Phemex vs KuCoin 2024: Compared & Tested !!

Phemex and KuCoin are one of the best exchanges out there for crypto trading, but when it comes to choosing the best among them, I know it gets complicated. But don’t worry, I am here to do the work for you.

I will be comparing them in detail for you guys so that you can choose the best that would fit your trading requirements. Let’s start with some background information about the two.

Phemex vs KuCoin: Introduction

Phemex

It is a cryptocurrency exchange based in Singapore, launched in November 2019, offering zero fees crypto trading. They currently have more than 5,000,000 users with more than 30 liquidity providers. Phemex has gained tremendous popularity among traders in a relatively less amount of time.

Phemex also provides a free demo amount for its users with up to a $100 welcome bonus, giving beginners an excellent opportunity to experiment and learn new trading skills.

KuCoin

It is a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange founded in the year 2019. Initially, it only offered spot trading, but two years later, in 2021, it started offering margin, futures trading and leveraged tokens for trading.

KuCoin has more than USD 800 Billion in total trading volume; they also boast that they have more than 20 global communities. 

 

Phemex vs KuCoin: Supported Cryptocurrencies

When it comes to choosing a crypto trading platform it is very important to consider what crypto assets are readily available on the platform. So, let’s compare Phemex and KuCoin on this basis. 

• Phemex

There are currently more than 230 crypto trading pairs compiling all the famous ones like BTC, ETH, BCH, XRP, LINK, LTC, etc., available on the platform for spot trading.

• KuCoin

KuCoin, on the other hand, offers more than 600 cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, BCH, XRP, etc.

Verdict: It is clear that KuCoin has many more cryptocurrencies supported on the platform, so KuCoin is the winner in this segment.

 

Phemex vs KuCoin: Product Offerings

Both the exchanges offer a variety of products for their traders; let’s discuss all of them so that you are more aware of these platforms.

Phemex

• Over-the-counter trading: Phemex offers institutional-grade services through its OTC offering by lowering fees the larger the transaction. It outsources its fiat wire transfers to purchase e-currencies via Legend Trading. Legend Trading in itself is a very secure and trustworthy payment gateway. 
• Spot Trading: Currently, only full premium and premium trial users can spot trade on Phemex with zero fees. Standard users have to pay 0.1% as fees.
• Derivatives Trading: Phemex offers derivatives like multiple perpetual contracts with leverage up to 100x. This allows you to amplify your profits by 100 times. The contracts on Phemex have no end date.

• Leverage Trading: Phemex allows you to open leveraged positions with over 40 crypto pairings, including BTC/USD and ETH/USD. 

KuCoin

• Spot Trading: KuCoin supports spot trading in around 500 cryptocurrencies currently. You can trade cryptocurrencies settled in USDT, BTC, KCS, TRX and ETH as per your preference.
• Margin Trading: With dual margin trading modes, Cross Margin is where all the assets in the margin account are used as collateral to improve capital utilization and prevent liquidation. In comparison, Isolated Margin is when the isolated margin trading pair has its own independent isolated margin account. Cross margin currently supports up to 5x leverage and isolated margin up to 10x leverage.
• Derivatives Trading: KuCoin Futures is a derivative trading platform with more than 20 million traders, which is growing rapidly. KuCoin offers perpetual, delivery, inverse and linear contracts.
• Perpetual Contracts: They don’t have a settlement time. Users can hold perpetual contracts until they are closed or forced to liquidate due to insufficient funds.
• Delivery Contracts: They come with a definite settlement time. The two parties to the contract can settle at a determined time, the delivery date, and deliver at a price agreed in the contract.

• Inverse Contracts: They are coin margined contracts where in if a trader would like to trade BTC, ETH, XRP or DOT contracts. The underlying cryptocurrency must be used as the margin to trade the respective contract, and the price falls non-linearly with revenue. 
• Linear Contracts: USDT- margined contract where the underlying prices rise and fall linearly with revenue. In linear contracts, USDT is used for trading and settlements, meaning that as long as you hold USDT, you can directly perform contract transactions with multiple mainstream currencies.
• Leveraged Tokens: KuCoin offers leverage trading that can be traded with up to 3x long/short leverage. Leveraged tokens don’t require any collateral and are comparatively less risky.
• KuCoin P2P: KuCoin also has a peer-to-peer service that allows trading cryptos using numerous fiat payment methods such as PayPal.
• Lending Platform: Through its lending platform KuCoin allows users to lend cryptocurrencies to other users and earn an interest rate. The lender can fill the loan amount and daily interest rate, ranging from 0 to 0.2%.

The default lend terms selection is 28 days; however, it can be 14 days and seven days.

