MEXC is our top pick among Bullish alternatives for traders outside the EEA, the United States and the United Kingdom, on one number.
Bullish's own fee schedule lists 67 withdrawable digital assets, against 1,633 that CoinGecko tracks on MEXC.
Bullish is cheaper per trade, and it is cheaper on far fewer things.
Key Takeaways
MEXC is our top pick among Bullish alternatives for retail traders outside the EEA, US and UK, and it wins on asset coverage rather than on price.
Bullish publishes the lowest base spot taker fee in this comparison at 0.5 basis points for individual accounts, and we are not disputing that.
Our count of Bullish's published withdrawal-fee table returns 67 assets, against 1,633 that CoinGecko tracked on MEXC on 2 September 2026.
Bullish caps perpetual and dated futures at 7x leverage, settled in USDC, per its own December 2023 launch announcement.
Bullish's Gibraltar terms limit customers in its ten Eligible U.S. States to BTC and ETH spot trading only.
Bullish Europe GmbH holds a BaFin MiCA licence and MEXC does not, so EEA readers should not treat MEXC as a compliant replacement.
This guide is published by MEXC Learn, so here is our position stated openly rather than buried at the end.
We think MEXC is the right destination for most people leaving Bullish, and we think the reason is narrow enough to state in a single line: the fee argument is one Bullish wins, and it does not decide anything.
Three numbers settle the comparison, and MEXC wins exactly one of them.
On assets the gap is not close: our count of Bullish's published withdrawal-fee table returns 67 assets, while CoinGecko tracked 1,633 on MEXC.
The two figures are counted differently, so read the gap as an order of magnitude rather than an exact multiple.
On maker fees, the two venues are identical at zero, so a limit-order strategy costs the same on either.
On taker fees, Bullish charges 0.5 basis points against MEXC's 0.0500%, and it wins that line by a factor of ten.
Only one of those three is a reason to choose a venue rather than a reason to argue about one.
Bullish is not a weak platform and this page is not going to pretend it is.
Its published fee schedule is the best in this comparison, its parent company files with the SEC, and its European entity holds an authorisation MEXC does not have.
A trader who only touches BTC, ETH and stablecoins, and who crosses the spread often, is better off staying exactly where they are.
Everything below is written for the other reader.
The problem is coverage, not cost.
People do not leave Bullish because it is expensive.
They leave because they went looking for a mid-cap token and it was not there, and every alternative they checked seemed to fix the asset list by tripling the fee bill.
What MEXC does differently.
MEXC runs its listing pipeline in the opposite direction from an institutional venue, where new and small-capitalisation assets are the reason the pipeline exists rather than an exception to it.
On cost it prices the maker leg at zero instead of shaving the taker leg to a fraction of a basis point, which produces a very different bill depending on how you actually trade.
The published numbers.
MEXC's official fee schedule sets spot trading at 0.0000% maker and 0.0500% taker, with the taker leg falling to 0.0400% when the MX deduction is enabled.
Futures run from 0.000% to 0.040% maker and 0.000% to 0.100% taker depending on tier and pair, and the BTCUSDT Special Rate is 0.000% maker and 0.020% taker.
Automated traders should note a separate rule: API futures trading is 0.060% maker and 0.080% taker with effect from 1 June 2026, and that schedule overrides web and app rates including promotional pricing.
CoinGecko tracked 1,633 listed assets on MEXC and scored the platform 9 out of 10 on its Trust Score with reserve data available as of 2 September 2026, and MEXC has published on-chain proof of reserves every month since February 2023, audited by Hacken. The calculation, run honestly.
Take a trader doing 500,000 USD a month in spot taker volume.
On Bullish's individual schedule for standard markets that costs 25 USD a month, or 300 USD a year.
On MEXC at 0.0500% the same flow costs 250 USD a month, or 3,000 USD a year, falling to 2,400 USD with the MX deduction applied.
Bullish wins that line by roughly 2,700 USD a year, and there is no reading of the two fee schedules that changes the answer.
Now run the same calculation on the assets you actually want.
Bullish's fee schedule names 67 withdrawable assets; CoinGecko tracks 1,633 on MEXC.
For any token in the gap between those two figures, Bullish's 0.5 basis point rate is not a saving of 225 USD a month, because the trade cannot be placed at all.
A fee you never pay on a position you never open is not a discount.
That is the whole argument, and it is why our pick does not change even though our platform loses the fee comparison outright.
The short asset list is not an oversight, and understanding why makes the rest of this comparison easier to read.
