Phemex

Phemex Review – Deposits, Fees, Features & Safety

Phemex is a smaller no-kyc exchange with excellent set of features, multiple cheap direct deposit methods, and low trading fees. Our Phemex review will provide more details on deposit and withdrawal methods and costs. Then, we’ll explore different ways to trade and analyze trading fees. We’ll also do a comprehensive overview of top features, and take a closer look at safety and security factors.

Who is Phemex For?

• First time investors: Phemex is excellent for first-time Bitcoin buyers. Very cheap bank transfer deposits are available in multiple globally used currencies, and card deposits can be used for others. Alternatively, a selection of several 3rd party payment gateways ensures you can deposit fiat through dozens of different payment methods. Furthermore, the platform has a very beginner-friendly interface, plus many newbie-friendly features that make the platform very suitable for new investors.
• Casual traders: Phemex’s 500+ altcoins provides sufficiently varied investments for majority of traders. Casual investors can buy pretty much any mainstream crypto coin on the Spot market, and even earn passive income through staking. Users can also explore features such as demo trading or copytrading, letting them practice making money with crypto trading with little or no risk.
• Professional day traders: At its core, Phemex is a derivatives trading exchange, and provides an excellent user interface and features. Intuitive interface, low fees, educational resources and more are all there to help you succeed with trading. You can trade crypto on Margin or Futures markets, all with solid liquidity and volume.

Phemex is not one of the world’s most popular exchanges, but its wide range of features truly helps the platform cater to all types of traders and investors. It’s a great platform built for everyone.

Pros and Cons:

Top Reasons To Use Phemex:

1. Derivatives Trading: At its core, Phemex is a crypto derivatives trading exchange, offering a robust framework for users to engage in spot, contract, and margin trading with ease and precision.
2. User-Friendly Interface: The platform prides itself on its intuitive charting and wallet interface, designed to streamline the trading experience for users of all proficiency levels.
3. Low Fees and Deep Liquidity: Phemex sets itself apart with competitive fee structures and deep liquidity pools, ensuring optimal trading conditions for its diverse clientele.
4. No-KYC Policy: Upholding the ethos of decentralization, Phemex operates with a strict no-KYC (Know Your Customer) policy, prioritizing user privacy and security.
5. Educational Resources: Recognizing the importance of financial literacy, Phemex offers an extensive educational portal complete with guides, charts, and expert advice to empower traders on their journey to success.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Getting money on or off Phemex is simple. You can deposit local currency (fiat), or crypto from another exchange or wallet. When the time comes to cash out, you can also withdraw fiat directly to your bank account or bank cards, or withdraw crypto assets to another platform/wallet.

How to Deposit Local Currency to Phemex?

To deposit funds on Phemex you can use their direct bank transfers or Visa/Mastercard cards. Alternatively, you can use any of the ~6 integrated third party payment services. Or lastly, you can try using the exchange’s P2P market to buy crypto directly from other users.

To buy cryptocurrency on Phemex simply follow these steps:

1. Find “Buy Crypto” option in the main menu
2. Choose “Fiat Deposit” or “Credit/Debit Card” for lowest fees (direct-to-exchange payments)
   • Alternatively, choose “One-Click Buy/Sell” to see all payment methods including 3rd party gateways (best for comprehensive fee comparisons and additional payment methods)
3. Select your fiat currency in the dropdown menu, such as USD, EUR, PHP, NGN, etc.
4. Input the amount you wish to purchase (in selected currency), and press the “Buy” button.

No matter which menu option you choose, all fees and payment methods are displayed transparently on the bottom of each deposit page. On some exchanges, you need to pass KYC or dig deep into help center articles to find exact fees. Phemex will give you all the information up front, and you’ll know exactly what you’re getting.

Fiat Deposit & Withdrawal Methods

1. Bank transfers

The cheapest way to get fiat onto Phemex is to deposit through bank transfers. Phemex supports bank deposits via SWIFT, ACH, SEPA, FPS and PIX. Fees will depend on the amount you purchase as follows:

Purchase amount	Buy fee	Fiat Withdraw Fee
$50 – $499	2%	2% + $30 SWIFT / €2 SEPA /￡2 FPS
$500 – $9,999	1.5%	1.5% + $30 SWIFT / €2 SEPA /￡2 FPS
$10,000 – $49,999	1%	1% + $30 SWIFT / €2 SEPA /￡2 FPS
$50,000 – $99,999	0.5%	0.5%
$100,000 – $499,999	0.1%	0.1%
$500,000 – $100,000,000	0.08%	0.08%

Depending on your payment method, you can deposit USD, EUR, CHF, AUD, GBP, and JPY. Not all of the methods/currencies will be available for withdrawals, though. For example, you can deposit via PIX in Brazil, but you won’t be able to withdraw crypto as BRL through the same payment method.

