⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.
Lighter vs Derive (2026): Zero-Fee Perps vs Options
Both settle on Ethereum with zero-knowledge proofs, but they serve different traders. Lighter is a perp-first rollup whose Standard accounts pay nothing. Derive is built for options: European options, portfolio margin and RFQ discounts for spreads, with a small perp book beside them.
Verdict
For perps, Lighter; for options, Derive. Lighter Standard charges 0% maker and 0% taker on a far larger perp shelf. Derive charges perps 0.03% plus $0.01 as a taker and 0.01% as a maker on 15 markets at up to 15.15x, but adds options with portfolio margin. Its docs disagree on the liquidation fee and on funding caps.
At a glance
| Lighter | Derive | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | zk-rollup on Ethereum | Off-chain order book + RFQ · ZK-proven batches settled on Ethereum L1 |
| Custody | Non-custodial (rollup) | Ethereum contracts; withdrawals pay out on batch verification; L1 escape hatch |
| KYC | Not stated | No identity step for trading in the docs read; some vaults may require KYC |
| Base perp fees | 0% (Standard) / 0.0280% (Premium) / 0% (Standard) / 0.0040% (Premium) t/m WINNER | 0.03% + $0.01 per order / 0.01% t/m |
| Funding | 1h period · P2P | Hourly; per-market caps (sources differ) |
| Token | LIT · live | DRV · live (collateral in every risk universe; staking lowers fee tiers) |
| Points programme | Unverified · Points Season 2 | None documented |
| Operating entity / access | US, Canada, UK among 14 barred (Terms) | Lyra Technologies Corp (app) and Derive DAO (protocol), Panama law; excludes US persons, Australian tax residents, Ontario |
facts verified · each venue's official docs Every cell restates a claim on one of this site's pages: /compare/hyperliquid-vs-lighter/ , /lighter/fees/ , /eu/lighter/ , /derive/ , /derive/how-to-start/ , /derive/fees/ , /airdrops/ .
Fees
Lighter — Order-book; zero-fee Standard accounts, paid Premium tier for lower latency, Plus tier for higher rate limits. Base tier: 0% (Standard) / 0.0280% (Premium) taker, 0% (Standard) / 0.0040% (Premium) maker. Numerics reflect Standard accounts (zero-fee); Premium trades 0.0040%/0.0280% with a LIT-staking discount grid. Discounts: LIT staking reduces Premium rates on a published grid. Standard’s trade-off is latency (300ms taker) and API rate limits, not hidden fees or position caps; LIT is live (staking discounts the Premium grid) and the points program remains a separate, conversion-undocumented track. Schedule verified 2026-09-16 on /lighter/fees/.
Derive — Order-book maker/taker on perps with a per-order taker base fee; options-first venue, ZK-proven settlement on Ethereum L1. Base tier: 0.03% + $0.01 per order taker, 0.01% maker. Numerics are the perp percentage rates; takers also pay a $0.01 base fee per order. The public instruments API carries 0.0001 / 0.0003 / base 0.01 on all 15 perps. Discounts: Lower tiers for more volume or staked DRV, shown in the app rather than the docs; RFQ multi-leg trades get up to 100% off cheaper legs. Options fees differ ($0.5 + min(0.03% notional, 12.5% premium) taker); the docs give the liquidation fee as both 10% and 2%, and funding caps differ between pages and the API. Schedule verified 2026-10-05 on /derive/fees/.
Base-tier rates answer one narrow question — what a small taker order costs on day one. Your maker/taker mix, volume tier and holding period decide the real number; the fee comparison lays all 20 venues side by side and the execution-cost tool adds live slippage on top.
Markets they share
In this site's market join, snapshot 2026-10-05, Lighter lists 210 perp markets and Derive lists 15; 14 appear on both. The market index shows every asset with the venues that list it and each venue's published leverage, and the join is refreshed weekly by a fail-closed pipeline. Breadth is not depth: a listing says nothing about how much size a book absorbs, which the execution-cost tool measures live where a venue publishes its order book.
Token and points
- Lighter: LIT · live. Points: Unverified — Points Season 2; Retail track: 200,000 points/week, distributed Fridays for Wednesday – Tuesday activity. The docs do not state what points redeem for, and no points-to-LIT conversion is documented. LIT is live and bought back from fee revenue. The market-makers page says "Points Season 2 ended on December 26th 2025"; the retail page and the overview still describe weekly Season 2 distribution and have not been updated with an end date. The docs do not say whether the retail track continues, so the status stays unverified until they do.
- Derive: DRV · live (collateral in every risk universe; staking lowers fee tiers). Points: None documented . The v3 developer docs (llms.txt index read in full) describe no points season. The Institutional Trading Rewards Program pays market makers "up to $500K USDC and 1M DRV per 28-day epoch, allocated by score, volume, and stDRV holdings". Only the v3 developer docs were read; retail campaigns, if any, would appear in the app.
Both rows are restated from the points & airdrop tracker, which is re-read against each venue's docs on a 45-day cadence and never prices a point.
Where Lighter wins
Perps at zero commission and a much longer list. Standard accounts pay nothing on every market, and LIT is live. Derive, by contrast, splits its markets into four separately margined risk universes that never net against each other.
Where Derive wins
Options. Derive lists European options to 400 days with portfolio margin and up to 100% fee discounts on the cheaper legs of multi-leg RFQ trades, and publishes a leverage cap for every perp. The Derive fees page has the detail.
What this site could not verify
- Lighter: KYC — no statement either way in the docs this site verified.
- Lighter: Whether Points Season 2 is still running: the market-makers page says it ended on 2025-12-26, the retail page has not been updated.
- Lighter: What points redeem for — no points-to-LIT conversion is documented.
- Derive: The liquidation fee — 10% on the fees page, 2% of the liquidatable fraction on the liquidation page.
- Derive: Funding caps — the funding page, the parameter page and the API disagree.
- Derive: A retail points programme — none in the developer docs read.
Which to pick
For perps, Lighter. For options or option-hedged books, Derive. Both bar the United States; Derive also excludes Australian tax residents and Ontario. The Lighter review and the Derive review carry the detail.
Related comparisons
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- Lighter vs edgeX
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- Lighter vs Extended
- Lighter vs Pacifica
- Lighter vs GRVT
- Lighter vs Variational
- Lighter vs ApeX Omni
- Lighter vs SoDEX
- Lighter vs Veranta
- Lighter vs Nado
- Lighter vs Vest Markets
- Hyperliquid vs Lighter
- Hyperliquid vs Derive
FAQ
Do both settle on Ethereum?
Yes. Lighter is a rollup posting validity proofs to Ethereum; Derive proves each batch and verifies it on Ethereum L1.
Which is cheaper for perps?
Lighter Standard, at 0% on both sides, against Derive's 0.03% plus $0.01 taker and 0.01% maker.
Do they list the same perps?
The shared-markets count above comes from this site's coverage snapshot; Derive lists 15 perps, so the overlap is small by construction.
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