Gemini Review 2026

Gemini Review: read the availability list first

Before anything else, check whether Gemini will take you at all. Its own availability page lists, for the entire continent of Asia, exactly three markets: Israel, Singapore and Turkey.

That means Gemini is not available in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand or Hong Kong. For most of this site’s readership, this review is informational rather than actionable.

It is also worth knowing that Gemini has been shrinking. Its availability page carries two notices: “Effective 6 April 2026, Gemini will close all customer accounts in the United Kingdom and European Economic Area” and “Effective 6 April 2026, Gemini will close all customer accounts in Australia.” Both dates have now passed.

What remains is a genuinely well-regulated US business – Gemini Trust Company, LLC is a New York limited purpose trust company – with high fees and a narrowing footprint.

Where Gemini is available, and where it has withdrawn

Gemini says it operates in 50+ countries. The distribution matters more than the count.

• Asia: Israel, Singapore, Turkey. That is the complete list.
• United Kingdom and European Economic Area: closed. “Effective 6 April 2026, Gemini will close all customer accounts in the United Kingdom and European Economic Area.”
• Australia: closed. “Effective 6 April 2026, Gemini will close all customer accounts in Australia.”
• North America, parts of Latin America, the Caribbean and a handful of African markets remain served.

An exchange exiting the UK, the EEA and Australia in the same window is a meaningful signal. Those are three of the most demanding crypto regulatory regimes in the world, and withdrawing from all of them at once suggests a decision about the cost of compliance rather than a market-by-market judgement. Gemini has not published a reason we could find, so we are not going to speculate about one – but if you are choosing an exchange to hold assets for years, a shrinking regulatory footprint belongs in the decision.

Gemini regulation: strong charter, no local entity

Gemini’s regulatory position is genuinely good, and also genuinely distant from a Singapore user.

Gemini Trust Company, LLC is a New York limited purpose trust company (NMLS #1518126), operating as Gemini Exchange, LLC in a number of US states. Gemini Moonbase, LLC (NMLS #2403509) is a separate entity. A New York trust charter is one of the more demanding authorisations in US crypto: it brings NYDFS supervision, capital requirements and fiduciary duties around custody, and it is a stronger instrument than the money-transmitter licences most exchanges hold.

But there is no Singapore entity. We read Gemini’s user agreement in full – 202,000 characters – and it does not mention Singapore, MAS, the Payment Services Act or digital payment tokens anywhere. A Singapore user is contracting with a New York trust company on US terms.

The practical difference from Coinbase is stark. Coinbase Singapore Pte. Ltd. holds a MAS Major Payment Institution licence and provides its services from Singapore, so a Singaporean customer has a locally licensed counterparty and a local regulator. A Gemini customer in Singapore has neither – their protection, such as it is, comes from New York.

That is not the same as being unregulated. It is a real charter with a real regulator. But cross-border recourse against a US trust company is a different proposition from a complaint to MAS about a locally licensed firm, and the difference matters most at exactly the moment you would need it.

Gemini fees: a precise schedule, and a hidden one

Gemini publishes two very different amounts of information about what it charges.

ActiveTrader – fully published

A clear 13-tier maker-taker schedule, reproduced below. It starts at 0.600% maker / 1.200% taker below $10,000 of 30-day volume and falls to 0.000% / 0.020% above $250 million.

That entry tier is expensive. 1.200% taker is double Coinbase Exchange’s 0.60%, and roughly twelve times Binance‘s typical 0.10%. On a $1,000 buy that is $12 to Gemini against about $1 to Binance. The schedule only becomes competitive well into six-figure monthly volume, which is not where most readers of this site are.

The retail app – not published at all

For ordinary Instant and Recurring orders, Gemini publishes no percentage, no tier table and no spread figure. Its own wording is that fees “are subject to influence by various factors, which may include your payment method, order size, market conditions, jurisdiction, asset, and/or other costs incurred to facilitate your transaction”, with a spread incorporated into the quoted price that “may vary for similar transactions”. You see the number on the trade review screen, and only then.

Publishing a precise 13-tier schedule for the professional interface and nothing for the retail one is a choice, and it is the same pattern Plus500 follows with its spreads. If you use Gemini, use ActiveTrader – at least you can see what it costs.

Platforms and custody

Gemini offers a standard web and mobile app, ActiveTrader with full order books and the published maker-taker pricing, and an API for programmatic access. It also runs a custody business, staking, a credit card, the Gemini Dollar stablecoin and a TradingView integration.

Custody is where the New York trust charter earns its keep. A limited purpose trust company holds assets under fiduciary obligations that an ordinary money transmitter does not carry, and Gemini’s institutional custody product is built on that. For a user whose main concern is that their assets are properly segregated and held by a supervised entity, this is a real advantage.

The counterweight, again, is that those obligations run under New York law, and you are in Singapore.

Who Gemini suits

Gemini makes sense if you are in Singapore, Israel, Turkey or one of its remaining Western markets; custody quality and a supervised trust charter are your first concern; and you trade enough volume for the ActiveTrader tiers to come down.

Look elsewhere if you are anywhere else in Southeast Asia, because Gemini will not take you at all. Coinbase covers Singapore and the Philippines with a MAS-licensed local entity, and Binance has far wider regional coverage.

Also look elsewhere if cost matters. At 1.200% taker on the entry tier, Gemini is the most expensive exchange in AFM’s set by a wide margin, and the retail interface does not tell you what it charges at all.

How Gemini compares

Gemini and Coinbase occupy similar territory – regulated, US-rooted, premium-priced – but Coinbase wins on both axes that matter here. It has a MAS-licensed Singapore entity where Gemini has none, and its entry taker fee is half of Gemini’s.

Against Binance, Kraken and OKX, Gemini is more expensive and far more restricted in this region, while offering a stronger custody charter.

Conclusion: is Gemini worth it?

Gemini scores 6.4. The New York trust charter is real and the custody proposition is among the best in crypto – if that is what you are buying, Gemini delivers it.

Everything else points the other way for this audience. In Asia it serves only Singapore, Israel and Turkey. It has closed every customer account in the UK, the EEA and Australia. It has no Singapore entity, so even a Singaporean customer contracts with a New York company rather than a MAS-licensed local one. Its entry-tier taker fee is double Coinbase’s and about twelve times Binance’s. And its retail pricing is not published at all.

For the large majority of this site’s readers, Gemini is simply not available. For Singaporeans who want a regulated exchange, Coinbase offers a locally licensed entity at half the trading cost, and that is the easier recommendation.

1. Gemini Exchange areas of availability — www.gemini.com/areas-of-availability (checked September 2026)
2. Gemini ActiveTrader and API fee schedule — www.gemini.com/fees/api-fee-schedule (checked September 2026)