Only couple of years ago, eToro was a well known platform for trading different kinds of financial products while Binance was non-existent noun in English language.
These two should not have too much in common and you won’t see them mentioned in the same sentence too often.
However, Binance’s incredible burst into prominence since its formation in 2017 made it the most popular crypto to crypto exchange in existence, while eToro added cryptocoins to their platform in 2018 – and so their paths crossed.
Binance needs little introduction: it is THE place, the crypto exchange with record trading volumes, where newcomers go to trade their crypto. eToro is famous for its social trading features and innovative approach to financial markets, making it a promising new player in crypto landscape.
So, having said all of this, it is a natural sequence of events to compare these two platforms, Binance vs eToro, as their paths have intertwined already and I have hunch are gonna meet each other ever more frequently in the future.
What you'll learn 👉
Binance vs eToro: General info
Binance is one of the largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchanges which initially started in China but then relocated their headquarters to the crypto-friendly Island of Malta in the EU. Binance is popular for its crypto to crypto exchange services. The company raised around $15 million in an ICO in July 2017. It immediately acquired 20,000 registered users as part of the raise.
Binance exploded onto the crypto world in the mania of 2017 and has since gone on to become the top crypto exchange in the world.
Since its launch in 2006, eToro has become a multinational sensation and is now active in over 140 countries.
eToro is a well established financial platform offering a wide range of financial trading services. They have expanded their offering to include crypto currencies with some unique benefits such as margin trading. It is also one of the rare services where you can buy crypto with PayPal. Credit Cards and PayPal are not available for deposits to the eToro balance of users under the FCA regulation.
eToro USA LLC does not offer CFDs, only real crypto currencies are available on the eToro platform.
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more
Cryptocurrency is offered by eToro USA LLC (“the MSB”) (NMLS: 1769299) and is not FDIC or SIPC insured. Investing involves risk.
Binance vs eToro: Fees
Standard Binance trading fees are 0.1%, but by using Binance native token BNB, you can make considerable reduction to the fees, currently 25% less if you check the option to pay fees in BNB (instead of paying them in the coin you are buying).
| Type | Fee |
|---|---|
| Standard trading fee | 0.1% |
| Credit card purchase | The higher of either 3.5% or US$10 |
Trading fee discounts
| The discount | What it is | How much it is |
|---|---|---|
| BNB discount | A discount when paying trading fees with the BNB coin. | 25% discount |
| Tiered trading fee discounts | A discount for holding different amounts of BNB in your account while meeting trade volume requirements. | Reduces base trading fees to as low as a 0.02% maker fee and a 0.04% taker fee. |
Below is the comprehensive tabular overview of Binance fee structure:
| Level | 30d Trade Volume (BTC) | & | BNB Balance | Maker / Taker | Maker/TakerBNB 25% off | Maker/TakerBNB x Referral 25% off x Kickback 20% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VIP 0 | < 50 BTC | or | ≥ 0 BNB | 0.1000% / 0.1000% | 0.0750% / 0.0750% | 0.0600% / 0.0600% |
| VIP 1 | ≥ 50 BTC | & | ≥ 50 BNB | 0.0900% / 0.1000% | 0.0675% / 0.0750% | 0.0540% / 0.0600% |
| VIP 2 | ≥ 500 BTC | & | ≥ 200 BNB | 0.0800% / 0.1000% | 0.0600% / 0.0750% | 0.0480% / 0.0600% |
| VIP 3 | ≥ 1500 BTC | & | ≥ 500 BNB | 0.0700% / 0.1000% | 0.0525% / 0.0750% | 0.0420% / 0.0600% |
| VIP 4 | ≥ 4500 BTC | & | ≥ 1000 BNB | 0.0700% / 0.0900% | 0.0525% / 0.0675% | 0.0420% / 0.0540% |
| VIP 5 | ≥ 10000 BTC | & | ≥ 2000 BNB | 0.0600% / 0.0800% | 0.0450% / 0.0600% | 0.0360% / 0.0480% |
| VIP 6 | ≥ 20000 BTC | & | ≥ 3500 BNB | 0.0500% / 0.0700% | 0.0375% / 0.0525% | 0.0300% / 0.0420% |
| VIP 7 | ≥ 40000 BTC | & | ≥ 6000 BNB | 0.0400% / 0.0600% | 0.0300% / 0.0450% | 0.0240% / 0.0360% |
| VIP 8 | ≥ 80000 BTC | & | ≥ 9000 BNB | 0.0300% / 0.0500% | 0.0225% / 0.0375% | 0.0180% / 0.0300% |
| VIP 9 | ≥ 150000 BTC | & | ≥ 11000 BNB | 0.0200% / 0.0400% | 0.0150% / 0.0300% | 0.0120% / 0.0240% |
A fee of 1% is calculated for buying or selling crypto assets on eToro.
