Key takeaways
- A fee is charged on the value of every order, win or lose. Buying and selling are two orders, so the cost of a position is paid twice.
- At Backpack's tier 1 spot rates, a round trip costs 0.20% as a taker and 0.16% as a maker. The price has to move by at least that much, before spread and slippage, just for you to break even.
- Cost scales with turnover. In the illustration below, 20 full round trips in a month cost 4.00% of the amount committed each time, against 0.20% for one.
- Leverage makes the same fee weigh more against the money you put up, because it is charged on the whole position.
- Backpack's Dubai licence covers spot trading only. Perpetual futures are not available in the UAE.
For information only. Not investment advice. This guide explains how a charge works and does not tell you whether or how to trade. Read the risk disclosure first.
Why small percentages matter
A fee of 0.10% looks trivial. The reason it is not is that it is charged on the value of the order, not on your profit, and it is charged every time. A trade that makes nothing still pays it. A trade that loses money pays it on top of the loss. Because the cost is certain and the gain is not, fees act like a steady headwind on returns, often called fee drag: the reduction in your result caused by costs rather than by the market.
The guide to maker and taker fees explains which rate an order pays. This guide takes the next step and shows how those rates add up over many trades.
The break-even hurdle on every trade
Because you pay on the way in and on the way out, the price must move in your favour by the combined fee before you have recovered your costs. Using Backpack's published tier 1 spot rates, read on 6 October 2026 from its support article on trading fees, the hurdle is as follows. The full tier table is on the fee schedule.
| Case | Fee in | Fee out | Price move needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taker both ways | 0.10% | 0.10% | about 0.20% |
| Maker in, taker out | 0.08% | 0.10% | about 0.18% |
| Maker both ways | 0.08% | 0.08% | about 0.16% |
These are approximations: the exit fee is charged on the sale value, which differs slightly from the purchase value, and the figures leave out the spread and slippage, which add to the hurdle on a market order. The guide to slippage and the bid-ask spread shows how large those can be on a thin order book.
How frequency multiplies the cost
The next table is an illustration of arithmetic, not a forecast or a record of anyone's results. It assumes a trader commits 10,000.00 USD to each full round trip, pays the tier 1 taker rate on both orders, and adds the fees up without compounding. A round trip then costs 20.00 USD.
| Round trips | Fees paid | As a share of 10,000.00 USD |
|---|---|---|
| 1 in a month | 20.00 | 0.20% |
| 4 in a month | 80.00 | 0.80% |
| 20 in a month | 400.00 | 4.00% |
| 12 in a year | 240.00 | 2.40% |
| 240 in a year | 4,800.00 | 48.00% |
The last row is not a claim that anyone trades this way. It shows that a rate which looks negligible per order can exceed the size of any realistic gain once turnover is high. If a position gains a gross 5.00% and the round trip costs 0.20%, the trader keeps 4.80%. A trader who needs to repeat that twenty times pays the fees twenty times.
The fee is the only part of a trade's result that you know in advance. Everything else is uncertain.
Why leverage magnifies fee drag
A fee is charged on the full value of a position, not on the margin, which is the money you post to open it. On a leveraged product, margin is a fraction of the position, so the same fee is a larger share of your own money. As an illustration, take a 10,000.00 USD perpetual futures position opened with 1,000.00 USD of margin, which is 10 times leverage. At the tier 1 taker rate of 0.05%, the fee is 5.00 USD to open and 5.00 USD to close. That is 10.00 USD, or 1.00% of the margin, before funding payments between traders. The perpetual futures guide follows a leveraged position through margin, funding and liquidation, and spot versus derivatives trading compares the two. Perpetual futures are not available in the UAE, so this example explains the mechanics only.
The costs that never appear on the fee schedule
The trading fee is the visible charge. Others work beside it.
- Spread. A market order buys at the best ask and sells at the best bid, so you give up the gap between them each time.
- Slippage. A large order can fill at worse prices than the one you saw.
- Network fees. The blockchain charges these when you move crypto on or off a venue. See how to deposit and withdraw crypto safely.
- Conversion to dirhams. Turning crypto into AED adds its own charges; options for cashing out crypto to AED compares them.
The sources read for this guide state no figure for network fees, so none is assumed.
Ways to reduce fee drag
None of these guarantees a better result. They reduce one known cost, and each has a trade-off.
- Trade less often. The most direct lever, because cost scales with turnover.
- Use limit orders where timing allows. A resting limit order can earn the lower maker rate, but it may fill late, in part or not at all. The guide to market, limit and stop orders explains the fill behaviour.
- Know your tier. Backpack recalculates your tier hourly from 30-day volume, BP staked or assets held. Do not stake BP or raise your volume only to chase a lower rate: a saving measured in hundredths of a percent can be smaller than the loss if BP falls, or the cost of the extra trading.
What this means in the UAE
In Dubai, Backpack is provided by Trek Labs Ltd FZE, licensed by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for Exchange Services, spot trading only, licence no. VL/23/07/001. Backpack's licence disclosure says the licence does not cover futures or margin trading, so the spot rates are the relevant ones for UAE clients. No single licence covers every Backpack product in every country; the page on the companies behind Backpack sets out who provides what. If you are new to how an exchange works, start with what a crypto exchange is, and see the FAQ for common questions.
Four checks before you trade
- Read the current schedule. The source is marked as subject to change; confirm your tier on the fees page.
- Add both sides. A position costs a fee to open and another to close.
- Estimate the break-even. Include the spread, not just the fee.
- Count your trades. Multiply the round-trip cost by the number you expect to make, and ask whether the expected gain justifies it.
More explainers are in the Backpack Learn hub.
Frequently asked questions
How much do trading fees cost over a year?
It depends on how often you trade and at what rate. Each order pays a percentage of its value, so annual cost is roughly the rate multiplied by the total value traded. At the tier 1 taker rate of 0.10% on spot, 12 full round trips in a year cost about 2.4% of the amount committed each time, before spread and slippage.
Why do fees matter more for frequent traders?
Fees are charged on every order whether the trade makes or loses money. The more often you open and close positions, the more times the charge is applied, so the cost rises in proportion to turnover while any gain depends on price moves that you cannot control.
Do fees matter if I only buy and hold?
Much less. A buy-and-hold investor pays on the purchase and, eventually, the sale, so the fee is charged twice rather than many times. Network fees, spread and any charges for converting to dirhams still apply, so they are worth checking.
Is a lower fee always the cheaper trade?
No. A maker order pays a lower fee but may fill late, in part or not at all. A taker order pays more for certainty. The spread and slippage on a market order can also exceed the fee, so compare the total cost, not the percentage alone.
Are fees higher on perpetual futures?
The percentage rates on Backpack's schedule are lower than spot at tier 1: 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker. But the fee is charged on the full position, not the margin, so with leverage it is a larger share of the money you put up. Perpetual futures are not available in the UAE.
Where can I check the current Backpack fees?
The fees page lists the schedule, and Backpack's support article on trading fees is the primary source. The schedule is marked as subject to change, so confirm the rate for your tier before you trade.
Sources
- Backpack, Trading Fees, support site. Tier values as recorded on the Backpack fee schedule, read 6 October 2026. The article is marked "SUBJECT TO CHANGE". It was not re-read for this guide on 23 October 2026.
- Backpack, VARA License Information, support site, as read for the perpetual futures guide on 12 October 2026. It was not re-read for this guide.
- Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, public register of licences, the register cited in the footer for licence no. VL/23/07/001. The entry was not re-read for this guide.
All worked figures in this guide are arithmetic illustrations built from the rates above, not Backpack data on client activity.