Lighter fees explained: Standard, Plus and Premium accounts

Lighter charges no maker or taker fees on standard accounts, for perps and spot alike (checked against Lighter’s documentation on 2 October 2026). The zero is real, but it is paid for in time: taker orders and cancels on a standard account wait 300 milliseconds. Traders who want faster execution or higher rate limits opt into a Premium or a Plus account, and those pay fees. Here is what each tier costs and what it changes in your PnL.

What does each Lighter account type cost?

On a standard account, maker orders go through with no delay; only taker orders, cancels and modifications wait. On Premium, cancels and post-only orders carry no added latency at all. A Plus account keeps the 300 ms taker delay and trades it for rate limits, which is why it suits automated strategies more than fast hands. A standard account can open up to four sub-accounts, and sub-accounts cannot be deleted.

Why is Lighter free for standard accounts?

Lighter describes itself as a zero-fee trading environment: fees come from the accounts that opt into speed or throughput, not from everyone. According to the same documentation, the protocol uses trading fee revenue to buy back its token, LIT, through daily time-weighted orders. The latency on standard accounts is what keeps the tiers apart: it is the one thing a Premium account pays to remove.

How do LIT staking discounts work?

Premium fees fall as you stake LIT. The schedule starts with no discount at zero stake, reaches 10% at 10,000 LIT and tops out at 30% for 500,000 LIT, which brings Premium to 0.0028% maker and 0.0196% taker. Stake is counted per Ethereum address across the main account and its sub-accounts, so they all share one tier. Traders who do not want to stake the full amount can buy LIT Fee Credits for a set period instead, and the proceeds go to stakers. Unstaking LIT takes three days.

Which account type fits which trader?

For most people placing a handful of trades a day, the standard account is the obvious choice: the fees are zero, and a 300 ms delay rarely moves a manual entry. The sums change for traders who take liquidity often in fast markets, where 300 ms of slippage can cost more than a 0.028% taker fee; that is the case Premium is built for. Plus is for automated strategies that send many requests and care about rate limits more than milliseconds. None of this is advice: the right tier depends on your own order flow, and the account type can be switched in the Lighter app or through its API.

What does this change in your PnL?

On a standard account a round trip costs nothing in fees, so realized PnL is the price move plus or minus funding. On Premium or Plus, every fill carries a fee on both sides, which one dashboard may net into PnL and another may show as a separate line; perp PnL explained untangles the four numbers. For scale, a $10,000 position opened and closed with market orders costs $0 on a Lighter standard account, $5.60 on Premium before discounts, and $9 at Hyperliquid’s base tier; Lighter vs Hyperliquid compares the two venues in full.

How to track Lighter PnL with funding

Lighter shows open positions and the PnL chart by address, but funding history needs authentication. TrueHold connects Lighter with a read-only token, a key that can read the account and cannot trade or withdraw, so positions, PnL and funding sit in one total with your Hyperliquid account, exchanges and wallets. The Lighter tracking guide shows how to make the token, and the Lighter page what TrueHold reads with it.

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