Coinbase Review 2026

Coinbase Review: the short version

Coinbase is the most institutionally serious crypto exchange in AFM’s set for this region, and unusually it is not a matter of interpretation. Coinbase Singapore Pte. Ltd. (“Coinbase SG”) has obtained a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to provide cross-border money transfer and digital payment token services, and it states that it is “based in, and provides its services from, Singapore”.

Compare that with the pattern running through almost every other review on this site – a group holding a good licence somewhere, while the entity that actually takes your money sits in Belize, Seychelles or the Marshall Islands. Coinbase does not do that here.

Two things stop it scoring higher. The retail interface is expensive – an undisclosed spread, a Coinbase fee of up to 1.875%, and a further 1% on every simple limit order – while Coinbase Exchange charges 0.60% taker at the entry tier for the same asset. And the Singapore agreement covers a specific country list that excludes Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Who Coinbase Singapore actually serves

This deserves stating first, because for a large share of this site’s readers it settles the question.

The Coinbase User Agreement served from Singapore applies to “customers who reside in Singapore and selected countries and territories (Hong Kong, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates)”.

That list does not include Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand. If you are in one of those countries, the MAS-licensed entity described in this review is not the one available to you – and we were not able to confirm whether any other Coinbase entity will onboard you. Check during registration before planning around it.

For readers in Singapore and the Philippines, which between them make up much of this site’s audience, Coinbase SG is the contracting entity and the MPI licence applies.

The MAS licence – and exactly what it does not cover

Coinbase SG’s MPI licence is real and it is meaningful. It is also, by MAS’s own instruction, narrower than people assume – and Coinbase is required to tell you so. The risk warning it must display reads, in part:

Coinbase SG is licensed by MAS to provide DPT services. Please note that this does not mean you will be able to recover all the money or DPTs you paid to Coinbase SG or any other third party referred to above, if Coinbase SG’s or the third party’s business fails.

You should be aware that MAS does not supervise or regulate Coinbase SG for the provision of unregulated services. This includes any service of trading digital payment token derivatives such as futures.

Read those two paragraphs twice. A payment-services licence is not deposit insurance and it is not an investor compensation scheme. It regulates how Coinbase SG conducts a payment and token business; it does not guarantee you get your assets back if the company fails, and it does not extend to derivatives at all.

MAS also requires the warning that “the value of DPTs may fluctuate greatly” and that you should buy them “only if you are prepared to accept the risk of losing all of the money you put into such tokens”.

Separately, Coinbase Custody Trust Company LLC is supervised by the New York State Department of Financial Services, and Coinbase, Inc. holds money transmitter licences across US states. Those are strong credentials – they simply belong to different companies from the one you contract with in Singapore.

The honest summary: this is the best regulatory position of any exchange in AFM’s crypto set, and it still is not the protection a bank deposit or an MAS-licensed brokerage account carries.

Coinbase fees: the expensive path and the cheap one

Coinbase runs two pricing worlds and most retail users never find the cheaper one. This is the single most useful thing in this review.

The simple buy/sell interface

On simple orders Coinbase applies:

• A spread built into the quoted price. It is not published as a percentage – you can only see it in the order preview. Coinbase states it “may retain any excess spread from a transaction” and that the spread “may vary for similar transactions”.
• A Coinbase fee of up to 1.875%, varying by payment method.
• On simple limit orders, a further 1% of the amount traded, on each buy and each sell.

Coinbase Exchange

The tiered maker-taker schedule below starts at 0.60% taker / 0.40% maker under $10,000 of 30-day volume and falls to 0.04% / 0.00% above $400 million. Stablepairs are 0.00% for makers.

The gap is roughly threefold at the entry tier – and larger once the undisclosed spread and the 1% limit-order fee are counted. If you buy crypto through the standard Coinbase app and you are not comparing that against Advanced Trade or Exchange, you are very likely overpaying by a multiple, not a margin.

Even so, 0.60% taker is not cheap in absolute terms. Binance‘s standard spot taker fee is around 0.10%. You are paying a premium for the MAS licence and the operating record, which is a defensible trade – but it should be a conscious one.

Platforms

Coinbase offers a tiered set of interfaces on the same account: the standard web and mobile app for simple buying and selling, Advanced Trade with order books, limit and stop orders and maker-taker pricing, and Coinbase Exchange for institutional and high-volume users with the full tiered schedule and API access.

The practical advice follows directly from the fee section: if you are using the simple interface for anything beyond an occasional small purchase, move to Advanced Trade. It is the same account, the same custody and the same assets – only the pricing model differs, and it differs by a lot.

Coinbase also runs staking, a custody business, derivatives in some jurisdictions and a DEX trading feature. Note that MAS’s warning specifically excludes DPT derivatives from its supervision, and DEX trades can carry an additional service fee on top of the standard Coinbase fee.

Withdrawals and network fees

Coinbase charges a network fee when you send crypto off the platform, based on its estimate of prevailing network fees for a standalone wallet-to-wallet send.

One disclosure worth knowing about: Coinbase notes that because it batches transactions, “the aggregate amount of estimated network fees paid by users within a given batch may exceed the final network fee paid by Coinbase”. In plain terms, the total estimated fees collected from a batch of users can be more than what Coinbase actually pays the network. That is disclosed rather than hidden, but it is the kind of detail worth knowing before you make frequent small withdrawals.

Transfers between Coinbase users’ primary balances are free, and holding cash or supported crypto carries no custody charge.

Who Coinbase suits

Coinbase makes sense if counterparty quality is your first concern and you want a MAS-licensed local entity rather than an offshore registration; you are in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan or the UAE; or you want a long, public operating record and an NYDFS-supervised custody arm.

Use Advanced Trade, not the simple app. That single change is worth more than choosing between most exchanges.

Look elsewhere if cost is the deciding factor – Binance is materially cheaper per trade – or if you are in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand, where the Singapore agreement does not apply.

How Coinbase compares

Coinbase is the regulatory benchmark in AFM’s crypto set. Against Gemini the contrast is sharp: Coinbase contracts with you through a MAS-licensed Singapore company, while a Singapore Gemini user contracts with a New York trust company, and Gemini’s entry-tier taker fee is double Coinbase’s.

Against Binance and Kraken, Coinbase is more expensive and better regulated locally. That is the whole trade.

Conclusion: is Coinbase worth it?

Coinbase scores 7.8, the highest of AFM’s crypto exchanges, and it earns that on structure rather than price. A MAS Major Payment Institution licence held by a Singapore company that provides services from Singapore is exactly what the rest of this review library keeps failing to find elsewhere.

What holds it back is cost and reach. The retail interface is expensive in a way that is easy to miss – an undisclosed spread, up to 1.875%, and 1% more on simple limit orders – and the fix is simply to use Advanced Trade. The Singapore agreement also stops short of Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.

And keep MAS’s own warning in view: the licence does not mean you get your money back if the business fails, and it does not cover derivatives at all. Coinbase is the best-regulated option here. It is not a bank.

1. Coinbase Singapore User Agreement – MAS Major Payment Institution licence and DPT risk warning — www.coinbase.com/en-sg/legal/user_agreement (checked September 2026)
2. Coinbase Exchange maker-taker fee tiers — help.coinbase.com/en/exchange/trading-and-funding/exchange-fees (checked September 2026)