Hello everyone, I believe currently a lot of newcomers are joining this subreddit, and especially for bitcoin & ETH.

I'm Henry, and I've traded 6 years on cryptocurrency market. I was mainly a spot trader for my first year, and for the 5 years, I mainly played on futures market. Now, I am working on a company that drives fee optimization solution on tradings. Every beginners, including me, will get into this feeling:"I want to buy bitcoin, but how can I buy it? and where can I buy it ?"

And the most easily found option for you will high likely to be "Coinbase" or "Robinhood". I've actually seen a lot people using these apps to buy a Bitcoin.

The simple and clear conclusion for this situation is, NEVER BUY ON THESE PLATFORMS

You might say, "it is just a fee, how much it would charge me? it will def not cost that much".

You are wrong. It can charge you up to 15% per each trade, and even it is the cheapest one on the above, you will get charged 24 Times higher fees than alternatives.

On this post, I'll break down the fee structure of those options above, and then give you the optimized solutions.

Coinbase (Basic Mode)

First lets talk about coinbase. I think all the intermediate users will know, the fee structure of coinbase is chaos itself, and booby trap for beginners.

This is because...
- Multiple Fee Layers: Coinbase has payment method fees, and transaction fees. And they are OVERLAPPED.

- Spreads: They includes the Spreads to Coinbase Basic users' transaction, which users cannot know the exact amount of spreads before the transaction completed.

- Multiple Modes: Coinbase has "Basic" and "Advanced" mode. You might think some interfaces and trading features might be the only difference, but surprisingly, two modes have different fee charge system. And the more amazing part is, it charges up to 10X more higher fees to basic users.

Now let's deeply dive into the Coinbase Basics' Fee structure. Below is the Payment method Fee table.

Currency	Payment Method	Fee	Explanation
ALL	Credit/Debit Card	~3.99%	Directly Buying Bitcoin with your Card.
USD	Bank Account/USD WAllet	~1.49%	Same, but with the bank account
USD	Wire Transfers	$10 incoming, $25 outgoing	Wire Transfer is one method of Bank Transfers
USD	ACH	N/A	Bank Transfer
USD	Wire	N/A	Bank Transfer
USD	SWIFT (UAE, HK, NZ, PH, KR, TW)	N/A	Bank Transfer
USD	FedWire	N/A	Bank Transfer
USD	CUBIX	N/A	Bank Transfer
EUR	SEPA	N/A	Bank Transfer
EUR	iDeal	N/A	Bank Transfer
EUR, GBP	Easy Bank Transfer	N/A	Bank Transfer
GBP	Faster Payments	N/A	Bank Transfer
CAD	Interac e-transfer	N/A	Bank Transfer
CAD	EFT bank transfer	N/A	Bank Transfer
BRL	Pix/Bank transfer	N/A	Bank Transfer
ARS	Bank Transfer	N/A	Bank Transfer
AUD	PayID, BSB	N/A	Bank Transfer
SGD	FAST SGD Account	N/A	Bank Transfer
SGD	USD Bank Account SWIFT	$25 + additional fee	Bank Transfer
USD	PayPal	2.5% estimated	USA only, unclear documentation
Netherlands, Italy, Spain, UK	3D Secure Card	N/A	Confusing fee structure

Disclaimer: For the N/A options, I could not find any of official documents of Coinbase Help Center. They only documented the method of payments, not about the fees. Unless you try to do the process by your app, it does not shows you the actual fees. But I am Korean so I'm not even available to try one of those options. In case, I cannot find out the fee structure of these options.

And the below table is Transaction Fee Table

Transaction Amount	Fee Amount	Percentage
$200	0.5% Spread	N/A I cannot understand what means 0.5% Spread is

So basically, if you buy a $11 of a Bitcoin on Coinbase basic, via your Creidit Card, then you will get charged with 17.54% of fees in ONE TRADE.

I personally think this kind of fee structure is disgusting, because most of the users who use Coinbase Basic is a Bitcoin Beginners, who don't even know about the mode change on Coinbase, and usually manage small amount of transactions.

TL;DR - NEVER use a Coinbase Basic to buy a Bitcoin

Robinhood

I've seen many many ppl using Robinhood as a Buy method for Bitcoin, and I actually 100% understand you. It is convenient, and the same app with you do the stock market tradings.

But the view of fee cost efficiency, it is NOT a good option for a Bitcoin buying option.

Thankfully, Robinhood has way way more simple structure on the fees, let's take a look on the table below.