In addition to this eToro charges a flat $5 payout fee while deposits are free (although conversion fees apply).
Buying Limits
Binance introduced buying crypto with fiat last year, via their Binance Jersey daughter company. They use service called Simplex to execute these orders. Simplex charges 3.5 percent of a transaction with a $10 minimum (flat fee). The daily limit is $20,000 per user, while the monthly max is $50,000 per user.
There is no buying limit if you want to do crypto to crypto transactions. There is a withdrawal limit of 2 BTC for unverified accounts which gets lifted once you go through KYC procedure.
There are no upper limits how much you can buy but there is a minimum deposit amount you need to put in on eToro. You must have $200 to participate in CopyTrading and make a minimum investment of $500 for CopyPortfolios. The minimum quantities for manual positions are based on the instrument.
For cryptocurrencies it is just $10 (or $50 if you are from the US). For stocks and ETFs it’s also $10. And for indices and currencies, it is $1000.
Deposit and Withdrawal methods
Since Binance main platform is crypto only, you can do deposits in any of the 150+ supported coins. Same goes for withdrawals – you just need the address on blockchain of the coin you want to withdraw.
Among crypto currency platforms, eToro stands out as one of the few platforms that offer users the ability to purchase crypto currencies via PayPal in combination with various other payment options. Other deposit and withdrawal options include: wire transfer (Swift and SEPA), Giropay, Skrill, Neteller, Credit Card.
Supported Countries
Binance does not specify which countries are supported and which countries are not supported but they did have couple of episodes of sudden blocks for traders from different countries around the world. As for the U.S traders, Binance made a separate platform, Binance US, to serve only US based traders and restricts them to use their main platform.
eToro is available in the majority of the globe, with the exemption of Canada, Cuba, Japan, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Serbia, Albania, and Sudan.
Supported coins
Binance has one of the broadest offerings when it comes to supported cryptocurrencies. The number of coins keeps growing by week and it exceeds 150 coins at the time of this writing.
As a multi-asset brokerage, eToro allows users to trade thousands of financial instruments, including over a dozen crypto currencies (all major coins such as Bitcoin, ETH, XRP, IOTA, EOS, XLM, ADA, EOS etc). Based on the concept of social trading, eToro is designed to be suitable for both new and experienced traders.
Customer Support
The customer service on Binance is also top-notch if you compare it with its peer exchanges. Worth noting, Binance provides customer support in 7 languages!
As of now there is no Binance support phone number, but they do have a customer support section where you can submit your requests. Usual turnaround time is around 24-hours. You can also use their live chat support option as shown here in the restricted operating hours. Apart from that, their FAQ section is quite detailed and if you go through it well, you may not really need to contact Binance support.
eToro has a thorough help center that provides basic information about trading as well as answers to the most common user problems. In addition, eToro only offers a simple ticket system for the majority of its user complaints and the answers are often slow. Beyond the traditional support lines, eToro also answers customer queries via social media. As a beginner-friendly platform, eToro also offers a variety of training materials and customer support for users, ensuring that help is at hand when it’s needed.
Trust and reputation
In its two short years of existence, Binance has gained a reputation for being fast and ferocious—sweeping aside peers on its rise to the top as one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume. Even though it is still unregulated (by any major finance authority aside of alleged regulation by Malta finance authorities), Binance enjoys very good reputation in crypto community thanks to their charismatic CEO CZ and his good communication and community management skills.
As a regulated platform, eToro is governed by the highest standards of accountability and transparency and is licensed to offer its services to large parts of the world. Currently eToro is regulated by the Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission (CySEC).
Security
Binance says it’s been awarded an information security accreditation after meeting standards set out by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). For the audits, Binance was examined on 114 criteria across 14 categories, including security policy, asset management, operational security and information systems.
Binance had an apparent leak of up to 60,000 users’ know-your-customer verification data, though it pointed a finger at a third-party service provider at the time. They also suffered a funds loss worth $40 million during a hack in May 2019. However, they had a separate fund for such cases and they refunded all users with the money from that fund.
In terms of cyber-security, eToro platform is extremely safe and never had any issues with hacking attacks or user fund losses. eToro also takes precautions to ensure the funds and personal information of clients are safe. Traditional funds remain secure in European banks of tier 1.
