Perpetual Swaps vs Futures: Funding vs Basis, With Real Rates
Last Updated: September 15, 2026
Perpetual swaps vs futures comes down to how each contract charges for time: swaps charge funding every few hours, while dated futures build the cost into the price. At 11:52 UTC on September 15, 2026, Binance BTCUSDT funding was 0.009012% per 8 hours, about 9.9% a year, while Deribit's December 2026 bitcoin future traded at a 4.94% annualized premium.
Both instruments give leveraged long or short exposure without holding the coin, and leverage in futures trading works on the same margin principles for each. The perpetual swap started as a swap of interest payments: when BitMEX launched XBTUSD on May 13, 2016, longs and shorts exchanged interest each day based on the Bitfinex lending market. A dated future has a settlement date, and its price converges with spot as that date approaches. The rest follows from this one design choice: who pays for time, when, and how predictable that payment is. This guide compares the two with market data taken on the same morning, then prices a $50,000 bitcoin position both ways. For background, see what perpetual futures are and the EVEDEX crypto derivatives contract specs.
Perpetual Swaps vs Futures: How Each Contract Prices Time
| Criterion | Perpetual swaps | Dated futures | On EVEDEX (September 15, 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin and format | BitMEX launched XBTUSD, the first perpetual swap, on May 13, 2016, with up to 100x leverage | Standardized contracts with a set expiry; CME Group listed its first bitcoin futures in 2017 | 52 perpetual swaps on crypto, stocks, FX and commodities; no dated futures are listed |
| How time is priced | Funding: a rate applied to notional at fixed intervals and paid from one side to the other | Basis: the premium or discount to spot at entry, which shrinks to zero by expiry | Funding is calculated every 8 hours, and one-eighth is charged or credited each hour |
| Market snapshot, BTC | Binance funding 0.009012% and OKX 0.00842% per 8 hours, about 9.2% to 9.9% a year | Deribit December 2026 future 1.37% over the index, or 4.94% annualized over 101 days | BTC-USD fees are 0.015% maker and 0.045% taker, with up to 200x up to $50,000 notional |
| Cash flow while open | Funding moves money between accounts every interval and changes your margin balance | No funding transfers; profit and loss are marked to market until the contract expires | Cross margin only, so funding and profit or loss both hit the shared USDT balance |
| End of the position | Only when you close it or the exchange liquidates it; there is no settlement date | Settlement at expiry, at 08:00 UTC for Deribit bitcoin futures, unless closed or rolled earlier | Open until closed or liquidated; an ADL Protection Reserve of $500,000 runs since July 18, 2026 |
| Cost predictability | Low: the rate can change sign between periods, within caps such as ±0.375% at OKX | High for the chosen contract, because the premium is known on the day you enter | Budget a range of funding rather than one number, since rates are recalculated every 8 hours |
| Worked example: $50,000 BTC long to December 25, 2026 | At a constant 0.009012% per 8 hours, 302 funding periods cost about $1,363 | Buying at a 1.3653% premium costs about $683 as the price converges with spot | The same funding rate would be charged at about $0.56 per hour; taker fees are $22.50 per side |
Data as of September 15, 2026, 11:52 UTC. Funding: Binance and OKX. Futures prices, index and expiry times: Deribit. History: BitMEX and CME Group. EVEDEX fees and funding cadence: EVEDEX docs. The worked example holds both rates constant, which real markets do not.
How Funding Works in a Perpetual Swap
A perpetual swap has no date on which its price must meet spot, so the exchange creates a daily pull instead. The funding rate has two parts. The first is a premium measure: how far the swap's order book trades above or below a spot index, averaged over the interval. The second is an interest component. Binance and OKX both publish an interest rate of 0.01% per 8 hours for BTCUSDT, and Hyperliquid's documentation uses the same 0.01% per 8 hours, then clamps the gap between interest and premium to ±0.05%. When the premium is small, the rate settles near that 0.01%, which is why funding on calm days tends to hover around it.
The payment itself is simple: position notional times the rate. On September 15, 2026, a $50,000 BTCUSDT long on Binance paid $50,000 × 0.009012% = $4.51 for the 8-hour period, and a short of the same size received it. Leverage does not change the payment, but it changes its weight: at 10x, that $4.51 comes out of $5,000 of margin.
Intervals and caps are exchange rules, not market facts, so they differ by venue. Binance and OKX settle BTCUSDT every 8 hours, and OKX caps the rate at ±0.375% per period. Hyperliquid pays every hour. EVEDEX calculates the rate every 8 hours and spreads it over eight hourly charges. The dedicated guide to the perpetual swap covers the contract itself in more depth.