Transaction Method	Fee	Explanation
Market Maker Routing	No commissions, But currency - Bitcoin Rate might differ with the global price	Market Maker Routing, is the method that Robinhood connects your order with "Market Maker" order. So it is basically the connecting service between external seller and buyer. Robinhood claims that they tries to find a best offer, but the best offer itself might be differ from the global exchanges' price.
Smart Exchange Routing	0.85% + 0.02%	Smart Exchange Routing is same routing service, but routes you with the Exchanges.
Debit card payment	0% - 1.5% + Spreads	Card payment buy option
Bank account transfer	0% - 1.5% + Spreads	Bank acount buy option
Robinhood Buying Power	$0	Buying power on Robinhood is the amount of funds you have available to execute a trade.

According to the table, it seems like Robinhood offers better than Coinbase Basic, and that's right ! It is way better ! But is it a good option, for overall ratings ? Let's look one by one on method types.

- If you can find a decent deal on MMR, get it ! Make the deal with that offer. But, realistically, usually this option may offer worse trade rates than the global real-time price. Also, if you try to get this kind of deal, you have to spend so much attention on MMR fee rate, even more than other important trades. So it is not recommended.

- Your card/bank has a 0% fees option for Robinhood? Use it! But, same as previous one, it is high likely that your card and bank does not offer those fee options, and mostly might charge you 1~1.5% fee. In case, this one is not recommended.

- For Robinhood Buying Power, if you already understand the concept of Robinhood Buying Power and you have sufficient amount of it, use it! it seems like nice deal. But if you are newcomer to both Robinhood and Bitcoin, it will take you so much time to understand the concept, so not recommended.

- For SER, yes it is a better deal than Coinbase 17.54% Fees, but most of the Crypto Exchanges' stanadrized fee are 0%~0.1% for Spot Trade. In case, it is 8X bigger than industry standard. So I don't recommend it neither.

TL;DR - Better than Coinbase Basic, but still cannot call it Good Deal

Then, Where and How should I Buy Bitcoin?

As you might feel, if you understand this concept, you can cut off your fees to literally ZERO. The concept is.. : Fee is a price for Convenience

They charge you a higher rates, spreads, fees, because they are making you more convenient, feel easy, simple. For example, if you just use bank transfer rather than Card payments on Coinbase, you can just directly save 3.99%.

If you have a will to spend 5 more minutes on Buying, you can easily cut the fee to 0.

I'll introduce you the most simple ways to cut off your fee.

Solution 1: Coinbase Advanced (0.6% total)

I mentioned several times, Coinbase has two modes, Basic & Advanced.

If you are using Basic mode currently, get into the app right now and change it into Advanced. There are many differences, but I'll only look on the fee difference. The fee for Advanced mode is wayyyy cheaper, and clean. I'll give you the Fee Table of Coinbase Advanced.

Disclaimer: It is all set as Spot Trading Fee for Advanced Mode, and no VIP Volume discount assumed because it is for beginners.

Pair Types	Fee	Explanation
Normal Pairs	0.6% maker, 1.2% taker	This is for the Normal Pairs, like Bitcoin, only support USD, EUR, GBP.
Stable Pairs(Stablecoin - Local Currency Pairs)	Mostly 0% maker, 0.001% taker	This pairs only support USD, EUR, GBP. Also, USDT-USD pair is 0.005% maker, 0.01% taker.

According to this fee structure, we can think about this route.
1. Deposit local currency (USD, EUR, GBP) via your free method like ACH.

2. Buy Bitcoin with maker order on Coinbase Advanced Spot Trade, with 0.6% maker fee.

This totally costs only 0.6% to you. Which is the lowest fee so far we looked through.

But, there will some users that don't want to spend this 0.6% too. And I am one of those person. So for us, I'll provide this solution.

Solution 2: Coinbase Advanced + Other Exchanges(MEXC or Binance) (0% total)

1. Deposit local currency (USD, EUR, GBP) via your free method like ACH. (0%)
2. Buy USDC with maker order on Coinbase Advanced Spot Trade. (0%)

3-1. MEXC way: Transfer it to MEXC, buy Bitcoin with Spot Trading, maker order. (0%)

3-2. Binance way: Transfer it to Binance, trade USDC to FDUSD on Spot, and FDUSD to Bitcoin with maker order on Spot (0%, 0%)

Through this way, you only spend a few more minutes, and cut your fee to 0%.

Endings

I always feel bad when newcomers lose money on unidentified fees, and making a question on reddit, because I was that newbie when I made a first step on Bitcoin, and I also paid so much amount of money on fees. It feels like watching the old me.

I'm always open to questions so you can pm me or email me or comment me. Thank you for reading this long guide.

For the other currency users, I acutally have a 40+ currencies' Zero Fee Optimization research, so make a inquiry on comment please if you need any help.

TL;DR -
Use Coinbase Advanced Mode for 0.6% fee
Use Coinbase Adv + Binance/MEXC route for 0% fee

**Currently I cannot see the comments.. 21-07-2025. idk why but if you got any questions you can pm me