Kraken: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 9/10

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 9 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 1st of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 40% weight that is 1.60 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

The benchmark. Its proof of reserves includes total client liabilities — Kraken’s own position is that “anything less isn’t a full proof of reserves” — it is attested by a named accounting firm, it runs quarterly, and every client gets a personal Merkle proof to check their own balance is inside it. Latest snapshot: 31 March 2026. None, and it says so plainly: crypto exchanges do not qualify for deposit insurance, and Kraken publishes no user-protection fund. We prefer that to a fund that exists only in marketing — but an absence is still an absence. Set against it: no hack of client crypto has ever been documented in its history.

True cost of trading: 5/10

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 5 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 20th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 16% weight that is 0.16 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Liquidity and execution: 6/10

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 6 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 12th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Assets and networks: 6/10

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 6 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 15th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 9% weight that is 0.04 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

A deliberately conservative listing policy — fewer assets than rivals, which for most people is a feature

Fiat on/off ramp: 10/10

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 10 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 1st of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.49 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

The best in the table. ACH, domestic wire and SWIFT documented as free on the USD side, free SEPA on the EUR side, plus GBP, CAD, AUD and CHF — with the fees actually published.

KYC and access: 8/10

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 8 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 2nd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.16 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Clear levels with published limits, and no pretence of an anonymous tier. United States: Served nationally except Maine and New York, with product-level limits in several other states. No separate US brand. European Union: MiCA CASP — Central Bank of Ireland. Payward Europe Solutions Ltd, passported across the EEA.

Product, API and docs: 9/10

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 9 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 1st of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 5% weight that is 0.17 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 4.

The best-documented product here: per-product API rate limits, and a status page publishing uptime and API response history.