Binance: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 5/10

Proof-of-reserves: does it exist, who attests it, does it include liabilities (a PoR without liabilities is close to meaningless), how often. Insurance fund: size, is the address public, and has it ever actually paid out. Hack history — and above all whether users were made whole. Licences by jurisdiction, and the enforcement record behind them. Every claim here is sourced to a primary document: a regulator’s register, a court filing, or the venue’s own published proof.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 14th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 40% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Liability-inclusive via a Merkle tree and a zero-knowledge proof, with self-verification — and no named auditor since 2022. Then the part that matters: in January 2026 Binance announced it had been excluding platform-owned assets from the calculation, which had “resulted in the display of inflated reserve ratio”, and changed the display. A proof of reserves that had to be corrected for overstating reserves is not a proof you should lean on. SAFU — roughly $1bn, with a published on-chain address and a stated rule to top it back up. Unlike almost every other fund in this table, it has actually been used: the 2019 theft of 7,000 BTC was covered and users were made whole. That is rare, verifiable evidence a fund is real.

True cost of trading: 10/10

Measured by us, not read off a fee page. We walk the live order book and fill $1,000 / $10,000 / $100,000 of BTC/USDT, then add the venue’s published taker fee. That sum — fee + spread + realised slippage — is the effective cost. Separately: the markup on network withdrawal fees, and the hidden spread inside “convert” / “buy in one click” flows.

Scored 10 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 1st of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 16% weight that is 0.64 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Liquidity and execution: 10/10

Order-book depth within ±0.1% and ±0.5% of mid, measured from the live book. Uptime over 12 months from the status page. Behaviour under stress: were there outages on days the market moved more than 5%.

Scored 10 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 1st of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.44 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Assets and networks: 9/10

Number of pairs, adjusted for quality: the share of listings delisted within a year. Which networks are actually supported for deposit and withdrawal — not merely “supports USDT”.

Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 2nd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 9% weight that is 0.23 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

The widest asset and network coverage here, with the listing churn that comes with it

Fiat on/off ramp: 5/10

Which methods are actually available per country, their fees, and their limits per verification tier — read from the venue’s published terms and cited. Where a venue does not publish this, that opacity is itself the finding, and it scores accordingly.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 15th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.06 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

A published per-currency fee schedule with bank and card rails — but EU/EEA users have been restricted since 1 July 2026, which removes the rails that matter most to a large part of the readership.

KYC and access: 6/10

Verification tiers and their limits, what is genuinely usable without verification, and the country deny-list — from the venue’s published policy, cited. A venue that will not tell you your withdrawal ceiling before you sign up is marked down for it.

Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 14th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Mandatory; unverified accounts are withdraw-only. Tiers exist, but the limits are not stated up front. United States: binance.com blocks US residents. The US is served by Binance.US — a separate company with its own, thinner order book — which does not serve 16 jurisdictions including New York, Texas, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, Connecticut and Georgia. The cost we measured is the global book, not the US one. European Union: None — MiCA application withdrawn. Withdrew its Greek MiCA application on 24 June 2026 and suspended most services for EU residents from 1 July 2026. Sign-ups, spot orders, deposits and Earn are off; withdrawals remain open.

Product, API and docs: 6/10

API documentation quality, whether rate limits are documented, whether a public status page with uptime history exists, and the API response latency we measured ourselves while pulling the order book.

Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 10th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 5% weight that is 0.03 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 4.

Good API documentation with documented rate limits. We could find no public uptime or status history for the global exchange — for a venue this size, a conspicuous absence.