dYdX vs GMX in 2026: Costs Worked Out on a $25,000 Trade
Last Updated: September 15, 2026
dYdX vs GMX comes down to how you enter, exit and hold. As of September 15, 2026, a $25,000 ETH round trip costs $25 with market orders or $5 with limit orders on dYdX's base tier, and $20 to $30 on GMX for either order type. Holding for three days on GMX's larger side adds about $103 in borrow fees.
Both exchanges let you trade perpetual futures from a wallet without handing custody to a company, but they are built in opposite ways. dYdX runs an order book on its own blockchain, so your price depends on the bids and asks other traders post, and the crypto order types you choose decide whether you pay maker or taker fees. GMX has no order book: you trade against liquidity pools at oracle prices, and the pool charges fees for opening, closing and borrowing. Those designs make one exchange cheaper in some situations and more expensive in others. Instead of listing features, this page prices the same trades on both venues, adds EVEDEX as a third reference, then walks through three scenarios with calculations. For a broader field that includes Hyperliquid, see the three-way comparison on this blog. If posting collateral is new to you, start with our guide on how to margin trade crypto.
dYdX vs GMX vs EVEDEX: Cost of One $25,000 ETH Trade
All three rows price the same $25,000 ETH perpetual trade; if the contract itself is new to you, read what perpetual futures are first.
| Exchange | Execution model | Market-order round trip | Limit-order round trip | Cost of holding 3 days | Drawbacks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EVEDEX | Hybrid order book matched off-chain and settled on Arbitrum L2, with USDT margin | $22.50 at 0.045% taker, or $14.63 with the maximum 35% cashback | $7.50 at 0.015% maker, or $4.88 with the maximum cashback | Funding only, calculated every 8 hours and charged hourly; it can be paid or received | No spot or options, 52 pairs |
| dYdX | Order book maintained by validators on dYdX Chain, with USDC margin and 119 perpetual pairs | $25.00 at the 5.0 bps base taker fee below $1M monthly volume | $5.00 at the 1.0 bps base maker fee, the lowest in this table | Funding only; no borrow fee is charged on open positions | $44.2M open interest limits depth |
| GMX | Trades against GM pools and GLV vaults at Chainlink oracle prices on Arbitrum, Avalanche and MegaETH | $20.00 to $30.00 at a 0.04% or 0.06% position fee, plus a keeper network fee | $20.00 to $30.00, because the position fee does not change with order type | About $103 in borrow fees at 50% a year if you are on the larger side, plus funding | Price impact on closing can reach 1,000 bps in some markets, and only 15 markets trade on Arbitrum |
Data as of September 15, 2026. Round trip = $25,000 × fee rate × 2. Borrow cost = $25,000 × 50% × 3 ÷ 365, using the midpoint of the 45–55% range GMX documents for optimal utilization. Fees: dYdX, GMX and EVEDEX documentation. Open interest and pairs: CoinGecko derivatives.
Order Book vs Oracle Pool: What Changes for You
On dYdX, another trader always takes the other side. Market makers post bids and asks, and a market order walks the book until it is filled, so a large order in a thin market pays through wider prices. In return, you can rest a limit order at an exact price and pay only 1.0 basis point when it fills at the base tier. dYdX supports limit, market, stop and take-profit orders, and ETH-USD and BTC-USD allow up to 50x leverage according to its indexer API.
On GMX, the liquidity pool is the counterparty. Your order fills at the oracle price from Chainlink Data Streams, so there is no spread to cross, and GMX's documentation says this means liquidations happen at fair market prices rather than during momentary spread spikes. The pool protects itself in other ways: a position fee on both entry and exit, a borrow fee for the side with more open interest, funding between longs and shorts, and price impact when you close. GMX V2 supports market, limit, stop market, TWAP, take-profit and stop-loss orders, but a limit order only chooses the trigger price; it does not lower the fee.
Liquidity providers experience the difference too. GMX pays liquidity providers 63% of fees from trading, liquidations, borrowing and swaps on Arbitrum and Avalanche, and they absorb traders' profits and losses. On dYdX, market makers earn the spread and, above $100 million in monthly volume, maker rebates of 0.7 to 1.1 basis points. For the basics of posting collateral, read our guide on how to margin trade crypto.
Three Scenarios With Calculations
Scenario 1: the frequent limit trader. One hundred round trips of $2,000 a month means $400,000 in volume. With limit orders on both sides, dYdX costs $40 at 1.0 bps, EVEDEX $60 at 0.015% or $39 at the maximum cashback, and GMX $160 to $240, because the 0.04% or 0.06% position fee applies to every entry and exit. For this trader, dYdX is four to six times cheaper than GMX, and EVEDEX roughly three to four times cheaper.
Scenario 2: the month-long ETH holder. A $25,000 long held for 30 days pays trading fees once, so holding costs decide. If the position sits on GMX's larger side, borrow fees at 45% to 55% a year add $925 to $1,130 for the month. On dYdX or EVEDEX there is no borrow fee, only funding. As an illustration only, a funding rate of 0.01% every eight hours would cost $225 over 30 days; if the market leaned short, longs would receive funding instead. Check each venue's funding history before holding for weeks.
Scenario 3: the large exit. Closing a $250,000 position on GMX carries price impact, which the documentation caps between 50 and 1,000 basis points on the negative side depending on the market, so the worst case ranges from $1,250 to $25,000. On dYdX the cost depends on book depth at that moment, and with $44.2 million in open interest across all markets, a quarter-million order in a small market can move the price sharply. Splitting the exit into smaller orders reduces the impact on both venues, and GMX also offers TWAP orders that do this automatically. Our explainer on crypto order types covers how each order behaves.
Access, Safety and Track Record
Both exchanges restrict access. The dYdX Help Center states that its front end is not available in some countries and sanctioned territories, and wallets that break the rules move to close-only mode. GMX's current V2 contracts are separate from V1, whose GLP pool on Arbitrum was exploited on July 9, 2025, for about $42 million; GMX paused the affected functions and recovered the funds under a bounty agreement. dYdX's main risk is concentration of liquidity: its open interest is small next to the market leaders, which matters more than any fee difference for large traders.
How EVEDEX Compares on Cost
EVEDEX sits between the two models: an order book like dYdX, with maker and taker fees instead of GMX-style borrow fees, but with matching run off-chain and settlement on Arbitrum L2. Fees are 0.015% maker and 0.045% taker, and cashback of up to 35% on your own trades brings them to 0.00975% and 0.02925% at the maximum. Margin is posted in USDT with a minimum deposit of 6 USDT, and all positions use cross margin. Leverage goes up to 200x on BTC-USD, ETH-USD and SOL-USD, but only for positions up to $50,000 notional; gold, silver, oil and XRP allow 100x. Funding is calculated every eight hours and charged hourly. The 52 pairs include crypto, US stocks, commodities and FX, all tradable 24/7. For the contract basics, read what perpetual futures are. Perpetual futures carry a high risk of loss.