Needless to say, fiat deposits and withdrawals will require KYC completion. Some payment methods may not appear until you submit your country/address. You can deposit and trade crypto without identity verification, but fiat services will require submitting your ID card.

2. Credit and debit cards

You can also simply use your Visa or Mastercard to deposit in 30+ local currencies. Fees start at 0.8% within EEA (European Economic Area). Outside EEA, fees are 2.8%. In UK and US, card deposit fees are 3.5%. Typically, most exchanges charge 3% or 3.5% deposit fees through cards, making Phemex one step ahead of the competition in most regions.

Fiat withdrawals are surprisingly also available via bank cards. This feature is usually only found on biggest exchanges like Binance or Gate.io, so we’re super pleased to see it on Phemex!

In our tests, the card fees seemed to be 4.3% for deposits and 3.3% for withdrawals. So in some cases, there might be some additional small fees charged for certain currencies or countries.

3. Third party payment gateways

These gateways are third-party payment services which have been integrated into Phemex for seamless purchases. When buying through the gateways, your funds will be deposited directly to Phemex.

Each of these services (Simplex, MoonPay, Mercuryo, etc.) has different fees, supported currencies, countries, and payment options. Using 3rd party gateways lets you buy crypto with Skrill, Neteller, Astropay, and other digital wallets or payment methods. Practically every local currency is supported. Biggest downside are the fees, typically between 3.5% and 5%.

You can scroll back up to Phemex fees section to view specific fees on each gateway broken down by payment method.

You can use 3rd party gateways without completing KYC on Phemex. However, the gateways will ask you to verify identity on their websites. Since Phemex doesn’t officially service customers from United States, potential users should avoid completing KYC on the exchange.

4. P2P Marketplace

In peer-to-peer trading, you can trade between crypto and fiat directly with other users on the platform in a safe manner. Unfortunately, at this time Phemex’s P2P market has very few traders. We found fewer than 10 traders and currencies in total, which makes this P2P market fairly unusable.

If you specifically need exchanges with P2P marketplaces, you can look at Binance, Bybit, OKX or Gate as the biggest ones.

Trading – How to Trade Crypto on Phemex?

• Convert feature lets you quickly swap between fiat, stablecoins and crypto with just a couple of clicks.
• Regular Spot trading is available for simple buying and selling of cryptocurrency assets.
• Margin trading with 5X leverage is available to increase profits.
• Futures trading with up to 100X leverage can be used to speculate on asset prices.
• You can also trade Pilot to invest into newly released coins. MemeX feature also lets you buy on-chain memecoins. Both of these are high-risk investments and not suitable for newbies.
• Copytrading, demo trading and trading bots are also available.

Below, we’ll detail the main ways to trade crypto on Phemex: Convert, Spot/Margin, Futures, and Copy Trading.

1. Convert

By using Convert (also called Crypto Converter in some parts of the website), you can quickly convert between ~30 assets with just a few clicks. For example, if you wish to sell your spot Bitcoin for USDC, this beginner-friendly conversion interface will make it very simple.

Beginner investors who mainly trade mainstream altcoins can simply trade through Convert. Be warned, a small spread (difference between quoted and current market price) will be charged as a fee, which is typically higher than regular Spot trading fee.

2. Spot Trading

Spot is the way when you want to own some Bitcoin, Ethereum, or invest into many other promising altcoins. The standard spot user interface will either be familiar already, or easy to learn for anyone. Plus, advanced order types and good customization truly make it a joy to trade on this exchange.

• Order types: Limit, market, conditional, basket order, iceberg, spot grid.
• Chart: TradingView
• Order Book and Recent Trades: Can be hidden!
• Layouts: Two pre-set layouts available, with buy/sell on left or right side.
• Customization: You can resize or move all panels.

Besides 500+ cryptocurrency assets, customers can also trade from a small selection of xStocks. These tokenized stocks are regulatory-compliant Solana SPL and ERC-20 blockchain assets representing the value of stocks.

3. Margin Trading

Margin trading is supported with 5X leverage, with auto-borrow and auto-repay. Limit, market and conditional orders can be placed. As margin trading is nearly the same as spot, the same UI applies.

