Opening a Binance account, and finding your real fee tier

The short version: register with the code entered on the sign-up form, complete verification before you try to deposit, turn on withdrawal address whitelisting on day one, then open the fee rate page inside your account to see what you were really given. That last step takes thirty seconds and almost no guide includes it.

Before you start

Two things are worth settling before you touch the form, because both are annoying to fix afterwards.

The name has to match. Whatever you type at registration and whatever is on your identity document need to be the same person, spelled the same way. Middle names, transliterations and married names cause more verification rejections than anything else.

A referral code, if you choose to use one, usually goes in at registration. The field can sit behind a small optional link, and platforms generally do not add a code retroactively. The code currently present in this guide has not been verified against the site's referral record, so do not infer a benefit from its presence.

Check also that the platform serves your country before you invest time in verification. Availability varies by region and by product, and the answer is on the exchange's own terms page rather than anywhere else.

Creating the account

Registration is an email or phone number, a password, and the referral field. Nothing else is required at this stage; the identity work comes next.

If the registration page does not display the code or a clearly stated benefit, stop and continue without assuming one. A value printed in this guide is not evidence that the exchange accepted it.

Use a password you do not use anywhere else. Exchange accounts are a standing target for credential stuffing, where attackers try passwords leaked from unrelated breaches. A reused password is the single most common way an account with good two-factor setup still gets compromised, because the attacker starts from inside the login flow rather than outside it.

Identity verification

Verification asks for a government photo ID and a liveness check, usually a short camera sequence. Depending on the level you need, it may also ask for proof of address.

What tends to go wrong, in rough order of frequency:

• Glare and crop. Photograph the document flat, in even light, with all four corners inside the frame. Flash on a laminated card is the classic rejection.
• Name mismatch. Covered above, and worth checking again before submitting.
• Expired document. Automated checks read the expiry date and reject without explanation.
• Address proof that is too old. Utility bills and bank statements usually need to be recent, and the address on them has to match what you entered.

Verification levels matter more than people expect. Deposit and withdrawal limits are attached to the level, not to the account, so a limit that looks like a restriction on you is usually just a level you have not completed. If your intended first deposit is meaningful, complete the higher level before funding rather than after.

Processing is often quick but not reliably so. Volume, document type and country all affect it, and a queue that clears in minutes one week can take considerably longer the next. Build in some slack rather than planning to deposit the same hour.

Security setup

Do this before the first deposit, not after. It takes a few minutes and it is the difference between a bad day and a total loss.

• App-based two-factor, not SMS. SMS codes can be intercepted through SIM swap, where an attacker persuades a mobile carrier to move your number. An authenticator app or a passkey removes the carrier from the picture entirely.
• Withdrawal address whitelisting. This is the most underused control on any exchange. With it on, withdrawals can only go to addresses you have pre-approved, and adding a new one triggers a cooling-off period. An attacker who gets full access to your account still cannot move funds to an address of their choosing. If you enable one thing today, enable this.
• Anti-phishing code. A short phrase you set, which then appears in genuine emails from the platform. Mail without it is not from them. It costs nothing and it defeats an entire category of convincing fake notifications.
• Store recovery codes somewhere real. When you set up two-factor you are given backup codes. Losing the phone without those codes turns account recovery into a support process measured in days.

Worth being clear about what these do not cover. Two-factor does not help if you approve a malicious transaction yourself. Whitelisting does not protect funds you have already sent to the wrong address. None of it protects you if you hand credentials to someone claiming to be support, which remains the most effective attack against retail accounts by a wide margin.

Getting money in

There are broadly three routes in, and they differ in cost and speed rather than in safety.

Bank transfer is usually the cheapest and the slowest, and availability depends heavily on your country and currency. Card is fast and carries the highest built-in cost, often bundled into the rate rather than shown as a fee. Peer-to-peer matches you with another user and can be the only practical route in some regions; it moves the risk from the platform to the counterparty, which is why the escrow mechanism and the dispute process are worth reading before your first trade rather than during it.

If you are transferring crypto in from elsewhere, the network you pick decides the cost, and the difference between networks for the same asset can be large. Send a small test amount first. This advice is repeated everywhere because the failure it prevents is unrecoverable: a transfer sent on the wrong network usually cannot be returned.

Confirming your actual fee tier

Here is the step this guide exists for. The rate you pay is not the rate on the public fee table. It is whatever your account is configured for, and those two numbers can differ.

They differ because of referral arrangements, regional pricing, promotions, and which product you are trading. The public table is a default. Your account has an actual value, and it is displayed inside the account, generally on a page reached from the trading screen under a heading about fee rate or VIP level.

Open it once, right after your first deposit, and check three things:

1. Which tier you are in. The fee page lists the current volume and BNB conditions for each row. The regular row and higher VIP rows can use different logic, so read the row shown for the account.
2. Your maker and taker rates separately. They can differ by tier, pair and promotion. Read both values from the account page or order ticket rather than copying an entry-tier snapshot.
3. Whether the token discount is switched on. Paying fees in BNB is a setting, and it is not always enabled by default. If you hold the token and have not enabled it, you are paying the undiscounted rate for no reason.

We keep a dated snapshot of the published tiers in the fee comparison matrix, but that page is a snapshot and your account page is the truth. If the two disagree, the account page wins and our table is out of date.

One more thing worth knowing before you place an order: on a fee schedule where maker and taker differ, the order type can do more work than the tier. A resting limit order is a maker order only if it rests and later fills; a market order is a taker. Check the two live rates and balance any saving against the risk that a limit order does not fill.

When something goes wrong

Support is reached from inside the account. That sentence is the whole security lesson. Every convincing exchange scam we have looked at works by getting the victim to start the conversation somewhere else — a search result, a chat group, a phone call, a message that arrives first. Nobody legitimate will contact you first and ask for a code, a password, or remote access to your machine.

For verification stuck in review, resubmitting repeatedly does not help and can make it worse. Open a ticket. For a deposit that has not arrived, get the transaction hash and check it on a block explorer before contacting anyone; the answer is usually visible there, and it is usually either confirmations still pending or a wrong network.

Questions