A strong platform for active traders

Kraken launched in 2011, which in crypto years makes it practically ancient. That staying power means the exchange has weathered market downturns, regulatory shifts, and the collapse of competitors that once looked untouchable. What remains is a platform with a well-earned reputation for security, competitive fees, and enough depth to grow with you, whether you’re buying your first coin or placing your hundredth trade.

However, longevity alone doesn’t make Kraken the right fit for everyone. The platform charges higher beginner trading fees than competitors such as OKX, eToro, and Robinhood, and it offers no insurance for crypto holdings and no coverage from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for cash balances.

Here’s what we found after putting Kraken through its paces.

Kraken is a U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange that launched in San Francisco in 2011 and has grown into one of the most widely used crypto exchanges in the world, serving retail and institutional users across more than 190 countries. It operates across 48 U.S. states, with Maine and New York being the two exceptions.

The platform runs two distinct products under one login: the standard Kraken app for simple crypto buying and selling, and Kraken Pro, a full trading interface with a live order book, advanced charting, and a range of order types used by institutional traders. This allows you to stay within the same ecosystem as you learn.

Beyond crypto, you can trade more than 11,000 stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) directly on the platform, something very few dedicated crypto exchanges offer. Add futures, margin trading, and staking to that mix, and Kraken covers more ground than most competitors in a single account.

Since it began operating, Kraken has never lost customer funds to a security breach. In an industry where major platforms have collapsed or been compromised with little warning, that kind of track record is noteworthy.

Here’s what you get when you open a Kraken account.

Simple and advanced trading

Kraken supports trading on more than 200 cryptocurrencies. The standard Kraken app keeps this simple: select a coin, enter a dollar amount, and confirm. In our testing, the all-in cost came to 2% per trade, made up of a 1% spread and a 1% trading fee.

Kraken Pro unlocks a fuller set of tools from the same account. You get a live order book showing real-time buy and sell activity, integrated charting, and order types beyond basic market orders. A limit order, for example, lets you set the exact price you’re willing to pay rather than accepting whatever the market offers at that moment. Stop-loss, stop-limit, take-profit, and trailing stop orders are also available.

Recurring orders let you schedule automatic crypto purchases at set intervals. This lets you buy a fixed dollar amount of any coin on a set schedule, regardless of price. That approach, known as dollar-cost averaging, smooths out the impact of market swings without requiring you to constantly monitor prices.

Staking on Kraken returned to U.S. users in 2025 after a regulatory pause. This feature lets you earn passive income on crypto you already hold. When you stake a coin, you’re lending it to help verify transactions on its blockchain network, and in return, the network pays you a reward. You don’t need to do anything actively once it’s set up.

Kraken supports staking on more than 20 assets, including bitcoin, ethereum, solana, polkadot, cardano, and cosmos, with rates published directly on its staking page for each one. You can choose between flexible staking, which lets you unstake at any time, or bonded staking, which locks your coins for a period in exchange for higher returns.

Rewards pay out weekly after Kraken deducts a commission, so the rates listed on the staking page reflect what the network pays before that cut. Kraken charges 30% commission for flexible staking and 25% or lower for bonded staking, depending on your staked balance.

For example, solana showed a 3.37% reward for flexible staking and 6.85% for bonded when we checked. After Kraken’s 30% commission on flexible staking, your net flexible return comes to roughly 2.36%. After the 25% commission on bonded staking, the net bonded return is roughly 5.14%.

Stocks and ETFs

Kraken lets U.S. users trade more than 11,000 stocks and ETFs commission-free, putting it in a category very few dedicated crypto exchanges occupy. Through Kraken Pro, stock trading runs 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday, which is a wider window than the standard market hours most brokerages offer.

Your stock holdings on Kraken receive protection from the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) for up to $500,000, including up to $250,000 for cash in your brokerage portfolio. However, your crypto holdings and any cash balance outside the brokerage portfolio don’t carry the same government-backed protection.

Crypto futures and margin trading

Crypto futures let you speculate on a cryptocurrency’s price direction without buying it. You make a bet on whether the price will go up or down. Kraken offers leverage up to 50x on major cryptocurrencies, meaning a $100 deposit gives you the buying power of $5,000.

Margin trading works similarly but applies to buying and selling orders without involving futures contracts. When you trade on margin, Kraken lends you funds to trade more than your balance allows, up to 10x leverage.

In both cases, leverage cuts both ways. A 10% move in your favor on a 10x trade doubles your money. A 10% move against you wipes it out. That’s why these trading tactics work for experienced traders who understand these products.

Kraken+ is a subscription that costs $4.99 per month and waives the trading fee on up to $10,000 in monthly trades through the standard Kraken app. This applies to instant buys, sells, recurring orders, and conversions. It doesn’t apply to Kraken Pro trades, which use their own fee schedule.

