Who pays for your free trading bot

A crypto trading bot with no price on it is not a charity and not a loss leader. It is a piece of order-routing software, and order flow is the one thing every venue in this market pays cash for. The money is there, it is disclosed more often than not, and it arrives through five specific mechanisms — each of which does something slightly different to your order, your account or your screen.

This page is not an accusation. Two of the five cost you nothing at all, one of them can leave you paying less than you would have, and the vendors that use them mostly say so on their own pages. What the arrangement does change is which venues you are offered, how hard the software argues for opening a fresh account, and — in exactly one of the five — the price of your fill. Those are worth knowing before you wire keys into anything.

How it works

Follow the money in the order it moves. You trade. The venue charges its own maker or taker fee. Some share of that fee, or an amount stacked on top of it, is routed to whoever sent the order. Nothing about this is unique to crypto — it is the same shape as payment for order flow and introducing-broker rebates elsewhere — but here it is unusually well documented, because the programmes are API features with public reference pages.

A builder fee is the one that comes out of your fill

This is the newest form and the only one that reaches your money directly. On Hyperliquid, the mechanism is called a builder code: the software that sends your order attaches a builder address, and the venue adds a fee for that builder to the fill. The documentation is precise about the shape of it. You approve a maximum first — "the end user would first approve a max fee for the builder address via the ApproveBuilderFee action" — the rate is quoted in tenths of a basis point, "i.e. a value of 10 means 1 basis point", and the protocol caps what any builder may charge at "at most 0.1% on perps and 1% on spot". Fees are collected in the quote or collateral asset and claimed by the builder through the same process as referral rewards.

Two things follow from that. First, the approval is yours and it is a ceiling, not a rate: the number you signed is the most that address can take, and it is visible on the wallet prompt before you sign. Second, one basis point — what the products in this catalogue actually charge — sits at the bottom of a range the protocol allows to go ten times higher on perps.

Four cards here document a builder fee, and no two describe it identically: Velo states one flat basis point on Hyperliquid in its terms and nothing equivalent for its other venue; Insilico Terminal makes signing the approval a precondition of connecting at all; Tealstreet says the rate shown is "usually 0.01% (1 bps), and can be higher if you signed up through an affiliate who sets their own rate", which means the number is not a property of the product; and CCXT applies one basis point by default on seven venues and documents the off switch in the same paragraph as the fee.

The supply side of this is equally open. The Hyperliquid Python SDK ships approve_builder_fee and an example for people building their own front end — it carries no default builder address of its own, but it hands you the machinery to charge your users.

A broker code tags the order and the rebate goes to the vendor

Older, larger and invisible at trade time. Every major centralised venue runs a broker or partner programme in which orders carrying an identifier are counted to that partner, and the partner is paid out of the fee you were already paying. Nothing is added to your cost; the venue's cut is simply split.

OKX's broker API guide states the mechanic in one line — "when the request parameter has tag, please be sure to enter your exclusive Broker code information" — and advertises up to 50% commission for a fully disclosed broker. Binance's equivalent, Binance Link, is a whole namespace of endpoints rather than a single header: the broker can set a sub-account's maker and taker commission through POST /sapi/v1/broker/subAccountApi/commission and read what it earned from GET /sapi/v1/broker/rebate/recentRecord, which is limited to a seven-day query window.

What that looks like from the reader's side is a configuration file. Passivbot ships broker_codes.hjson carrying codes for Binance, Bybit, Bitget, OKX, KuCoin with separate spot and futures entries, GateIO and WEEX — and lists Hyperliquid, Bitunix, defx and paradex with null, which is the file stating plainly that those venues carry no broker payload. Read that file and you know exactly where the project earns and where it does not.

SignalPlus documents the same mechanism on a derivatives venue: it attaches a partner broker identifier to the orders it sends to Deribit, and its own page says the effect is that Deribit recognises them as partner-sourced and credits the rebates to SignalPlus. Worth noting the exact scope of a statement like that — the vendor's broker-ID page covers one venue, which is not the same as a claim that the others carry no tag.

A referral link attaches to the account, not to the trade

A broker code follows the order. A referral attribution follows the account, usually for its lifetime, and it is claimed once — at sign-up — which is why so much free software would like you to open a new account.

OctoBot states the arrangement about as plainly as it can be stated, on its own exchanges page: the goal is to keep the open-source bot free, "therefore we rely on exchanges partnerships", and trading on a partner venue supports the project at no cost to you. Nineteen exchanges are partners; the README carries links for five of them. Hummingbot's README sponsor table is the version where the reader is paid too — four of the links advertise a fee discount, −10% at one venue and −20% at three others. 3Commas runs it at scale: every sign-up button on its supported-exchanges page routes through the vendor's own link shortener into affiliate URLs, and its affiliate page offers partners up to 25 percent recurring commission with a bonus tiered on referred volume.

