⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.
Lighter vs Vest Markets (2026): Zero Fees vs Stock Hours
Both list US stock perps beside crypto, and both charge nothing in some cases. Lighter is a zero-knowledge rollup on Ethereum whose Standard accounts pay nothing on any market. Vest matches off-chain, prices risk through its zkRisk engine, keeps balances on Base, and charges by session: nothing on stocks in US hours, more overnight and at weekends.
Verdict
Lighter on cost, settlement and hours; Vest on its stock focus. Lighter Standard charges 0% on every market around the clock and settles through validity proofs to Ethereum. Vest charges nothing on US stocks in market hours and 0.01% to open or close crypto, plus zkRisk premia, runs non-crypto markets 24/5, and restored its whole ledger to a snapshot after a pricing bug in April 2026.
At a glance
| Lighter | Vest Markets | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | zk-rollup on Ethereum | Off-chain matching, zkRisk pricing, state on Base |
| Custody | Non-custodial (rollup) | Balances and positions in contracts on Base; one validator today |
| KYC | Not stated | No identity step in sign-up docs; Terms prohibit US, UK, China + |
| Base perp fees | 0% (Standard) / 0.0280% (Premium) / 0% (Standard) / 0.0040% (Premium) t/m | 0% stocks in US hours · 0.01% crypto / 0% stocks in US hours · 0.01% crypto t/m |
| Funding | 1h period · P2P | Continuous; hourly formula with a 5% APY interest term |
| Token | LIT · live WINNER | None named in the docs |
| Points programme | Unverified · Points Season 2 | Active · Vest Markets points (weekly, no end date) |
| Operating entity / access | US, Canada, UK among 14 barred (Terms) | Vest Exchange Inc. (Panama); prohibits US, UK, China + |
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/ , /vest/ , /vest/how-to-start/ , /vest/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/.
Vest Markets — Session-based fee per market plus zkRisk risk premia and funding; off-chain matching, state on Base. Base tier: 0% stocks in US hours · 0.01% crypto taker, 0% stocks in US hours · 0.01% crypto maker. Not a single maker/taker rate: stocks 0% from 4 AM to 8 PM EST on weekdays, 0.05% overnight, 0.10% at weekends; FX 0% on weekdays, 0.25% at weekends; ES and NQ 0%; crypto 0.01% to open or close. The public API showed a taker fee of 0 on 83 of 88 trading markets. Discounts: No volume tiers or token discount documented. zkRisk charges premia by each trade's marginal risk on top of the listed fee; non-crypto markets pause at weekends since 31 July 2026. Schedule verified 2026-09-30 on /vest/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 Vest Markets lists 84; 54 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.
- Vest Markets: None named in the docs. Points: Active — Vest Markets points (weekly, no end date); Distributed weekly on Wednesday for trading volume (currently boosted on equity markets), referred volume and Vest Liquidity Pool deposits; a one-time reward for connecting social accounts. Vest Exchange points were merged in.. Docs: points "will be used to determine rewards provided to users in the future", and "Vest Markets will publish additional information about rewards in the future". No token is named. The docs say there is "no firm end date to the points program" and publish no formula or conversion.
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
Zero commission at all hours and stronger settlement. Standard accounts pay nothing on every market, positions settle through validity proofs to Ethereum, and LIT is live.
Where Vest wins
A stock-first shelf. Vest lists US stocks, ETFs, CME-tracking index and energy perps and FX, with no trading fee on stocks during US sessions and zero liquidation penalties. The Hyperliquid vs Vest page covers its incident record.
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.
- Vest Markets: Whether settled trades are final — Vest restored its whole ledger to an earlier snapshot after the April 2026 pricing incident.
- Vest Markets: Maximum leverage — "up to 50x" in the docs against 1% initial margin ratios on nine markets.
- Vest Markets: What points convert to — no token or rewards are named.
Which to pick
For zero commission around the clock on a rollup settling to Ethereum, Lighter. For US stock and index perps in market hours, and after accepting cross margin only, a last-trade mark price and Vest's incident record, Vest. Both bar the United States; Vest also prohibits the United Kingdom and China. The Lighter review and the Vest review carry the detail.
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- Hyperliquid vs Lighter
- Hyperliquid vs Vest Markets
FAQ
Which is cheaper for stocks?
In US market hours, both charge nothing: Lighter Standard is 0% on every market and Vest charges no fee on stocks in US sessions. Outside those hours, Lighter stays at 0% while Vest charges a session fee.
Can I trade stocks at weekends?
On Lighter, its real-world-asset markets follow their own rules on the RWA markets page. On Vest, non-crypto markets pause at weekends.
Do they list the same markets?
The shared-markets count above comes from this site's coverage snapshot, which reads both venues' public market lists.
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