Crypto exchange fees in the Philippines: what buying really costs

Reviewed by the Crypto Philippines Editorial TeamUpdated September 28, 2026 · 10 min read

Crypto exchange fees in the Philippines come in four layers: the trading fee (0.10–0.15% on Coins.ph Spot), the spread between buy and sell prices, the cash-in fee (usually free by bank InstaPay, ₱10 from GCash or Maya) and the cash-out fee (₱5 to ₱15). A ₱10,000 round trip costs from about ₱37 to over ₱300.

That range is the whole point of this page. Two people can buy the same ₱10,000 of Bitcoin on the same day and one pays eight times more than the other, without either of them seeing a line called “fee”. The difference sits in how they funded the account, which screen they tapped, and how they got their pesos back. Below we break down each layer, then add them up on real routes. All figures come from official fee pages and were checked on 28 September 2026. If you’re still choosing an app, start with our ranking of the best crypto exchanges in the Philippines.

The four layers of crypto fees

1. Trading fee (maker and taker)

This is the fee an exchange charges for matching your order in its order book. Coins.ph publishes a tiered table on its fee announcement, effective since 8 August 2025: 0.10% maker and 0.15% taker at VIP0, falling to 0.03% and 0.05% at the top tier (₱5 billion of 30-day volume). A taker fills an existing offer right away, as a market order does. A maker places a limit order that waits in the book. If you’re patient, the maker rate saves you a third.

PDAX is harder to pin down. Third-party reviews quote 0.40% maker and 0.50% taker, but we could not find a trading fee on PDAX’s official fees page, which lists only cash-in and cash-out charges. Treat that number as unverified and check the order screen in the app before you trade.

2. The spread

The spread is the gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at. It’s the hidden fee behind every “zero fee” claim. On an order book, it’s simply the distance between the best buyer and the best seller. On a Convert or Quick Buy screen, or inside an e-wallet, the app sets both prices and keeps the difference. Coins.ph says openly that Convert has no trading fee but has a spread. GCash says the GCrypto buy price “already includes service and platform fees”. Maya advertises no transaction fees. None of them publishes the spread percentage.

3. Cash-in fee

This is what it costs to get pesos into the platform. The good news: since the BSP ended the transfer-fee freeze in mid-2026, most big banks made both rails free. The BSP’s summary of transfer fees via digital channels, as of 31 August 2026, lists BPI, BDO, Metrobank, Security Bank, RCBC and UnionBank as free for InstaPay and PESONet. GCash, Maya and GrabPay charge ₱10 per InstaPay transfer; ShopeePay is free; GoTyme charges ₱0 to ₱9.

On the receiving side, Coins.ph charges nothing for InstaPay or PESONet deposits, and ₱25 for cash-in at remittance centres through Dragonpay, according to its cash-in and cash-out fees page. PDAX is where people get caught: online bank transfer is free, but topping up from GCash costs about 2.90%, GrabPay about 1.70% and Maya about 3% plus ₱15.

4. Cash-out fee and network fees

Coins.ph charges ₱5 by InstaPay, nothing by PESONet for individuals, and ₱105 at remittance centres below ₱10,000 (1.6% above). PDAX charges ₱15 by InstaPay, ₱10 by PESONet and ₱15 for UnionBank direct. Moving crypto out of an app adds a network fee, which depends on the coin, the network you choose and how busy it is. GCash, for example, says its send fee varies per coin and includes the network fee, while receiving is free. Always read the fee shown on the withdrawal screen before you confirm; the same USDT can cost very different amounts to send depending on the network.

A ₱10,000 round trip, route by route

The fairest way to compare costs is a round trip: put ₱10,000 in, buy, sell straight back, and withdraw to your bank. Whatever you lose is the total cost of using that route. We used the Coins.ph order book snapshot of 28 September 2026 (BTC/PHP about 0.15% spread, USDT/PHP about 0.02%) and taker orders both ways.

