Lighter vs Hyperliquid: fees, funding and how to track both

Lighter and Hyperliquid are both decentralized perpetuals exchanges built around a real order book, and they compete for the same traders. The short version, checked against both venues’ documentation on 2 October 2026: Lighter charges standard accounts nothing to trade and makes up for it with a short delay on taker orders, while Hyperliquid charges 0.015% maker and 0.045% taker at its base tier with no delay. Both pay funding every hour, trader to trader. They differ most in what anyone can read from your address, and that decides how you track them.

How do Lighter and Hyperliquid compare at a glance?

What does each one cost to trade?

Lighter charges standard accounts no maker or taker fees, on perps and on spot. The price is time: taker orders, cancels and modifications on a standard account wait 300 milliseconds, while maker orders go through at once. Traders who need speed can opt into a Premium account, which cuts taker latency to 140 ms and charges 0.004% maker and 0.028% taker before staking discounts. A Plus account costs 0.005% each way and buys higher rate limits rather than speed. The full schedule is in Lighter fees explained.

Hyperliquid has no free tier. Its base perps tier charges 0.015% maker and 0.045% taker, the rate steps down with rolling 14-day volume (spot volume counts double), and staked HYPE takes another 5% to 40% off. Builder-deployed markets can run a growth mode in which protocol fees are cut by 90%.

In money: a $10,000 position opened and closed with market orders costs $0 in fees on a Lighter standard account and $9 at Hyperliquid’s base tier, before any discount. The gap matters most to frequent takers and least to traders who hold for days, for whom funding is the bigger number.

How does funding work on each?

Both venues settle funding every hour, directly between longs and shorts, with no cut for the exchange. Both start from the same interest component, 0.01% per eight hours, and add a premium that follows how far the perp trades from its index. The difference is the ceiling. Hyperliquid caps funding at 4% an hour; Lighter caps most markets at 4% per eight hours, which is 0.5% an hour. In a squeeze, funding on Hyperliquid can run much further before it stops.

What can anyone see from your address?

Hyperliquid is public by address: open positions, fills and funding history all come back from its info API without a signature. That is why Hyperliquid trackers need nothing but the wallet address. Lighter splits the account. Positions and the PnL chart are public by address, while funding and transfer history need authentication. For that, Lighter issues read-only tokens, which can read an account and cannot place orders or withdraw.

The privacy picture differs accordingly. Anyone who links your Hyperliquid address to you can read your whole trading history. On Lighter they see your open book, but not your funding or your transfers.

Which one should you use?

That depends on how you trade, and none of this is advice. Frequent takers save the most on a Lighter standard account, if a 300 ms delay does not hurt their entries. Traders who want no delay at all, or who already hold HYPE for the discount, tend to stay on Hyperliquid. Some keep an account on both and move size to wherever fees or funding favor them that week, which is exactly when tracking gets messy.

How do you track positions on both?

Each venue draws its own dashboard with its own PnL, and neither shows the other. To see total exposure and one number across both, put them in one tracker. In TrueHold, Hyperliquid connects by wallet address and Lighter through a read-only token made in the Lighter app; the Lighter guide shows how to make one. Both accounts then sit in one total with your exchange accounts and wallets, under one PnL definition.

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