How a Dated Future Prices Time
A dated future carries the cost of time in its price. If the market expects to pay more for bitcoin delivered in December than today, the December contract trades above the index, and the gap is the basis. Because the contract settles against the index at expiry, the basis must shrink to zero by then. A buyer who holds to expiry gives up that premium if the spot price does not move.
To compare contracts with different lives, annualize the basis: divide the premium by the days remaining and multiply by 365. On September 15, 2026, Deribit's BTC-25DEC26 future traded at $77,942.78 against an index of $76,892.98, a premium of 1.3653% with 100.84 days left, or 4.94% a year. The March 2027 contract annualized to 4.84% and the June 2027 contract to 4.97%. Every Deribit bitcoin expiry traded above the index that morning, between about 4.3% and 5.1% annualized, so the curve was in mild contango.
Two practical points follow. The premium is locked for the contract you buy, which makes the cost of carry known in advance. And the exposure ends on a date: keeping it beyond December means selling the expiring contract and buying a later one, at whatever basis the market offers then.
Worked Example: $50,000 of BTC Exposure Until December 25, 2026
Assume a trader wants $50,000 of long bitcoin exposure from 11:52 UTC on September 15, 2026, until Deribit's December expiry at 08:00 UTC on December 25, 2026, 100.84 days later.
- Dated future. Buying BTC-25DEC26 at a 1.3653% premium costs $50,000 × 1.3653% = $682.65 over the period if spot ends where it started. The 0.035% taker fee listed in Deribit's API adds $17.50 on entry; any delivery fee is not included.
- Perpetual swap. At a constant 0.009012% per 8 hours, 302.5 funding periods cost $50,000 × 0.009012% × 302.5 = $1,363. Entering and exiting as taker at EVEDEX's 0.045% adds $22.50 per side, or $45.
- Break-even funding. The swap becomes cheaper than the future if funding averages less than 4.94% ÷ 1,095 = 0.0045% per 8 hours over the period.
On that morning the future was the cheaper way to hold bitcoin to a known date: roughly half the carry of the swap. That can reverse. OKX's BTCUSDT rate on the same morning was 0.00842%, and funding can turn negative, in which case shorts pay longs. A trader who expects funding to fall below the break-even level, or who may exit in days rather than months, can still prefer the swap. A trader with a fixed horizon who wants a known cost has a clear reason to use the dated contract. Both positions carry the same price risk, and at high leverage both can be liquidated long before any carry cost matters; leverage in futures trading explains that trade-off.
Choosing Between Perpetual Swaps and Futures
Run through these checks before picking a contract.
- Compare annualized rates, not raw numbers. Multiply the funding rate by the number of periods in a year (1,095 for 8-hour funding, 8,760 for hourly) and compare it with the future's annualized basis.
- Match the contract to your horizon. For a position with an end date, a future that expires near that date fixes the carry. For a trade that could last hours or months, the swap avoids rolling.
- Check the funding interval and cap. An hourly schedule, as on EVEDEX and Hyperliquid, spreads the same cost more evenly than three payments a day, but the total depends on the rate.
- Account for fees on every roll. Each roll of a dated future is two trades; a swap position needs only one trade to open and one to close.
- Know the settlement rules. A future closes at a settlement price you do not choose. A swap closes only when you act or when margin runs out.
- Confirm what the venue lists. Many exchanges list only perpetuals: on September 15, 2026, Hyperliquid showed 404 perpetual pairs and no dated futures, and EVEDEX lists none either.
Perpetual Swaps on EVEDEX
For a trader weighing funding against basis, EVEDEX offers only the funding side. Every one of its 52 public pairs is a perpetual swap, from BTC-USD to gold, oil, EUR/USD and US stocks, and the exchange sets each pair's funding rate once per 8-hour window, then charges or credits one-eighth of it every hour, so the cost of holding accrues hour by hour instead of in three larger payments a day. Trading costs are 0.015% for resting orders and 0.045% for orders that fill immediately, and cashback of up to 35% on your own trades reduces both. Matching happens off-chain and settlement on Arbitrum L2, with USDT posted as cross margin. Leverage is tiered: 200x exists only on BTC-USD, ETH-USD and SOL-USD and only up to $50,000 of notional, while XRP and the three commodity contracts stop at 100x. CoinGecko put open interest across the exchange at $678.6 million on September 15, 2026.
The trade-offs are concrete. With no dated futures, a known carry cannot be locked to a calendar date; there is also no spot market, no options, and a far shorter pair list than the largest exchanges carry. The specifications of each crypto derivatives contract and the basics of perpetual futures are covered on separate pages. Perpetual futures carry a high risk of loss.