4. Futures Trading

Perpetual futures trading can be USDT-margined or coin-margined, one way or hedged, and in either cross or isolated modes. Maximum leverage depends on asset traded: up to 100X for Bitcoin and Ethereum, 50X for biggest altcoins such as Solana, Sui or Uni, and 20X on most newly released coins.

The user interface (UI) is even more customizable on Futures compared to Spot, with several new options available. As for orders, on Futures you can use limit, market, conditional, trailing stop, scaled, basket, OCO, and Iceberg. There’s plenty of options to satisfy even high-demanding traders.

Futures Grid and Futures Martingale trading bots are also available for experienced traders. A rarity among crypto exchanges is Signal Trading integration via TradingView, letting you open or close positions based on your TV indicators and strategies.

5. Copy Trading

Phemex has over a thousand lead traders in its Copytrading feature, giving you many choices on who to follow and copy trades from. Most of the lead traders we looked at weren’t worth copying, but we did notice a few with very interesting statistics and profits. But compared to other big copytrading platforms, Phemex overall doesn’t appear to have a large number of profitable traders.

Sadly, Phemex doesn’t make it particularly easy to find profitable leaders. There’s no advanced filtering, and you can only sort the list of traders by their total assets, profit and loss, monthly ROI (return on investment), or monthly profit and loss (P&L).

A unique feature on Phemex is a list of top on-chain traders from GMX, a decentralized exchange. However, at the time of our review none of the traders seemed to be active recently. Otherwise, this sounds like a very promising feature to explore.

6. Trading Bots

For automated trading, Phemex isn’t the greatest platform. The only trade bots available are Spot Grid, Futures Grid, and Futures Martingale. We won’t go over the details of each bot, as these are best used by experienced traders anyway. What we will talk about instead is the Bot Marketplace.

Beginners who wish to dabble into automated trading can find plenty of pre-made trading bots in the marketplace, and use them for free. This can be a good way to find already profitable trading bots. Then, you can either copy their settings, or use it as a template to create your own.

Trading Fees – Is Phemex Cheap For Trading?

• Spot trading fees are set to 0.1% no matter the order type. Whenever you a buy or sell, you will pay 0.1% of the total transaction amount in fees. Simplistically, buying $1,000 worth of Bitcoin will cost $1.
• Futures trading fees start at 0.01% (minimum or maker fee), and go up to 0.06% (maximum or taker fee). How much you’ll pay depends on your order type. For example, opening a $1,000 position will cost $0.10 for a maker order, or $0.60 for a taker order.

Compared to other exchanges, Phemex is one of the cheapest ones:

• On Spot, the fees are cheaper than industry average (0.20%).
• On Futures, 0.01% maker fees are considered very cheap, while 0.06% taker are industry average.

By having PT (exchange’s native token) in your spot wallet, you can use it to pay for trading fees for an easy 20% discount on Spot and 10% discount on Futures. High-volume traders can also receive discounted fees through the VIP program. For details, check the “Crypto trading fees” tab under Phemex fees above.

Highlighted Features

There’s more to this exchange than meets the eye. Here are some features we specifically want to highlight!

Earn

The Earn section lets you earn passive income with spot coins held on the exchange. You can choose either Flexible or Fixed staking duration. In Flexible, you can trade or withdraw your coins at any time and keep the earnings accumulated. In Fixed, you’ll “lock” your funds for 7-14 days, and won’t be able to use the coins before the time expires.

At this time, you can stake nearly 30 assets. Main ones include Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, USDC, XRP, Cardano, Solana, Aptos, Sui, Polkadot, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and others. The yearly yields (APY) are quite competitive, as we’re seeing similar numbers on other CEXs with Earn features. Customers holding Spot assets on Phemex should definitely check Earn for an easy portfolio boost.

Demo Trading & Subaccounts

If you’re only starting with crypto, having a professional-grade platform where you can practice without risk is critical. With Phemex’s Mock Trading, you can have the exact same UI and tools as regular trading, but there’s no risk of losing actual funds. You will start with $105,000 in funds, and can claim more every day.

Similarly, high-risk traders can also create up to 20 sub-accounts to isolate assets. If you engage in high leverage futures trading or simply want to track particular trading strategies separately, you can use subaccounts from your account menu.

TradingView Integration

Not many exchanges in the industry can brag about full TradingView (TV) integration, but Phemex can. Put simply, you can execute trades on Phemex directly on TV’s charts, without even having to visit the exchange.