Passivbot publishes the condition most projects leave vague: it earns Binance commission only from accounts created after 21 September 2024 that were opened either with no referral link at all or under its own. That is the attribution rule stated in public, and it is the reason a project may ask you to open a second account rather than connect the one you have.

One case in this catalogue goes further than a request. On Tealstreet, a Bitunix API key works only if the Bitunix account was registered through Tealstreet's referral link — an existing account cannot be used, and the vendor's advice is to open a new one or pick a different venue. The vendor describes that as the exchange's doing rather than its own. Either way it is the point at which a referral relationship stops being invisible and becomes a requirement.

Routing order flow buys a share of the fees

Where a venue is on-chain and governed, the same arrangement is a published parameter rather than a sales agreement. dYdX's revenue share documentation describes an Order Router Rev Share that "enables third-party order routers to direct orders to dYdX and earn a portion of the trading fees (maker and taker)", specified in parts per million, with the router address and its split approved by a governance vote. The document also sets the priority: affiliate revenue is distributed first, and where an active affiliate split has not hit its 30-day maximum, the order router receives nothing.

CoinRoutes is the card here that sits inside that arrangement — on 23 October 2025 it announced it was the first governance-approved partner in dYdX's revenue share, under which partners earn a share of the trading fees their referred users generate. It is also the card that shows how little a revenue share tells you about your own bill: the announcement does not say whether it changes what the client pays, and no page on the vendor's site names a builder fee or an execution commission of its own.

The venue pays for the integration itself

Distinct from anything per-trade, and the one that quietly shapes the product. The Hummingbot Foundation publishes a rate card on its exchanges page: a maintained connector starts at $10,000 and a sponsorship at $50,000, paid by the exchange. The bot is Apache-2.0 and nothing is sold to the person running it.

Insilico Terminal has no pricing page at all — /pricing returns 404 — and its FAQ explains why: "We have brokerage deals with exchanges which are comparable to referral link structure deals … they compensate us for the volume we bring in." The consequence is visible in the venue list, which is shaped by who signed an agreement rather than by where a trader might want to trade.

This is the form to understand before reading any coverage table. A supported-venue list on free software is a list of commercial relationships at least as much as it is a list of engineering decisions, and the venues that are missing are as informative as the ones that are there.

Screen space is sold to the other side of the market

The screeners are a different business again: the reader is not routing orders, so the product is attention, and the buyers are token teams. DEX Screener publishes its rate card — Enhanced Token Info from $299, banner advertising from $299, a trending-bar slot from $2,000 in packages of a day to a week rotated with up to five other advertisers on the same chain, and a custom direct deal at a fixed minimum of $100,000 with KYC on the advertiser. Boosts are sold from the token page itself in packs lasting 12 to 24 hours.

Where a paid input reaches the ranking, and where nobody has checked

This is the distinction the page exists for, and it is easy to blur.

"The vendor earns from your volume" and "the vendor sells ranking" are different claims with different consequences, and only the second means the order of what you are looking at was bought. In this catalogue there is exactly one product where the second is documented, by the vendor: DEX Screener states that its Trending Score blends market activity, page visits, community reactions and trust signals, and that paid Boost packs apply a multiplier to it, that trending-bar ads help it, and that tokens with Enhanced Token Info get a lift. None of that is hidden. It does mean the trending list measures attention, some of it purchased.

For every other product on this page, the arrangement documented is payment for flow or for an integration — not for a position in a list. That a vendor is paid by seven exchanges is not evidence that those exchanges are ranked ahead of others in its interface, and this page does not claim it. It is a question worth asking a vendor, and the honest state of our own knowledge is that we have not checked it.

What it costs

The builder fee, in money. One basis point is 0.0001 of notional. On $250,000 of monthly turnover that is $25; on $10 million it is $1,000 a month. Set that against the subscription it is attached to — Velo charges 199 USD a month for its top tier, so at a few million dollars of monthly flow the basis point is the larger number. For a strategy quoting inside the spread it can be the difference between a positive and a negative expectancy, which is why CCXT documenting a one-line off switch matters more than the rate does.

The ceiling you agreed to, not the rate you were quoted. Hyperliquid's cap is 0.1% on perps and 1% on spot, and Tealstreet's own docs say the rate can be higher than one basis point if you arrived through an affiliate who set their own. Read the number on the approval prompt rather than the number in the marketing copy.