A few things jump out. On Coins.ph, the trading fee is the biggest cost, not the spread, so switching to limit orders (0.10% maker) cuts the USDT round trip to about ₱27. On PDAX, the GCash top-up alone costs more than everything else combined; fund it from a bank instead and the cash-in drops to zero. And on e-wallets, the total depends entirely on a spread you have to measure yourself.

The card row is different in kind. CEX.IO, the global exchange we work with, charges 0.49% to 4.99% plus a service charge for card Instant Buy, and a Philippine peso card is converted at your bank’s rate. It has no peso wallet, GCash or InstaPay and is not BSP-licensed, so to get pesos back you would send the coins to a licensed local app and sell there, paying a network fee plus that app’s cash-out fee. It’s a convenience route for card users, not the cheapest round trip.

How to measure the spread yourself

You don’t need to trust anyone’s claims, including ours. Open the app, pick one coin and note two numbers at the same moment: the price to buy and the price to sell. Then calculate: (buy − sell) ÷ buy × 100.

Using the Coins.ph snapshot: (₱5,226,951 − ₱5,219,086) ÷ ₱5,226,951 × 100 = 0.15%. On a ₱10,000 purchase that’s about ₱15 you would lose if you sold immediately. Do the same on GCrypto, Maya or any Convert screen, a few times during the day, because spreads widen when markets move fast and on smaller coins. If one app shows 1% and another 0.15%, you now know which one is really “free”.

A second check is to compare the buy price to an outside reference, such as the Coins.ph Spot price or the USD/PHP rate for stablecoins. On 28 September 2026 the mid-market USD/PHP rate was about ₱62.45 and Coins.ph was selling USDT at ₱62.51, only about 0.1% above it. Our USDT guide goes deeper into stablecoin rates.

Hidden fees that catch beginners

E-wallet spreads. “No fees” in GCash and Maya is true only for the line items. The cost lives in the price, which GCash says updates every 10 seconds. For the full GCrypto picture, including send fees and limits, read our GCash crypto guide.

Funding from the wrong wallet. Topping up PDAX from GCash (about 2.9%) or Maya (about 3% plus ₱15) can cost more than a year of trading fees. Sending from GCash to Coins.ph by InstaPay costs ₱10.

Remittance-centre cash-out. Picking up cash from Coins.ph at a remittance centre costs ₱105 below ₱10,000, which is 2% on a ₱5,000 withdrawal. If you need physical pesos, compare options in our guide to selling crypto for cash.

Many small trades. Fixed fees hurt small amounts most. A ₱5 InstaPay cash-out is 0.5% of ₱1,000 but only 0.05% of ₱10,000. Batch your withdrawals.

P2P premiums. P2P sellers on offshore exchanges charged about 0.1% to 0.3% above mid-market for USDT on 28 September 2026, which is no cheaper than the licensed Coins.ph order book, and those venues are flagged by the SEC. Our P2P crypto guide explains the freeze risks.

How to pay less, in practice

For most people the cheapest setup is simple: fund a licensed exchange from a bank that charges nothing for InstaPay, buy on the Spot screen with limit orders, and cash out by PESONet when you’re not in a hurry. Keep your e-wallet for small, convenient buys where a few pesos of spread don’t matter. And don’t chase a lower fee onto an unlicensed venue: a cheap trade is worthless if your withdrawal gets stuck, which is why we only benchmark platforms on the BSP licensed exchanges list. If you trade often, Coins.ph’s fee tiers start dropping at ₱500,000 of 30-day volume (0.09% maker, 0.13% taker).

If you move ₱1 million or more at a time, the order book is no longer the cheapest place. OTC desks at Coins.ph and PDAX start at ₱1 million and quote a single all-in price; Coins.ph ran a TradeDesk promotion with a 0.03% USDT/PHP spread in late 2025. See our crypto OTC guide for minimums and settlement. And for a first purchase, our step-by-step guide to buying Bitcoin shows the whole process with a ₱5,000 example.