Clause 13.11 of the Bullish (GI) Limited exchange terms of service, last updated 23 June 2026, explains that compensation under the Gibraltar Investor Compensation Scheme is available only to retail or private investors, and that because the entity serves exclusively Professional Clients and Eligible Counterparties, no client is currently eligible to claim under that scheme.
Read that sentence twice if you hold an individual account there.
It does not say individuals cannot open accounts, because they plainly can, and Bullish publishes a separate Individual fee schedule for them.
It says the venue's client classification is professional, which is exactly why the product surface looks the way it does.
Everything a departing user complains about is downstream of that one line.
The asset list is short, in the pattern of an order book built for depth in a handful of markets rather than breadth across a thousand.
The leverage ceiling sits at 7x.
There is no staking, no copy trading and no launchpad.
Bullish has not published a rationale for each of those choices, but they are the configuration you would expect from a venue whose own contract classifies its clients as professional.
And Automated Market Making Instructions, the mechanism that distinguishes its order book from a standard one, can only be submitted by institutional customers under its published fee schedule.
None of this is a defect.
It is a design decision, and Bullish states the underlying classification in its own contract rather than hiding it.
This is the comparison that decides the question, and we could not find it on any of the pages currently ranking for this query.
The middle column describes the common configuration across the major retail exchanges in this article rather than any single one of them.
Dimension | Bullish | Typical retail exchange | MEXC |
Client classification in the terms | Professional Clients and Eligible Counterparties, per clause 13.11 | Retail clients | Retail clients |
Withdrawable assets | 67 named on the official fee schedule | Several hundred to over 1,000 | 1,633 tracked by CoinGecko |
Maximum futures leverage | 7x on BTC and ETH perpetuals, USDC-settled | 50x to 125x on major pairs | Up to 500x on select USDT-M pairs |
Liquidity provision by users | AMM Instructions, institutional customers only | Not offered | Not offered |
Staking and yield products | None | Standard | Flexible and fixed Earn products |
Copy trading | None | Common | Available |
New-listing access for individuals | Listings driven by institutional demand | Varies widely | Launchpad and Launchpool, plus a fast listing pipeline |
Support channel | Email and a named Relationship Manager for institutions | Live chat and ticketing | Support centre and ticketing |
Liability cap in the terms | Greater of three months of fees paid or 50 USD, per clause 30.4 | Varies by contract | Varies by contract |
Bullish column verified as of 2 September 2026 against the Bullish (GI) Limited exchange terms of service dated 23 June 2026 and the Bullish Help Center fee schedule. MEXC and retail-exchange columns verified against each platform's official fee schedule, help centre and terms.
These six cover the two distinct exits from Bullish: traders leaving for breadth and cost, and traders leaving for a regulated venue in a specific jurisdiction.
Platform | Base spot fees | Listed assets | Derivatives | Reserve disclosure | Retail availability note |
Bullish | 0 bps maker, 0.5 bps taker on standard markets for individual accounts | 67 withdrawable assets on its own fee schedule | Perpetual and dated futures to 7x, USDC-settled, plus BTC options | NYSE-listed parent with SEC reporting; full-reserve custody model per its terms | Ten Eligible U.S. States, BTC and ETH spot only; UK access limited to professional and high-net-worth investors |
MEXC | 0.0000% maker, 0.0500% taker; 0.0400% taker with MX deduction | 1,633 tracked by CoinGecko | USDT-M and coin-M futures, up to 500x on select pairs | Monthly proof of reserves audited by Hacken since February 2023; 9 out of 10 CoinGecko Trust Score | Not available in the US or Canada; restrictions apply in the UK, Singapore and other markets; not MiCA-authorised in the EEA |
OKX | 0.08% maker, 0.10% taker | Broad major and mid-cap coverage | Unified account margining spot, perpetuals and options together | Proof of reserves using zk-STARK cryptography; 10 out of 10 CoinGecko Trust Score | Operates a separate licensed US platform |
Bybit | 0.10% maker, 0.10% taker | Broad major and mid-cap coverage | Deep perpetuals book, 0.02% maker and 0.055% taker on futures | Reserve data available per CoinGecko | Not available in the US or the UK |
Kraken | 0.25% maker, 0.40% taker on Kraken Pro | More than 450 digital assets, plus over 11,000 US-listed equities and ETFs on its own figures | Futures at 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker | Reserve data available per CoinGecko; published proof of reserves | Licensed across the US, UK, EU, Canada and Australia |
Coinbase | 0.40% maker, 0.60% taker on Advanced at the entry tier | Curated listing policy, narrower than offshore venues | Regional derivatives products | Nasdaq-listed with SEC filings and third-party asset audits | Broad US availability; check state-level coverage before funding |
Gate | 0.20% maker, 0.20% taker | Very broad long-tail catalogue | Tiered futures schedule | Reserve data available per CoinGecko; 10 out of 10 Trust Score | US retail access runs through a separate limited entity |
Data verified as of 2 September 2026 against each platform's official fee schedule, help centre and terms, and against CoinGecko's exchange data. Bullish figures taken from its published fee schedule and its Gibraltar terms of service dated 23 June 2026. Base tiers shown, before token discounts or VIP levels; rates and availability vary by region and pair.
