OKX: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 6/10

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

Cryptographically strong and institutionally weak. Monthly, liability-inclusive, proven with zero-knowledge proofs over a Merkle commitment, with open-source code so you can verify your own balance. But no independent auditor is named anywhere: OKX checks OKX. A Security Fund with a live balance page, but no headline size and no on-chain address. We do not repeat the widely-quoted figure because it has no primary source. No exchange-wide breach of customer funds is documented.

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: 9/10

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 9 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 3rd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.33 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Assets and networks: 8/10

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 8 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 6th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 9% weight that is 0.14 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Broad coverage of majors without a long tail of thin listings

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.

Bank transfer, card, Apple Pay and P2P across several currencies, with fees shown at deposit time rather than in one table.

KYC and access: 5/10

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 5 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 17th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.08 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Mandatory — and the per-tier limits are not published anywhere we could find. You learn your ceiling after you are inside. United States: Served by OKX Inc., a separate US platform (FinCEN MSB, NMLS #1767779) licensed in 48 states plus DC and Puerto Rico — but not New York, Texas, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands or the US Virgin Islands. The global okx.com book we measured is not the one US users trade on. European Union: MiCA CASP — MFSA (Malta). OKX Europe Ltd, authorised January 2025, passported across the EEA.

Product, API and docs: 8/10

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 8 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 3rd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 5% weight that is 0.13 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 4.

Well-documented API with rate limits, and a public status page.