rekt.money fees are one of the first things people google before sizing up. fair instinct. the headline fee on any perp platform almost never tells the full story — it is the combination of opens, closes, spread, funding, and what gets charged on losers that determines whether a venue is actually cheap.
this post is a structural walk-through of how to read any perp arcade fee schedule, what to look for specifically on rekt.money, and where uponly.win lands as a cheaper alternative by design.
the five places fees actually come from on a perp
before you compare any two platforms, understand what categories of cost exist on a leveraged trade. there are five.
- open fee — paid the moment you enter the position
- close fee — paid the moment you exit
- spread mark-up — the difference between the public market price and the price the platform fills you at
- funding rate — paid (or earned) over time on open positions
- fees on losers — yes, some venues take a cut even when you exit at a loss
a platform can be "cheap" on the headline number and expensive everywhere else. when comparing rekt.money or any other arcade to uponly.win, look across all five.
how to read rekt.money's fee schedule fairly
we are not going to invent specific numbers for rekt.money. their published docs are the source of truth and you should read them yourself. what we can offer is a checklist for reading any arcade-perp fee schedule without getting fooled by presentation.
what to verify
- is there an open fee, and is it the same regardless of leverage?
- is there a close fee, and is it applied to both winners and losers?
- is there a spread mark-up vs the underlying market?
- what is the funding rate methodology, and who sets it?
- are there any fees specifically applied when you exit at a loss?
if you cannot answer all five of those questions from the public documentation, that is information. opacity is a fee.
uponly.win's fee structure, in plain english
we set ourselves up so the math is simple to explain.
- open fee — zero
- spread mark-up — zero
- fees on losing trades — zero
- small variable fee — only on net winnings
that is it. there is no scenario where a losing trade costs you more than your collateral and the underlying on-chain funding from the venue. there is no scenario where uponly.win earns a cent when you lose. we structurally cannot extract value from a losing trader. trades route to avantis on base, the market is the counterparty, and we are just the arcade layer in front of it.
why "no fees on losses" is the most important line
most people focus on open and close fees. those compress over time as competition heats up. the line that actually shifts the long-run math is whether the platform earns when you lose.
the conflict of interest baked into house models
when a platform earns on losing trades, every product decision can be tilted, consciously or not, toward setups where users lose more often. that does not mean every house-style platform is dishonest. it means the incentives point that direction.
why we cannot tilt anything
uponly.win's only revenue comes from a small cut of net winnings. our incentive is for traders to win and come back. when you get rekt, we make zero. when you rip a winner, we earn a small variable cut and you still go home with the bulk of it.
cheaper alternatives to rekt.money
the honest list of arcade-perps cheaper than rekt.money on a structural basis is short, because "cheap" has to include the cost of losing trades. uponly.win is built to be cheap on every axis at once.
- compare on open fee — uponly.win is zero
- compare on spread — uponly.win has no mark-up because we route to the on-chain venue
- compare on loser fees — uponly.win is zero
- compare on creator share — uponly.win pays 50% lifetime, which directly reduces effective cost for referred users via creator rebates
for a fuller side-by-side that includes structural fairness, see our rekt.money vs uponly.win comparison and our alternatives roundup.
a worked mental model
imagine ten trades, each a $100 collateral rip at high leverage. on a typical "everyone pays" structure, every entry and exit is taxed regardless of outcome. losers compound their losses with fees. winners give back a chunk.
on uponly.win, the same ten rips look different. losers pay zero to the platform. winners pay a small variable cut on their winnings only. the long-run effective fee rate on a frequent rip habit is lower because half your sessions — the losing ones — cost you nothing on top of the loss itself.
try the cheaper structure for yourself
best way to compare fee schedules is to run one rip on each platform and see what comes out of your wallet. try uponly — fund a wallet with a small amount of usdc on base, hit rip, watch the math. if it makes sense, we have a migration guide from rekt.money ready to go.
standard disclaimer: cheap fees do not save you from bad position sizing. perps at 75x–500x leverage are high-risk entertainment. fees are the last thing that will rekt you. leverage is the first.