Perps funding rate
A funding rate is a periodic payment between long and short holders of a perpetual futures contract that keeps its price close to the underlying asset. When the contract trades above the spot price, longs pay shorts. When it trades below, shorts pay longs. It is charged on your full position size.
Why perps need funding
Perpetual contracts never expire, so there is no settlement date to pull their price back to the asset's spot price. dYdX's docs explain that funding payments provide the incentive instead. When the perp is too high, longs pay shorts, which encourages selling. When it is too low, shorts pay longs, which encourages buying.
How Hyperliquid calculates it
Hyperliquid's docs say funding is peer-to-peer and the exchange takes no fee on it. The rate combines a fixed interest component of 0.01% per 8 hours, which works out to 0.00125% per hour paid to shorts, with a premium based on the gap between the perp's price and the oracle spot price. The premium is sampled every 5 seconds and averaged over the hour.
Funding is paid every hour at one eighth of the computed 8-hour rate. It is capped at 4% per hour, which Hyperliquid notes is much less aggressive capping than at centralised exchanges. The payment equals position size times oracle price times the funding rate, so it is based on notional value, not your margin.
Other venues
dYdX also settles funding hourly, using a premium averaged from one-minute samples. Its docs say the default interest component is 0% for cross markets and 1 basis point per 8 hours for isolated markets. Formulas, intervals and caps differ between venues, so the same position can cost differently on each.
What it means before you trade
Funding is a holding cost or income that accrues while your position is open, separate from trading fees. With leverage it is charged on the whole notional, so a small hourly rate can be large relative to your margin over days. Check the current and recent funding on the market before opening, and include it in the cost of any trade you plan to hold.
Where this shows up
- Hyperliquid — Perps traders outside the US who want onchain order-book trading from their own wallet, with fees that drop by volume and HYPE staking.
- dYdX — Non-US, non-UK, non-Canadian traders who want an open-source, order-book perps venue with volume-tiered fees.
- Lighter — Non-US, non-UK retail perps traders who want zero trading fees and can accept slower taker execution than paid accounts.
- Aster — Non-US, non-UK traders who want zero maker fees on order-book perps, very high leverage modes, or privacy-shielded orders.
- Jupiter — Solana traders who want aggregated routing across DEXes with low or zero fees on major and stable pairs.
Sources
Last checked . Fees and terms change often; the venue's own page wins if it disagrees with ours.
- Funding (Hyperliquid docs) — checked 2026-10-16
- Funding (dYdX docs) — checked 2026-10-16