With all that in mind, you should remember that there are no regulations for cryptocurrencies. Because of this, if you engage in cryptocurrency trading or other crypto-related investments, there is no insurance from the investor compensation schemes within the UK or Cyprus. The lack of regulations also means that if you have a complaint, you cannot file it with your financial ombudsman service.
Despite this, eToro takes pride in working to resolve issues as seamlessly as possible. In addition, there are numerous social platforms where you can register complaints, which may influence other users.
Other features – Binance or eToro
Binance is ferocious when it comes to expansion: they keep adding new features like margin trading, OTO options for traders and similar. They also keep stacking new services on top of their original exchange platform: initial exchange offerings, staking, custody, lending, academy and education portal etc.
eToro’s next generation investment product CopyPortfolio is also a feature not found on any other crypto currency platform. CopyPortfolios allows eToro users to easily invest in top trader portfolios so they can copy the trades of the best traders on the website. eToro users who invest in a CopyPortfolio let eToro manage their capital professionally and avoid the guesswork of trading.
In addition, eToro also offers a unique social feature known as CopyTrading which allows users to automatically copy the trades of other successful traders based on specific conditions.
Margin trading
One of the most recent features Binance added to their platform is margin trading. After transferring BNB coins from your regular exchange wallet to your Margin Wallet, you will be able to use those coins as collateral to borrow funds. Your Margin Wallet balance determines the amount of funds you can borrow, following a fixed rate of 5:1 (5x). So if you have 1 BTC, you can borrow 4 more. In this example, we will borrow 0.02 BTC.
Interest fee on borrowed coins varies depending on your account level and type of coin you borrowed. Bitcoin has the lowest daily interest rate of 0.0075%, followed by ETH at 0.01% and XRP with 0.02%.
Currently eToro also offers margin trading.
Binance vs eToro: Pros and cons
Binance Pros ✅
- Easy to Use
- Low Fees
- Good Support
- Lots of Listings
- Good Trading Interface
Binance Cons ❌
- Doesn’t offer phone Support
eToro Pros ✅
- Well-Designed Interface
- Trustworthy & Secure
- Variety of Options
- Large range of Markets
eToro Cons ❌
- No cryptocurrency deposits
- Not many cryptocurrencies
- Don’t hold the assets
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more
Cryptocurrency is offered by eToro USA LLC (“the MSB”) (NMLS: 1769299) and is not FDIC or SIPC insured. Investing involves risk.
Binance vs eToro: Final verdict
So who wins the battle between Binance and eToro?
- In terms of fees – Binance is cheaper especially if you use their BNB token to pay the fees and get solid discounts (25%)..
- In terms of supported currencies – another W for Binance as it completely dominates almost any exchange in this criteria
- In terms of regulatory compliance and licensing: eToro is a clear winner in this aspect as it is regulated and licensed, unlike Binance.
- In terms of customer support: Both are of similar quality so it is a tie.
- Deposit and withdrawal methods: eToro is far superior to Binance when it comes to payment options.
- When it comes to security in the Binance vs eToro battle: Even though Binance is a secure platform, eToro is unequivocal winner in this criteria as they never had any fund or data losses in their 14 years of existence.
- Trading features: another tie since both platforms offer tons of advanced trading functions + margin trading.
- Overall reputation: another tie since both enjoy fairly good reputation in crypto community with sporadic complaints by individual customers.
If you are not fond of neither of these exchanges, here is a list of potential alternatives: Coinbase, Cex.io, PrimeXBT, PrimeBit, Deribit, Coinbase Pro, Coinmama, Changelly, Bitpanda, Bitfinex, Kraken, Bittrex, Bitstamp.
In case you want to compare eToro or Binance with other exchanges, have a look at our guides where we do just that:
- Coinbase vs Binance
- Binance vs Kucoin
- Binance vs Bittrex
- BitMex vs Binance
- Binance vs Coinmama
- Binance vs Coinbase Pro
- eToro vs Coinbase
eToro is a multi-asset platform which offers both investing in stocks and cryptoassets, as well as trading CFDs.
Please note that CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 51% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
This communication is intended for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or investment recommendation. Past performance is not an indication of future results.
Copy Trading does not amount to investment advice. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
Cryptoasset investing is highly volatile and unregulated in some EU countries. No consumer protection. Tax on profits may apply.
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more
eToro USA LLC does not offer CFDs and makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the content of this publication, which has been prepared by our partner utilizing publicly available non-entity specific information about eToro.
In terms of support is a tie?? I’m using eTorro and I have my personal account manager and customer success agent that I can’t contact through phone and personal email. I think that would make etorro by far better in this category