Verdict: Phemex and KuCoin provide similar kinds of products in the market; hence it’s a tie between them.

Phemex vs KuCoin: Order types

Phemex and KuCoin are quite similar platforms providing a variety of order types; let’s discuss them one by one.

Phemex

• Market Order: When traders want their order to be filled immediately at the next available price, they can be of two types, buy market order and sell market order.

• Limit Order: In this type of order, the trader can specify a price, and the order will not be filled until it can be done at that cost or better. They can also be of both types, sell and buy.

• Stop Order: These trades help protect investments rather than simply buying and selling. Stop orders can be used both for buying and selling assets. They are of the following types:

• Buy-Stop Orders: Here, an investor can set an activation price to buy once an asset has reached the value that is affordable to them or is most profitable.

• Sell-Stop Orders: Here, an investor will stake an activation price that will sell off their assets as soon as they fall beneath a specific value.

• Stop market: This is a stop order combined with a market order. It works like a market order: it sells or buys at the next available opportunity.

The difference is that the market order will not be activated until the activation price is reached.

• Stop limit: In this order, a limit order will be triggered once the activation price has been reached. Thus, after surpassing the activation price, the transaction will be initiated, and the assets will be sold or bought when they reach the limit price or better.
• Trailing Stop: With this stop order, an investor does not set an activation price but instead sets a percentage or amount that will follow or trail just below/ above the market value.

KuCoin

• Limit Order
• Market Order
• Stop-Limit/Stop-Market

There are also some advanced order types like

• Iceberg Order: It is typically a single large order divided into smaller limit orders to hide the actual order quantity.

• Post-Only: When you select post-only, the order will not execute immediately against the market, thus ensuring a maker fee. If in case it crosses the market, it will be cancelled instead.

• Time in Force: There are two times in force options (GTC, IOC) for limit orders on KuCoin Futures, and an order is set as GTC by default.

The order will remain effective in GTC until it is cancelled or filled. And in IOC, the order will be fully or partially completed immediately at a better price, and any parts unfilled will be cancelled.

Verdict: Both Phemex and KuCoin are pretty similar in this segment, but KuCoin provides some advanced order types as well, thereby making it a winner. 

 

Phemex vs KuCoin: Liquidation Mechanisms

When a trader’s position loses nearly all the initial margin and cannot maintain the minimum requirement to keep their positions open, it will be liquidated to prevent further losses. Let’s see how is mechanism carried out on these platforms.

• Phemex

Phemex uses a fair price marking mechanism that helps prevent a forced liquidation when the margin gets below the maintenance margin level. The company does this to avoid the loss of the initial margin that comes with liquidation.

Besides fair price, Phemex also applies risk limits to larger positions that often require higher margins to keep open. 

When liquidation is triggered, the Phemex liquidation engines will cancel all the open orders for the particular position to free up more funds to help raise funds to keep the margin at the maintenance level. If this doesn’t work, the position gets partially or fully closed.

• KuCoin

KuCoin uses a Fair Price Mechanism to avoid liquidations due to price manipulations or illiquid markets. Traders can reduce their leverage size and increase their initial margin by adding margins to their initial positions.

Additionally, if liquidation is triggered, KuCoin automatically cancels all open orders on the contract to free up margin.

Verdict: These platforms are pretty similar in their work regarding liquidation mechanisms. However, with personal experience, Phemex will be a better option when you consider some additional liquidation benefits it provides. Therefore, Phemex is the winner in this segment. 

Phemex vs KuCoin: Fee Comparison

The fee structure is a very important aspect to look upon when choosing a profitable crypto trading exchange for your trading, therefore let’s quickly discuss what the fee structure is on these platforms.

• Phemex

Phemex follows a maker/taker fee model for futures and leverage trading. They charge 0.075% per order from market takers and a rebate of 0.025% for market makers.

Funding fees are charged or issued between long and short position holders every 8 hours. There are no overnight fees charged on Phemex.

For spot trading, Phemex charges a 0.1% fee per order. Additionally, there’s no fee for Premium and Premium Trial users.

• KuCoin

One of the main fees you will need to pay is the trading fee. You can see the following table for detailed spot and futures trading information.

So it is clear that the trading fee depends on your trading volume, which will reduce as your volume increases. There are no deposit fees on the KuCoin platform, and any fee you pay depends on the method or channel of payment you use to deposit.

KuCoin also charges a flat fee when withdrawing funds from your wallet. The actual cost depends on the specific asset you are withdrawing with no hidden charges.

Verdict: Phemex is the winner in this segment with relatively lesser fees and a well-organized, partial and easy-to-understand fee structure. 