The 1% spread still applies, so your all-in cost drops from about 2% to 1% per trade. That puts you in line with some of the lowest simple-mode fees available, matching OKX and eToro at 1% and just above Robinhood at 0.85%.

Simple and advanced mobile apps

The Kraken app covers the basics well: buying, selling, portfolio tracking, and account management. It holds 4.7 stars on the App Store and 4.5 stars on Google Play. If you want the full trading experience on your phone, the Kraken Pro app delivers that too, with the order book, charting tools, and advanced order types all accessible on mobile. It’s well rated in its own right, sitting at 4.7 on the App Store and 4.6 on Google Play.

We hand-tested about a dozen crypto platforms, and Kraken earned the top spot in our ranking with a 4.9/5 rating. Here’s where it pulls ahead of the competition.

Kraken has never lost customer funds to a security breach since it launched in 2011, and unlike many exchanges that make similar claims, Kraken has third-party audits to back it up.

Independent security firms have reviewed and certified its infrastructure, confirming it meets rigorous standards for how it protects user data and manages risk. The platform also stores the vast majority of customer assets in offline cold storage, held in secure facilities with 24/7 armed guard surveillance.

On top of that, Kraken publishes quarterly proof-of-reserves audits, conducted by The Network Firm, an independent registered CPA firm. The process uses a Merkle tree, a cryptographic structure that lets each user verify that Kraken actually holds their funds without exposing anyone else’s account details.

And while some platforms publish only the asset side, Kraken discloses both assets and client liabilities in every report to prove solvency. The most recent report, covering December 31, 2025, showed reserve ratios above 100% for all major assets.

Both the standard Kraken app and Kraken Pro display the full cost of a trade before you confirm it. On the standard app, you see the spread and trading fee broken out separately. On Kraken Pro, the fee is shown based on your current volume tier. You’re never surprised after the fact, which isn’t the case with every exchange we used.

Kraken Pro’s base rates of 0.25% for makers and 0.4% for takers put it among the most competitive advanced platforms. Maker orders, which sit in the order book waiting to be filled, typically cost less than taker orders, which execute immediately against existing orders.

These fees sit well below Coinbase Advanced, which starts at 0.6% and 1.2%, respectively. On a $10,000 maker trade, that’s $25 at Kraken versus $60 at Coinbase. OKX is cheaper at 0.08% maker and 0.10% taker, but Kraken still offers strong value for active traders who want competitive fees alongside a long security track record.

Fees drop further as your 30-day trading volume grows, reaching 0% for makers at the highest tier. Volume from the standard Instant Buy interface doesn’t count toward your Kraken Pro tier, so building those discounts requires trading through Pro directly.

Kraken Learn is a structured library of articles and videos organized by experience level, covering everything from basic blockchain concepts to advanced trading mechanics. For newer users working their way up to Kraken’s more advanced features, having a structured learning resource built into the platform makes the learning curve noticeably easier to manage.

Every platform has trade-offs, and Kraken’s are worth knowing before you commit.

The biggest gap in Kraken’s offering is the absence of any insurance layer. The exchange carries no FDIC coverage on cash balances and no crypto insurance against platform-level losses.

FDIC coverage, which is standard at Coinbase, eToro, and Gemini, protects your dollar balance up to $250,000 if the bank holding those funds fails. Coinbase and Gemini also carry crime insurance covering a portion of crypto holdings against theft or a security breach.

Kraken is transparent about this, and its security setup is genuinely strong. But if the absence of that safety net matters to you, Coinbase or Gemini might be better fits.

The standard Kraken app charges a 1% trading fee on top of a 1% spread, bringing the all-in cost to about 2% per trade. That’s not the worst rate among popular crypto platforms, but it’s meaningfully higher than OKX at a flat 1% spread, eToro at a flat 1% fee, and Robinhood at 0.85%.

On a $1,000 purchase, you pay $20 at Kraken, $10 at OKX or eToro, and $8.5 at Robinhood. The cost adds up for anyone buying frequently without switching to Kraken Pro.

Funding via debit card costs $0.25 plus 3.75% per transaction, which works out to about $38 on a $1,000 deposit before you’ve made a single trade. Bank transfers via Automated Clearing House (ACH), the standard U.S. electronic transfer method, are free and give you instant buying power so you can trade before the transfer fully settles. That makes the debit card fee hard to justify for most users.

Kraken doesn’t operate in Maine or New York. If you live in either state, the platform isn’t an option, regardless of how well it fits your needs. In that case, Coinbase and eToro are among the alternatives available to you.

What you pay on Kraken depends almost entirely on which interface you use, and the difference between the two builds up over time.

In our testing, the standard app applied a 1% trading fee plus a 1% spread. You see the full breakdown before you confirm, so the 2% all-in cost is transparent up front. That said, it’s on the higher end compared to most crypto platforms we used.

Kraken+ subscribers can bring that down to 1% by waiving the trading fee on up to $10,000 in monthly trades for $4.99 per month. The subscription pays for itself once you trade more than around $500 per month, since the 1% you save on that amount covers the subscription cost.

