Funding rate calculator
The invisible rent on your perpetual position — turned into dollars you can see.
$90.00 paid
$3.00
$21.00
≈ 10.95%
The Practice Arena opens this exact setup on live prices with a virtual $10,000 account — same coin, same direction, same stop, same target — hold a position and watch funding do its work. Every position you close is written into your journal, so the number you learn from is your own.
live prices · virtual money
Reading the result
Funding = notional size × rate, charged every interval — most exchanges use 8 hours (3× daily). A positive rate means longs pay shorts; a negative rate means shorts pay longs (enter a negative number to see what you'd receive). The "annualized" figure is what the current rate compounds to over a year if it never changed — it will change, but the number shows how expensive a crowded trade really is.
The quiet danger: funding is deducted from margin. On a leveraged position held for weeks, paid funding drags your margin down and your liquidation price closer — the position can die without price moving at all.
Typical rate ranges
| Rate per 8h | Market mood | $10,000 position, 30 days |
|---|---|---|
| 0.01% (baseline) | Neutral — the default on most exchanges | ≈ $90 |
| 0.05% | Crowded longs, heated market | ≈ $450 |
| 0.1%+ | Euphoria — longs paying dearly | ≈ $900+ |
| Negative | Fear — shorts paying longs | You get paid to be long |
Common mistakes
Ignoring funding on swing trades — a "free" 2-week hold at elevated funding can cost more than the fees of ten trades. Using funding rate alone as a signal — extreme funding says the boat is crowded, not when it tips; combine it with structure. Forgetting it compounds against leverage — funding is charged on notional, so at 10x it eats your actual margin 10× faster than the headline rate suggests.
A worked example: when funding eats the target
A long Bitcoin perpetual with $20,000 of notional, held for ten days while the market is crowded long and funding sits at +0.03% every 8 hours.
- Per interval: $20,000 × 0.03% = $6.00
- Per day (three intervals): $18
- Over ten days: $180
- Annualised: 0.03% × 3 × 365 ≈ 32.9% of notional per year
Now put the trade next to it. On a $10,000 account risking 1%, the plan risks $100 to make $200 at 1:2. Ten days of funding at that rate costs $180 — 90% of the planned profit, paid whether the trade works or not. If the position runs at 10× leverage, the $2,000 of margin also shrinks by 9% from funding alone, which pulls the liquidation price closer every day you hold.
The same rate is income on the other side: a short of the same size would receive about $180 over those ten days. That is why extreme positive funding often shows up near crowded tops — holding the long is expensive, and it gets cut when price stalls.
Three habits that keep funding small
Check the rate and the countdown before entry. Every perpetual page shows the current rate and the time to the next payment next to the mark price; a payment due in five minutes is charged in full even if you entered a minute ago. Match the instrument to the holding time. A trade you expect to hold for weeks usually belongs on spot, where there is no funding at all. Put funding into the plan, not the post-mortem. The trade planner adds funding over your planned hold next to size and risk/reward, so the cost is visible before the order rather than after.