Phemex vs KuCoin: Account Funding Methods

• Phemex

Phemex completes transactions via Banxa, a payment gateway which is safe and secure in itself. The exchange accepts debit and credit card purchases as deposit methods for crypto. 

However, when it comes to withdrawing funds, it only supports cryptocurrencies, and you can’t withdraw funds in the form of fiat currency.

• KuCoin

KuCoin allows you to deposit funds using cryptocurrency and fiat currency. 

The exchange supports twenty fiat currencies, fourteen of which were recently added in February; the fiat currencies are on KuCoin are AED, ARS, BRL, CHF, KRW, MXN, PHP, QAR, SAR, THB, ZAR, USD, CAD, VND, IDR, INR, EUR, AUD, NGN and CNY. 

If your country’s currency isn’t supported, you can go to a Bitcoin exchange platform, convert your cash into BTC and transfer it into your KuCoin wallet.

Verdict: Both the platforms offer varied yet subtle payment methods with reasonably safe and secure payment gateway, and therefore, it’s a tie between them. 

Phemex vs KuCoin: Trading Platform Comparison

Let’s now quickly discuss what user experience should you expect from these crypto trading platforms.

• Phemex 

Phemex has a user-friendly and one of the simplest trading platforms for beginners. They also consist of all the necessary analytical tools and functionalities experienced traders would need to complete profitable trades in an informed and controlled manner. 

Let’s look at each aspect of the trading platform in detail.

Desktop Platform

As I already mentioned, Phemex is an easy-to-use platform with all the inbuilt analytical tools and indicators. The platform supports the importing of custom-built indicators. The platform also has an Order Book to place orders and monitor and manage your running positions.

In addition, you get access to real-time price alerts and various order types, as I told you earlier. You can also export your previous trades to other trading platforms to analyze your past performance and improve your different trading strategies.

Phemex desktop platform has all the functionalities and features ideal for everyone from beginner retail traders to veteran institutional traders.

Charts and Trading View

Phemex trading system comes with a modular design, allowing traders to customize their dashboard as per the requirement. It comes with the following features:

• Order book
• TradingView powered chart
• Order menu
• Live positions
• Recent trades
• Order book depth chart
• Crypto perpetual contracts details
• Trading account display
• Mobile Platform

Phemex exchange has a mobile trading app as well available for all your devices. It comes with almost all the features and tools available on the desktop platform. You can use all of them anywhere, anytime, with the comfort of just a few taps on your mobile phone.

• KuCoin

KuCoin also has a simple user interface with all the platform’s functionalities and features readily available. The platform also uses TradingView charting system. 

It has an order form on the right. The order book on the left of the order form provides real-time trade information and helps you analyze the market sentiment. Then there is the position manager, the charting system on the front page of the trading panel.

KuCoin also has technical analysis tools available at your fingertips; they are:

• Chart Types
• Time Frames
• Indicators
• Drawing Tools
• OTC Trading Desk

The trading desk enables institutional traders to execute large trades at specific prices without putting the market at risk of sudden fluctuations. It allows you to deposit funds using fiat currencies for fiat to crypto trading. KYC is mandatory to access OTC trading on KuCoin.

Mobile Trading Platform

KuCoin carries the simple user interface as its desktop platform to its mobile platform as well. It comes with various features available for Android and iOS, with a user-friendly and pleasant trading experience for its users.

Verdict: Though both these platforms offer similar features and trading experience via their interface, Phemex has a slight advantage in this segment with a powerful and faster trading interface making it the winner. 

Phemex vs KuCoin: Account Types

Now, I will tell you what account types and accessibility levels these platforms have to offer.

Phemex

Phemex has two types of perpetual futures trading accounts:

• BTC trading account
• USD trading account

It also has minimum and maximum withdrawal limits and minimum deposit requirements based on the cryptocurrency you use to deposit and withdraw funds. For standard users, the maximum withdrawal limit is 2 BTC.

Phemex lets you trade anonymously without any KYC requirements. You just need to register using your email address and are ready to trade.

If you prefer KYC-certified trading, Phemex also supports KYC services, and you can get that to revoke the 2 BTC daily withdrawal limit. In addition to these, Phemex also offers a premium membership, giving you extra benefits like:

• Zero trading fees on spot trading
• Support for conditional orders
• Hourly withdrawals
• No withdrawal limits

Phemex also allows its users to create sub-accounts from a single trading dashboard. They are ideal for professional and institutional traders who need multiple trading accounts to test different strategies. 

Sub-accounts come with helpful features, including segregating trading funds and transferring funds from the mail account to sub-accounts. 

You can change each account’s balances, leverage, permissions and margin levels without affecting your main account and other sub-accounts, and you can switch between different sub-accounts seamlessly.