Kraken Pro uses a maker-taker fee structure where fees drop as your 30-day trading volume grows. Makers pay less because their activity adds liquidity to the market. Here’s how the schedule works at a few key levels:

The full schedule includes higher tiers that reach 0% maker and 0.05% taker fees for monthly volumes above $500 million.

Funding and withdrawal methods and fees

Kraken supports several ways to move money in and out. Here’s what each method costs.

Cash deposits

• ACH bank transfer: Free with instant buying power before the transfer settles

• Wire transfer: Free for most domestic and international transfers

• Debit card: $0.25 plus 3.75% per transaction

Cash withdrawals

• ACH bank transfer: Free

• Wire transfer: $4 to $13

Crypto deposits

Crypto withdrawals

Most crypto withdrawals carry a flat network fee that covers the cost of processing the transaction on the blockchain. Fees for the three most traded assets:

• Bitcoin: 0.00015 BTC per withdrawal

• Ethereum: 0.00016 ETH per withdrawal

• Solana: 0.005 SOL per withdrawal

Keep in mind that these fees shift with network conditions, so confirm the current fee on the withdrawal page before sending.

Kraken doesn’t suit every type of user, and three situations stand out where a different platform makes more sense: You live in Maine or New York, you want insurance coverage on your holdings, or the 2% beginner-mode cost is a deal breaker. Here are the better fits for each.

Coinbase is the most practical alternative for users in Maine or New York since it operates in all 50 states. It also covers cash balances with FDIC insurance and carries crime insurance on a portion of crypto holdings, filling two of the gaps that Kraken leaves open.

The trade-off is cost. Advanced Trade fees start at 0.6% for makers and 1.2% for takers, two to three times what Kraken Pro charges. But for first-time buyers, Coinbase’s onboarding is among the most guided and beginner-friendly of any exchange we tested.

eToro charges a flat 1% on every trade, with no additional fees, which immediately cuts the all-in cost in half compared to Kraken’s standard app. It offers FDIC coverage for cash balances, charges no fees for debit card deposits, and is available in most U.S. states except Nevada and Hawaii.

The platform also has a social investing layer that lets you follow and mirror the trades of more experienced users, which makes it a natural fit for beginners who want a less technical starting point.

Gemini covers cash balances with FDIC insurance and holds commercial crypto insurance for a portion of hot wallet holdings, making it one of the strong alternatives for people who put protection first. It operates in all 50 states and has never reported a breach resulting in customer fund losses.

Gemini ActiveTrader fees start at 0.6% for makers and 1.2% for takers, which is higher than Kraken Pro, but if coverage and availability are your main criteria, Gemini delivers on both.

Kraken’s minimum deposit varies by funding method. ACH transfers and domestic wire transfers start at $1, debit card deposits require at least $10, and international wire transfers require between $4 and $100, depending on the provider. Each cryptocurrency also carries its own minimum deposit. For example, bitcoin requires at least 0.0001 BTC, ethereum 0.004 ETH, and solana 0.01 SOL.

Yes. Kraken reports to the IRS and sends 1099 forms to eligible U.S. users, so any staking rewards or trading gains count as taxable income. Kraken has built-in tools to help you track your activity, and if you’re a Kraken+ subscriber, you also get access to Koinly, a dedicated crypto tax platform, at no extra cost.

In our hands-on testing, we opened an account, got verified in under 10 minutes, and were able to start trading the same day. Kraken’s automated verification usually completes within a few hours, though some accounts may take one to two business days if additional documents are needed.

Our Kraken review is based on hands-on testing and independent research across five categories.

• Fees and costs: We tested trades at multiple dollar amounts to calculate the true all-in cost, including spreads and any fees not clearly disclosed up front. Kraken’s beginner and advanced interfaces were tested separately, given the significant difference in their costs.

• User experience: We created an account, went through identity verification, and navigated both the standard app and Kraken Pro. We evaluated how easy it is to find key information, such as fee breakdowns, staking terms, and account settings, across both interfaces.

• Available assets and features: We evaluated Kraken’s coin selection, staking options, order types, and additional features, including recurring buys, stock trading, futures, margin trading, and the Kraken+ subscription.

• Security and regulatory compliance: We reviewed Kraken’s cold storage practices, proof of reserves program, insurance coverage, state availability, and history of security incidents and regulatory actions.

• Customer support and reputation: We contacted Kraken’s support team and evaluated response quality, available contact channels, and the platform’s overall operational history since 2011.

We scored each category independently with no input from or compensation by Kraken. Fees and security carry the most weight in our overall rating, reflecting what matters most to the average user.

Editorial disclaimer: The information on this page is for educational purposes and isn’t meant as investment advice. Cryptocurrencies are volatile assets, and past performance doesn’t indicate future results. Research any platform independently and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decision.