Gate: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 4/10

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 4 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 16th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 40% weight that is 0.40 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

A Merkle-and-zk proof showing a 115% reserve ratio, with open-source verification — and no periodic third-party balance attestation behind it. The only external sign-off shown is a review of the verification code, which checks the machinery, not the money. Its former accounting attestor left the crypto business at the end of 2022 and no successor is named. A per-contract derivatives fund with no aggregate figure and no on-chain address — and Gate’s own documentation says it does not cover individual trading losses. It is not theft protection. The widely-quoted “$200m SAFU” has no primary source, so we do not repeat it.

True cost of trading: 6/10

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 6 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 14th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 16% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Liquidity and execution: 4/10

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 4 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 20th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.22 points below 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.

One of the widest catalogues in the test — the only real reason to be here

Fiat on/off ramp: 7/10

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 7 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 8th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.17 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Card, SEPA Instant, Apple and Google Pay, PIX and P2P through partner rails. Functional, though its own restricted-country list is unusually long.

KYC and access: 3/10

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 3 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 25th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.24 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

The worst disclosure in the table: no published tier names and no per-tier withdrawal limits anywhere we could find. United States: The global platform lists the US as restricted. A separate Gate US platform launched spot trading in August 2025; we could not source its current state coverage. European Union: MiCA CASP — MFSA (Malta). Served through the Gate Europe entity. Note the global platform separately restricts France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and Malta — EU users are routed to the licensed entity.

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.

Solid API documentation with explicit rate limits. No status page.