TradingView integration and trading can be done securely, because Phemex is a verified broker on the platform. If you have your own indicators or scripts on TV, you can even automatically open or close positions. For users who enjoy TV’s comprehensive charting tools, the ability to trade directly on TradingView’s charts is a big deal.

Other features:

• Launchpool: By staking PT (native token), USDT, or launchpool-specific coins, you can earn additional tokens with no risk. Unfortunately, Launchpools on Phemex are very rare, which makes this feature very inconsistent for earnings.
• Launchpad: Launchpads allow you to invest early into upcoming crypto projects. However, last token launch on this platform happened in 2022, so don’t hold your breath for access. Instead, you can look into Pilot or MeMeX features.
• Pilot: In Pilot, you can trade futures contracts for newly released tokens, typically memecoins. These are very risky investments and not suitable for beginners, so caution is advised.
• MemeX: MemeX lets you buy on-chain assets on Solana, Base, Binance Chain, TON or other networks directly with your Spot balances. By investing into Pump.fun or other on-chain memecoins you can potentially get very high returns, which of course doesn’t come without risks. But, it does come with simplified trading compared to dealing with decentralized wallets, gas fees, or contracts.
• Crypto Loans: Experienced investors can borrow USDT, USDC, BTC or other tokens at competitive rates through Phemex Lending Protocol. With crypto loans you can receive instant access to additional trading capital and increase your positions with yearly interest even below 5%.
• Learn & Earn: By watching videos and taking quick quizzes, you can earn a few USDT in spot crypto. It won’t make you rich, but you can earn about ~$4 for just a few minutes of your time, and use the funds in any way you like.
• Tax Reporting: You can download your transaction history and easily export it to CoinTracking or Koinly, two popular crypto tax reporting services. This makes paying crypto takes simpler and quicker, and you don’t need to do any manual work.

Security – Is Phemex a Safe Exchange?

Phemex was established in 2019, and is currently headquartered in Singapore. Under the leadership of its current CEO Federico Variola, the company grew to over 200 employees and services more than 5 million users (according to their Linkedin).

Below we’ll take a closer look into some main safety and security factors and explain the hot question: is Phemex safe for trading?

• Funds security: The exchange uses cold wallets with multi-signature for customer asset storage. Exchange doesn’t publish any other details relating to their security protocols.
• Proof of Reserves: Merkle tree Proof of Reserves are published to ensure we can transparently and securely verify that all deposits are accounted for. In previous reports, all assets were 110% – 120% over-collateralized.
• Bug bounty: No official bug bounty programs exist, but exchange’s security page mentions rewards for reporting security issues and bugs.
• Previous hacks: About $70 million was stolen from hot wallets in January 2025, but no customers lost funds.
• Licenses and registrations: Registered as a Money Services Business (MSB) in Colorado, United States. Licenses in other countries include Canada, Turkey, and Lithuania (source: company Linkedin page).
• Account security: 2FA is mandatory, and supports email, Google Authenticator, and Passkeys. To bolster account safety and prevent unauthorized use, platform also has anti-phishing codes, withdrawal address whitelist, new address withdrawal lock, custom daily withdraw limits, and device management.
• 3rd party scores: CoinGecko rates Phemex with a 7/10 score as the world’s #62 exchange.
• Customer support: Available 24/7 in multiple languages.

In general, we don’t consider Phemex to be the safest exchange, and there are bigger and more reliable platforms for safer funds storage. There’s very few regulatory approvals, but that’s expected for platforms with optional identity verification.

On the other hand, there’s no evidence to suggest Phemex is unsafe, scam, or unreliable either. There’s one hack in recent history which raises some questions about their security practices, but no customers lost money in the incident.

Phemex is a legit crypto exchange and not a scam. That being said no platform is 100% safe, so follow our crypto exchange safety tips to keep your coins secure. Phemex supports high leverage, so there’s no reason to keep your entire portfolio on the platform’s wallets.

Conclusion – Is Phemex a Good Exchange?

Overall, Phemex is a very good small to medium-sized exchange catering to both beginner investors and experienced traders. Cheap and convenient fiat deposits with an intuitive and powerful trading interface makes this platform excellent for everyone, including first time buyers. Experienced traders will find solid liquidity and volume on Futures market, plus a plethora of tools such as trading bots, margin trading and more.

When we compare all features and aspects, it’s obvious that Phemex is quickly growing and catching up to larger exchanges in the market. Phemex is a fantastic choice for traders who need a privacy-focused exchange with optional KYC, but with powerful trading features.