The 67 figure deserves one more look, because it is smaller than it appears.
On our reading of that list, about 16 entries are stablecoins or fiat-pegged tokens and about 6 are wrapped, staked or commodity tokens.
That leaves roughly 45 ordinary crypto assets, which is closer to what a trader is actually choosing from.
The straightest swap for a Bullish user whose complaint is the asset list rather than the price list.
Benefits:
Spot maker fees of 0.0000% match Bullish's zero maker rate, so a limit-order strategy costs the same on both venues.
CoinGecko tracked 1,633 listed assets on MEXC, against 67 in our count of Bullish's published withdrawal-fee table.
Monthly proof of reserves audited by an external firm, published continuously since February 2023.
Limitations:
The 0.0500% spot taker fee is ten times Bullish's individual standard-market rate, and that gap is real money at high taker volume.
MEXC is not available to residents of the United States or Canada, with restrictions in markets including the United Kingdom and Singapore.
MEXC does not hold MiCA authorisation and appears on ESMA's register of non-compliant entities, which makes it unsuitable for EEA readers leaving Bullish Europe.
The closest thing in this list to Bullish's unified-margin engineering, with a far wider asset shelf.
Benefits:
A unified trading account margins spot, perpetuals and options from one collateral pool, which is the structure institutional users leaving Bullish will recognise.
Base spot fees of 0.08% maker and 0.10% taker undercut the 0.10% retail standard on the maker leg.
Proof of reserves published using zk-STARK cryptography rather than a plain Merkle tree.
Limitations:
The derivatives destination for traders whose complaint about Bullish is the 7x ceiling.
Benefits:
Among the largest perpetual futures venues by reported volume, at 0.02% maker and 0.055% taker.
A full testnet and demo environment for strategy development before committing capital.
Limitations:
Not available in the United States or the United Kingdom.
The 2025 breach remains a legitimate counterargument on custody risk.
Spot listing breadth trails the listing-focused exchanges.
The pick for a Bullish user who valued the regulated posture more than the fee schedule.
Benefits:
Licences across the US, UK, EU, Canada and Australia, which is the widest Western footprint in this list.
More than 450 digital assets alongside over 11,000 US-listed equities and ETFs on the company's own figures.
Operating since 2011 with no customer-fund hack losses on record, per the company.
Limitations:
Kraken's 0.40% spot taker fee is eighty times Bullish's 0.5 basis point individual rate, against a 0.25% maker fee.
Fewer small-capitalisation and meme listings than offshore venues.
Instant-buy products carry meaningfully higher effective costs than the Pro interface.
The answer for US readers, and only for US readers, because licensing decides before fees do.
Benefits:
A Nasdaq-listed, SEC-reporting company with quarterly filings and third-party asset audits.
Broad US availability with institutional-grade custody used by spot-ETF issuers.
The cleanest onboarding path in this list for a first-time buyer.
Limitations:
Advanced base fees of 0.40% maker and 0.60% taker are the highest here.
A conservative listing policy means new tokens arrive later and in smaller numbers.
Derivatives access is delivered through regional products rather than one global venue.
The breadth play for traders who want a long-tail catalogue and will accept a higher spot rate for it.
Benefits:
Operating since 2013, which is thirteen years of continuous survival across multiple market cycles.
One of the broadest early-stage and niche token catalogues among established venues.
A 10 out of 10 CoinGecko Trust Score with published reserve data.
Limitations:
A flat 0.20% maker and taker spot rate is four times MEXC's taker fee.
US retail access runs only through a separate, more limited entity.
Interface density can overwhelm newer traders.
Leverage is the second most common reason people look for a Bullish alternative, and it is the one where the honest answer runs against our own product.
