Lighter charges funding every hour, trader to trader, with no exchange fee. This guide shows how the hourly rate is built from the order book, where it is capped, and what it costs on a real position, from Lighter’s own documentation.
Lighter funding is a payment between longs and shorts, made every hour. When the rate is positive, longs pay shorts; when it is negative, shorts pay longs. Lighter keeps none of it. When the order book trades close to the index, the rate sits at a baseline of 0.01% per 8 hours, which Lighter pays out as 0.00125% an hour. When the perpetual trades far from the spot index, the rate rises with the gap, up to a cap of 0.5% an hour on a default market.
Funding is a cost you pay (or a payment you receive) for as long as you hold a position, on top of any trading fee, so it matters most to anyone holding a leveraged position for hours or days.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| How often is it paid? | Every hour, at the hour mark |
| Who pays whom? | Longs pay shorts when the rate is positive; shorts pay longs when it is negative |
| Does Lighter take a cut? | No: peer to peer, no fee taken by the exchange |
| What drives the rate? | The premium of the order book over the spot index, sampled once a minute and averaged over the hour |
| Default baseline | 0.01% per 8 hours (0.00125% an hour) |
| Default cap | 4% per 8 hours (0.5% an hour) |
| Per-market settings | Interest rate, both clamps and a premium multiplier |
Lighter builds the rate in four steps. The wording below follows its Funding page; the symbols are explained under each formula.
premium_t = ( max(0, ImpactBid - index) - max(0, index - ImpactAsk) ) / index
premium = average of premium_t over the hour x multiplier
smallClamp = SmallClamp x multiplier
adjusted = premium + clamp(InterestRate - premium, -smallClamp, +smallClamp)
fundingRate (per hour) = clamp(adjusted, -BigClamp, +BigClamp) / 8Dividing by 8 is deliberate. Lighter says it makes the premium’s payments “distributed over 8 hours, closely aligning with the approach adopted by centralized perpetual exchanges”, so a Lighter rate and an 8-hour rate on a centralized exchange can be compared directly once you multiply the hourly figure by 8.
The payment to an account on market j is the position size times the index price times the rate, with the sign flipped: a positive result is credited to the account and a negative one is charged. A long position facing a positive rate therefore pays.
Each example uses a default crypto market (multiplier 1, interest rate 0.01%, small clamp 0.05%, big clamp 4%) and a $10,000 long. They are our arithmetic from the formula above, not live data.
| Average premium over the hour | Rate per 8 hours | Rate per hour | A $10,000 long pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| +0.03% (a mild premium) | 0.01% | 0.00125% | $0.125 an hour, about $3.00 a day |
| +0.20% | 0.15% | 0.01875% | $1.875 an hour, about $45 a day |
| +5% (at the cap) | 4% | 0.5% | $50 an hour, $1,200 a day |
A large negative premium mirrors the table: −0.20% gives −0.15% per 8 hours, and shorts pay longs. A small one does not: at −0.03% the interest rate is still added in, so the rate stays at +0.01% and longs pay. The baseline of 0.00125% an hour comes to about 11% a year if it never moved (0.00125% × 24 × 365 = 10.95%).
Lighter sets four numbers per market and returns them from its orderBookDetails endpoint: the interest rate, the small clamp, the big clamp and the premium multiplier. The documented defaults are:
In the 214 active perpetuals Lighter listed on 5 November 2026, 115 had the 0.01% interest rate, 89 had 0.0032% and 10 had zero (the foreign-exchange pairs, US10Y and STRC). These are defaults and counts at a date, and Lighter can change them. For a market you are about to hold, read its own settings rather than assuming the defaults.
Lighter publishes two figures for each market: the rate for the hour that is still forming, which is an estimate and moves until the hour mark, and the rate of the last payment actually made. WatchCrypto reads the first. Its funding pane multiplies it by 8 and averages it with the same coin on every other venue that lists it, weighted by open interest, so the pane shows one market-wide rate per 8 hours, not Lighter’s hourly figure on its own. A positive number there means longs are paying across the market.
Open Lighter BTC in the terminal and add the Funding pane from the Indicators menu. It charts BTC’s funding across every venue that lists it, Lighter included, as one rate per 8 hours weighted by open interest, and its legend says how many venues it holds. The Lighter charts page lists the busiest markets and links each into the terminal; Lighter is charts and data only on WatchCrypto, and no account is needed. For Hyperliquid, every perpetual’s current rate is in the live Hyperliquid funding table, and the open interest table shows how much is exposed to it. New to funding? Perpetual futures explained covers funding, leverage and liquidation from the start.
Every hour, on the hour. Funding payments occur at each hour mark. Lighter says each market currently has a one-hour funding period, and that the period is a per-market setting, so new markets may differ.
The traders on the other side. Funding is peer to peer and Lighter takes no fee from it. When the rate is positive, longs pay shorts; when it is negative, shorts pay longs.
On a market with the default settings, 0.5% of the position's value per hour (the 4% big clamp divided by 8). Two markets set their own clamp: on 5 November 2026 ARC's was 20% and RIVER's 16%.
No. Each market has its own interest rate, clamps and premium multiplier. Crypto markets use a multiplier of 1, RWA markets 1/2, and pre-IPO and prelaunch markets 1/100, so the same price gap produces a smaller rate on the last two.
Yes, blended with the other venues. Open a Lighter market in the WatchCrypto terminal and add the Funding pane: it charts the coin's funding on every venue that lists it, Lighter included, as one rate per 8 hours weighted by open interest. Lighter is charts and data only on WatchCrypto, with no account needed.
orderBookDetails, fetched 5 November 2026 at 08:19 UTC: 214 active perpetuals, their interest rates, clamps and multipliers.WatchCrypto is not affiliated with Lighter. Rules, defaults and market settings change; check Lighter before you trade. Leveraged trading can lose more than you expect; this guide is not financial advice.