Broker codes, referrals and revenue shares cost you nothing at the till. In all three the venue splits a fee you were already paying. The occasional referral link is worth real money in the other direction — a −20% fee discount on a venue where you were going to trade anyway is a larger annual sum than most of the subscriptions in this category.

The costs that do not appear as a number are the ones to weigh. A venue list selected by who pays. A push toward a fresh account, sometimes as a hard requirement. A vendor whose revenue rises with your turnover and not with your returns. And on a screener, a ranking that is partly an advertising product.

What the other side pays, for scale: $10,000 for a maintained connector and $50,000 for a sponsorship at Hummingbot; $299 to $100,000 on the DEX Screener rate card; up to $100 per licence sold to a Gunbot reseller, of which there are seventeen; 30 percent of every recurring payment to a Bitsgap affiliate, on a 30-day cookie that renews on every visit.

How to find out in ten minutes

Six places, in the order they are worth checking.

1. The pricing page. A 404, or a page that says free with no adjacent product, means the money is somewhere else. That is a starting point, not a verdict.
2. The terms of service, searched for "fee" and "commission". This is where the builder fee and the venue-rebate clause usually live, and it is the one document the vendor had to be accurate in. Tealstreet's says it may receive a fee or commission arising from the fees the exchanges charge the user, in as many words.
3. The repository, for a configuration file. broker_codes.hjson, a referral or broker_id constant, a default address in a client's order-submission path. A code that ships as a default is earning by default.
4. The README, below the install instructions. Sponsor tables and exchange tables are where the referral links sit, and a ?ref=, /join?, invite, utm_source or an opaque short link in a sign-up button is the whole tell.
5. The wallet prompt. On a chain venue, the builder-fee approval is a transaction you sign, and the maximum rate is on the screen. It is the only moment the number is unavoidable.
6. The supported-venue list, read as a list of counterparties. Which venues are present, which are conspicuously absent, and whether the missing ones are the large venues or the ones with no broker programme.

What you can do about it

Read the approval screen before you sign it, and treat the number as a ceiling. It is the maximum that builder address can charge you, for as long as the approval stands. A rate you cannot see on that screen is not a rate you have agreed to.

Turn off what has a switch. CCXT's default builder fee on seven venues is one line — exchange.options['builderFee'] = False — and the project documents it next to the fee. Software that charges by default and documents the off switch is doing the honest version of this; software that charges by default and does not is the case to walk away from.

Work out whether a basis point matters to your strategy before it matters. Against a taker fee on a handful of discretionary trades a month it is noise. Against a market-making or high-turnover strategy it is a line item that scales with exactly the thing you are trying to maximise. Do that arithmetic with your own expected turnover, not with the vendor's example.

If you are opening a new account anyway, shop the referral link. A link carrying −10% or −20% on venue fees pays you more than it pays the project, at any volume you are likely to run. If you are not opening a new account, be suspicious of any product that makes you.

Treat the supported-venue list as the payer list, and ask the vendor directly. "Which of these venues do you have a broker, referral or revenue-share arrangement with, and does any of it change my fee schedule?" There is a correct answer to that question, it is short, and an evasion is itself informative. Ask it before you wire keys, not after.

On a screener, treat rank as attention and check what is purchasable. Where a vendor publishes that paid products feed the ranking, believe it. Where a vendor publishes nothing about how its ranking is computed, you have learned less than the first case, not more.

If you want none of it, the option exists. GoCryptoTrader carries no exchange referral links, no sponsor banners and no broker programme, and asks for a donation instead. Freqtrade adds no commission and routes nothing through anything of its own. The Hyperliquid Python SDK has no default builder address. The trade is that you supply the server, the strategy and the support, and the catalogue page for trading bots is the place to weigh that.

If you are the one publishing the link, disclose it properly. This matters the moment you fork a bot and keep its referral codes, or write up a tool you earn from. The FTC's revised Endorsement Guides, announced on 29 June 2023, turn on whether there is a material connection between endorser and seller, added a definition of "clear and conspicuous", noted that a platform's built-in disclosure tool may not be adequate on its own, and set out the liability of advertisers, endorsers and intermediaries. The agency's accompanying FAQ is blunter about the practical form: disclose the relationship clearly and conspicuously, "the closer the disclosure is to your recommendation, the better", and a bare "commissionable link" is probably not a clear disclosure. This is US guidance and your jurisdiction may differ; the standard it describes is a reasonable floor anywhere.