Bullish caps perpetual and dated futures at 7x, settled in USDC.
Read as a limitation, that is restrictive.
Read as a risk control, it is doing something for the user.
At 7x, a position survives roughly a 14% adverse move before margin is wiped out, before maintenance margin, funding and fees, which bring the real level closer.
At 100x that distance is about 1%, and at 500x it is about 0.2%, which is inside the daily range of most crypto assets.
MEXC offers up to 500x on select USDT-M pairs, and anyone treating that ceiling as a target rather than an option has misread the chart above.
If your reason for leaving Bullish is that 7x is too tight for a specific hedging structure, higher tiers exist on MEXC, Bybit and OKX.
If your reason is that 7x felt slow, the ceiling was not your problem.
A comparison that cannot name the other side's strengths is an advertisement, so here are Bullish's, stated the way its own users would state them.
The fee schedule is the best in this comparison, and it is not close.
An individual account pays 0 basis points maker and 0.5 basis points taker on standard spot markets.
Token markets pay a 1.5 basis point maker rebate against a 2 basis point taker fee, and perpetual and dated futures fall into the same Delta 1 category with the same rebate structure.
A trader running a market-making strategy on Bullish is paid to provide liquidity rather than charged for it.
The corporate disclosure is genuinely stronger than most of this list.
Only a handful of crypto venues, Bullish and Coinbase among them, can be checked against a public company filing.
The licensing footprint is real.
Bullish (GI) Limited holds a distributed ledger technology provider licence from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission under reference FSC1038FSA, and is registered as a money services business with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
The market structure is unusual and worth understanding.
Pairing a central limit order book with proprietary automated market making produces tight spreads in supported markets without relying on external liquidity providers, and the platform added a daily scheduled auction called the Bullish Closing Cross to give eligible markets a single reference price.
None of this is undone by a short asset list.
It simply answers a different question than the one most retail traders are asking.
Availability is where this comparison stops being about preference.
United States.
The Bullish Gibraltar terms of service define Eligible U.S. States as California, Colorado, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
The same document states that customers from Eligible U.S. States may access BTC and ETH spot trading services only.
That is ten states and two assets, with no derivatives and no wider token list.
US readers should also know that MEXC does not serve US residents at all, so nothing in this article is a recommendation to move US assets to MEXC.
If you are in the United States and Bullish's two-asset window is too narrow, the licensed shortlist is Coinbase, Kraken and the other platforms registered in your state, and you should verify state-level availability directly with each of them before funding anything.
United Kingdom.
Bullish access in the UK is limited to professional and high-net-worth investors rather than general retail.
MEXC applies restrictions in the UK as well, so UK readers should treat this page as background rather than a migration plan and use an FCA-registered platform.
The rest of the world.
Bullish said at its December 2021 public launch that the exchange was available in more than 40 jurisdictions across Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa and Latin America, and has since described the figure as more than 50.
MEXC's own restricted-jurisdiction list is the authority for where MEXC can be used, and readers should check the official restricted regions list before opening an account rather than relying on any comparison article, including this one.
This section will cost us readers, and it should.
Bullish Europe holds MiCAR authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider.
MEXC does not.
The MiCA transitional period expired across the EU on 1 July 2026, and ESMA's statement on the end of transitional periods is explicit that after that date any entity providing crypto-asset services to EU clients without a MiCA licence is in breach of EU law and must cease offering those services. For a reader in the EEA, moving from Bullish Europe to MEXC would be a move from an authorised provider to one that is not authorised.
We are not going to recommend that, and there is no version of the fee arithmetic that would make it a good idea.
If you are in the EEA and Bullish's asset list is too narrow for you, the correct next step is to check which venues appear as authorised in ESMA's interim MiCA register and choose among those. Within this comparison, Bullish Europe, Kraken, Coinbase, OKX and Gate all appear as MiCA-authorised crypto-asset service providers in the ESMA register, and MEXC does not.
Licensing changes weekly, so confirm any platform's current entry in the register before you move funds.
Step 1. Close positions and settle before you withdraw.
Bullish perpetual and dated futures settle in USDC, so unwind derivatives exposure first and let the settlement complete before touching the spot balance.
An unsettled loss with insufficient balance accrues a Delayed Settlement Fee under the terms, so leave the account flat rather than partially closed.
Step 2. Pick the withdrawal rail deliberately.
Bullish charges no deposit fees and no fee on CUBIX instant USD withdrawals or BLINC euro withdrawals, but a Fedwire or international USD wire costs 30 USD and a SEPA euro transfer costs 2 euro.