KuCoin

There are 4 levels of traders on KuCoin regarding KYC verification: unverified, KYC 1, KYC 2 and institutional KYC. You can refer to the accessibility limits of the KuCoin accounts in the following table:

Phemex vs KuCoin: How to get started?

Let’s now discuss how can you begin your trading journey on these platforms.

Phemex – Register Your Account

1. Visit the homepage and click on the register button in the top right corner. Enter your email address and password. 
2. Enter the verification code to verify your account.

Add Funds

Now you can add funds via different payment methods available on the platform. Just enter the amount and click the ‘Transfer in’ button. 

Place a Trade

Now that you have funds in your account, it’s time to place a trade. Head to the dashboard and open the pair you want to trade. Next, select the type of order you wish to place from the Order Book. 

Then, specify the quantity you want to trade and the leverage you want to use. You’ll also need to specify the price you want your order to execute in case of limit orders. Lastly, select advanced order functions, such as post-Only, if you wish. 

Once you have entered all the details, click on Buy to place a buy order and Sell to place a sell order.

Exit a Trade

To exit a trade, you can open your position and click on ‘Exit’. While exiting, you can use stop-loss and take-profit orders.

KuCoin- Register Your Account

1. Visit the KuCoin homepage and click the sign-up button in the top right corner.
2. Sign up with your phone or email and fill in the required details. Finish by clicking on the ‘Sign up’ button at the bottom.
3. Verify your account using the code received on your phone or email and activate the two-factor authentication for extra security. 

Deposit and Withdraw 

Once your account is set up, you must have funds in your KuCoin account to trade. To do that, go to the main account page. You will see a list of all assets you can deposit. Just choose the asset and click on ‘Deposit’ present on the right side of that asset.

On the deposit page, you will get a screen with your wallet address to send the assets you want to add to your account. The withdrawal process is the same, but you must click on ‘Withdrawal’ on the main account page.

To trade Bitcoins or altcoins on KuCoin, you just need to choose the asset type, order type to use and the amount you want to buy or sell. Next, click on the buy/sell button to complete your trade.

Now, let’s compare them based on the customer support and security they offer their users.

Phemex vs KuCoin: Customer Support

• Phemex

Phemex offers 24×7 direct line customer support to its users. You can also raise a ticket if you have any issues. You can even contact them via their social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and Reddit. 

Phemex also has a help centre with a comprehensive FAQ section answering all the commonly asked questions about opening an account, adding funds, withdrawing funds, etc.

• KuCoin

KuCoin also has a reliable customer support team and offers support via its comprehensive help centre with a live onsite chat option. They also have a FAQ section with most solutions to your queries. 

KuCoin also has a reputable presence on various social media channels like Facebook, Telegram, Twitter, and Reddit. 

Verdict: Both these platforms are good in customer support, but their users have highly rated Phemex; the customer reviews that’s why Phemex is the winner.  

Phemex vs KuCoin: Security Features

Phemex 

Phemex implements all the security features for a secure and seamless trading experience for its users.

The exchange uses a hierarchical deterministic cold wallet system. They gather and store the majority of its user’s funds in their multi-signature cold wallet through offline signature.

There is also Amazon Web Services (AWB) is the leader in the cloud security services industry. Phemex uses AWS cloud to secure its servers. They also use firewalls based on different trading zones. 

Phemex also comprises TradingEngine and CrossEngine to ensure minimal time lag and price delays. 

KuCoin

KuCoin also has top-notch security features. It keeps a majority of its user’s funds in cold storage with industry-level multilayer encryption. KuCoin also encourages its users to enable two-factor authentication on their accounts.

 You can also set security questions that will be asked when you take significant actions such as password changes, withdrawals, etc. The KuCoin manually authenticates all withdrawal requests and sends email and push notifications for important account actions.

Verdict: Clearly, Phemex has more security features implemented on the platform, therefore, making it the winner again. But I must say both the exchanges are pretty safe.

• Is Phemex Safe?

Yes, Phemex is a safe and secure platform. It has been a highly reputed and trustworthy platform for years. Phemex is regulated by trustworthy authorities and has a payment gateway known for its impenetrable security. 

• Is KuCoin Safe?

KuCoin is also a safe and legit platform that implements robust and industrial-grade security features with detailed identity verification. Keeping their user’s information, funds and accounts safe and sound.

Conclusion

These platforms are excellent trading exchanges, providing unique tools and order types for seamless trading. But looking at them in detail, it is clear that Phemex is relatively better in most aspects.

Choosing the best option is pretty handy to get optimum user experience and profitable trading. Therefore, check out this fantastic platform and start your trading journey with Phemex.