and funding for Hyperliquid alongside your AsterDEX and Lighter accounts, without connecting a wallet or sharing keys. See our multi-venue portfolio guide, the Lighter tracker guide and the AsterDEX tracker guide. If you trade on Hyperliquid, the referral code HYPERFOLIO gives you 4% off trading fees (more in our referral code guide).

FAQ

Is Lighter really free to trade?

On the default Standard account, regular perp and spot orders pay 0% maker and 0% taker. TWAP/advanced orders and RFQ pay 1 bp, and taker orders, cancels and modifications have 300 ms of latency. The faster Premium account pays fees (0.028% taker and 0.004% maker at zero staked LIT).

Which has lower fees, Hyperliquid or Aster?

At the base tier Aster is slightly cheaper: 0.04% taker and 0% maker against Hyperliquid's 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker. On a $10,000 market order opened and closed, that is $8.00 against $9.00, or $8.64 on Hyperliquid with the HYPERFOLIO code. Both venues lower fees for higher volume tiers.

Which perp DEX has the most open interest?

In our 3 November 2026 snapshot, Hyperliquid had the most open interest on BTC, ETH, SOL and HYPE among the three venues, for example $3.06B on BTC against $488M on Aster and $344M on Lighter.

Are funding rates the same on Hyperliquid, Lighter and Aster?

Often close but not identical. In our snapshot BTC funding was about 11% APR on all three, but SOL was negative on Hyperliquid and positive on the other two. Payment intervals also differ: hourly on Hyperliquid and Lighter, every 8 or 4 hours on Aster depending on the market.

Can I track all three in one app?

Yes. Hyperfolio shows Hyperliquid, AsterDEX and Lighter accounts in one read-only portfolio, so you can compare PnL and funding across venues without connecting a wallet.