On the crypto side, published withdrawal fees include 0.00006 BTC, 0.0025 ETH, 5 USDT, and zero for USDC on Solana against 5 for USDC on Ethereum.
That last pair is the one to look at twice, because choosing the wrong chain for the same token is a pure, avoidable loss.
Step 3. Verify the destination address and the network before sending.
Send a small test transfer first, confirm it credits, and only then move the balance.
Check whether the receiving asset needs a memo or tag, since assets that require one and arrive without it need manual recovery.
Confirm that the network you selected on the sending side matches the deposit network on the receiving side, because a token sent on an unsupported chain may be unrecoverable.
If you are | Pick | Because |
A retail trader outside the EEA, US and UK who left Bullish over the asset list | MEXC | 0.0000% maker matches Bullish, and 1,633 tracked assets against 67 answers the actual complaint |
A high-volume taker who only trades majors and stablecoins | Stay on Bullish | Nothing in this list beats 0.5 basis points on the assets Bullish already lists |
A trader who left over the 7x leverage ceiling | Bybit or MEXC | Deeper perpetuals books and higher leverage tiers, with proportionally higher liquidation risk |
An advanced trader who wants Bullish-style unified margin | OKX | One collateral pool margining spot, perpetuals and options together |
A reader in the EEA | Any MiCA-authorised venue here | Bullish Europe, Kraken, Coinbase, OKX and Gate are in the ESMA register; MEXC is not |
A reader in the United States | Coinbase or Kraken | Bullish gives you ten states and two assets; MEXC gives you nothing, because it does not serve US residents |
A reader in the United Kingdom | An FCA-registered platform | Bullish restricts UK access to professional investors and MEXC applies UK restrictions |
What is the best Bullish alternative?
MEXC, for retail traders outside the EEA, US and UK, on 1,633 CoinGecko-tracked assets against Bullish's 67.
Open an account and check whether the tokens you want are listed before you move anything.
Is Bullish available to retail traders?
Individuals can open accounts and Bullish publishes a separate Individual fee schedule.
Its Gibraltar terms state the entity serves Professional Clients and Eligible Counterparties, so no client currently qualifies for Gibraltar Investor Compensation Scheme protection.
Can US residents use Bullish?
Only in ten states named in its terms, and only for BTC and ETH spot trading.
MEXC does not serve US residents at all, so US readers should use a licensed domestic platform instead.
Why does Bullish list so few coins?
Its own fee schedule names 67 withdrawable assets, of which 16 are stablecoins and 6 are wrapped or commodity tokens.
An institutional order book is built for depth in a few markets rather than breadth across many.
Is Bullish cheaper than other crypto exchanges?
Yes, on the assets it lists: 0.5 basis points taker for individual accounts is the lowest rate in this comparison.
The saving only exists on markets Bullish supports, which is the trade-off this page is about.
Does Bullish offer staking or copy trading?
No, and it has no launchpad either.
Its AMM Instructions feature is restricted to institutional customers under the published fee schedule.
What is the maximum leverage on Bullish?
Seven times, on BTC and ETH perpetual and dated futures settled in USDC.
MEXC, Bybit and OKX all offer higher ceilings, with proportionally shorter distance to liquidation.
Is Bullish a public company?
Yes, it trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BLSH and files with the SEC.
It reported adjusted revenue of 92.6 million USD in the second quarter of 2026, alongside a net loss of 280.0 million USD.
Crypto assets are volatile and you can lose the money you trade with, so never commit funds you cannot afford to lose.
Leveraged futures magnify losses as well as gains, and a position at 500x is liquidated by a price move roughly seventy times smaller than the same position at 7x.
Higher available leverage is a capital-efficiency feature and a risk multiplier at the same time, and it should be sized accordingly.
Fee schedules, asset lists and jurisdictional availability change without notice, and every figure here carries a retrieval date for that reason.
MEXC does not hold MiCA authorisation and appears on ESMA's register of non-compliant entities; readers in the EEA should choose a provider listed as authorised in ESMA's register.
MEXC does not serve residents of the United States or Canada and applies restrictions in other markets including the United Kingdom and Singapore.
This article is for information only and is not financial, legal or tax advice.
If the asset list was your reason for leaving, the comparison ends at one number: 67 against 1,633.
If the fee schedule was your reason for staying, Bullish is still the cheapest venue in this article and no amount of writing changes that.
Most people reading this fall into the first group, and for them the next step is straightforward.