Past incident: funding-index outage and chain rollback (resolved) — 2026-01-19. On 2026-01-19 a database-maintenance race condition zeroed Paradex’s funding indices, briefly pricing BTC at $0 and triggering mass liquidations; the site was offline for roughly six hours. Paradex rolled the chain back to block 1,604,710 and refunded about $650,000 to roughly 200 affected accounts. The venue has operated normally since — noted here as resolved context for anyone weighing its reliability, not a current outage. ( Paradex post-mortem )

⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.

Comparison · By · Updated 2026-10-07

Lighter vs Paradex (2026): Two Zero-Fee Headlines

Two venues, two zero-fee headlines, two different asterisks. Lighter's zero applies to its Standard accounts, with a paid Premium tier for traders who need lower latency. Paradex's zero applies to Retail orders, with a published Pro ladder for API flow. Both run weekly points programmes and both have live tokens. The differences are in what each zero excludes and what each venue shows the market.

Verdict

Equal on the headline, different on the exclusions. Lighter's exclusion is latency: pay nothing and accept the Standard tier's limits, or pay a published Premium rate. Paradex's exclusion is classification: Retail orders trade free, and API orders pay a published Pro ladder. Paradex adds hidden positions and an options surface; Lighter adds a public Ethereum rollup and a published points pool. Neither documents what its points convert to.

At a glance

Lighter versus Paradex, compared across key dimensions
Lighter Paradex
Architecture zk-rollup on Ethereum Starknet appchain
Custody Non-custodial (rollup) Self-custody (Starknet)
KYC Not stated None in Terms
Base perp fees 0% (Standard) / 0.0280% (Premium) / 0% (Standard) / 0.0040% (Premium) t/m 0% (retail) / 0.045% → 0.035% (Pro, by 14-day volume) / 0% (retail) / 0.003% (Pro) t/m
Token LIT · live $DIME · live (Pro taker fees payable in DIME at a flat 40% discount; fee-revenue buybacks)
Points programme Unverified · Points Season 2 Active · XP Season 3
Operating entity / access US, Canada, UK among 14 barred (Terms) US + Canada restricted

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/ , /compare/hyperliquid-vs-paradex/ , /guides/perp-dex-kyc/ , /paradex/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 rather than fees, except TWAP orders, which carry a 1 bp fee on Standard per the API docs; 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/.

Paradex — Zero-fee Retail orders (web app or interactive-token API); Pro orders (standard API) pay a flat maker fee and a 14-day-volume taker ladder. Base tier: 0% (retail) / 0.045% → 0.035% (Pro, by 14-day volume) taker, 0% (retail) / 0.003% (Pro) maker. The zeros describe RETAIL orders. Pro orders pay 0.003% maker and 0.045% taker at the base tier (floor 0.0175% after discounts) — use those for API flow. Discounts: Pro taker: pay fees in DIME for a flat 40% off; stake DIME for a further tiered discount up to 30%; floor 0.0175%. The headline zero covers Retail-classified orders only; an account that exceeds Retail rate limits switches to Pro behaviour and the ladder applies. Schedule verified 2026-09-10 on /paradex/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 2026-10-07, Lighter lists 209 perp markets and Paradex lists 66; 63 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

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

The paid taker rate is cheaper. Lighter's Premium taker rate (0.0280%) is below Paradex's base Pro taker rate (0.045%). On the maker side it runs the other way: Paradex's flat 0.003% Pro maker fee is below Lighter's 0.0040% Premium base, which only LIT-staking discounts bring level or lower. Both venues publish their paid tiers, and Lighter's funding period is stated in its docs.

Where Paradex wins

Product surface and privacy: perps, options and spot on one Starknet appchain, with positions hidden from the public book. Its token utility is live and documented, with fees payable in DIME at a flat 40% discount on Pro taker fees and buybacks from net revenue, and XP Season 3 has a published weekly pool and start date. On what XP becomes, its docs are as silent as Lighter's.

What this site could not verify

Which to pick

If you trade retail size and want privacy or options, Paradex offers both at zero fee. If you trade size through an API, both paid tiers are published: compare Lighter's Premium grid with Paradex's Pro ladder and DIME discounts on the fee pages. On points, both programmes are running on paper; Lighter's status is unverified in its own docs and Paradex's is live with no conversion statement, so neither is a reason to choose. See the Lighter review and the Paradex review for the detail behind each cell.

Related comparisons

FAQ

Are both really zero fee?

For the accounts each headline covers, yes: Lighter's Standard tier and Paradex's retail accounts. Lighter's Premium tier and Paradex's Pro tier are not zero; both paid tiers are published.

Do XP or Lighter points convert to a token?

Neither venue's docs say so. Paradex's DIME and Lighter's LIT are both live, but no points-to-token conversion is documented on either side.

Can I see Paradex positions on-chain?

No; hiding positions is a stated design choice. Lighter's book is public. Which you prefer is a matter of strategy, not a safety ranking.

Open Lighter → (opens in a new tab)

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