Crypto exchange fees in Japan, and the cheapest way to buy bitcoin

The five places crypto fees hide in Japan

Most fee comparisons stop at the trading fee. In practice, money leaves your pocket at five points: when you deposit yen, when you buy, when you sell, when you withdraw yen, and when you send coins somewhere else. An exchange that is free at one point often makes it back at another, so the only fair comparison is the whole journey.

The five layers are: deposit fees (your bank’s transfer charge, or a convenience-store fee); trading fees on the order bookThe exchange’s marketplace (取引所, torihikijo) where users trade with each other at prices they set. Fees are low, but you place orders yourself.; the spread on the dealer desk; yen withdrawal fees; and network or send fees when you move coins to your own wallet or another platform. This page takes them one at a time and ends with a calculator for ¥100,000 there and back.

Every number comes from the exchanges’ official fee pages. Two of them, bitFlyer and Rakuten Wallet, block automated access, so their figures come from archived copies of the official pages and are marked as such. We do not publish measured spreads, because we have not measured them. To check that an exchange is licensed in the first place, see the list of FSA-registered exchanges.

Order-book fees: maker vs taker

On an order book, your fee depends on how you trade. Post a limit order at a price nobody is offering yet and wait for it to fill, and you are the makerThe side that posts a new limit order and waits. It adds liquidity, so fees are lower or even negative (you get paid).. Hit an order that is already sitting there, which is what every market order does, and you are the takerThe side that trades instantly against an existing order. Market orders are always taker orders, usually at the higher fee.. Three exchanges pay makers a small rebate: a −0.02% maker fee at bitbank means a filled ¥100,000 limit order earns you ¥20.

If you only want bitcoin and don’t mind market orders, Coincheck’s 0% is the simplest number on the table. If you are patient enough to use limit orders, the rebates at bitbank, GMO Coin and SBI VC Trade start to count. Volume-tiered exchanges such as Binance Japan, OKJ and bitFlyer put small personal accounts on their highest rate, so the headline “from 0.01%” rarely applies to you.

Check which coins actually trade on the order book before you sign up. SBI VC Trade’s order book has eight coins, and everything else is dealer-desk only; bitbank puts every coin on the book. An exchange can have a low trading fee and still push you onto its dealer desk for the coin you want.

Dealer spreads: only two exchanges publish them

The big “Buy” button in most Japanese exchange apps leads to the dealer deskThe dealer desk (販売所, hanbaijo): the exchange sells to you itself at a quoted price. Simple, but its buy-sell gap is your real cost. (販売所, hanbaijo). It says “no trading fee”, and that is true, but the exchange quotes a buy price above the market and a sell price below it. That gap is the spreadThe difference between the buy and sell price quoted at the same moment. On dealer desks it can be several percent, far more than any listed fee., and it is the fee you actually pay.

Among the official pages we checked, only two exchanges put a number on it. Coincheck’s fee page gives 0.1–5.0% against its reference price (1.7–7.0% on some coins), and Zaif’s gives 0.1–8.0%. Both warn that spreads widen when markets move fast. bitFlyer, bitbank, SBI VC Trade, GMO Coin, Binance Japan, Rakuten Wallet and Mercoin do not publish a figure.

We have not measured anyone’s spread, so we won’t tell you which is narrowest. You can check it yourself in ten seconds: open the dealer screen and note the buy and sell prices shown at the same moment. If the app quotes ¥10.3 million to buy and ¥10.0 million to sell (made-up numbers), the ¥300,000 gap divided by the ¥10.15 million midpoint is about 3%, which is roughly what a buy-and-sell round trip would cost you at that moment.

Yen deposits: bank transfer, instant deposit, konbini, PayPay

There are three main ways to get yen in. A plain bank transfer (振込, furikomi) to the exchange’s account is usually free on the exchange side, but your bank charges its own transfer fee. An instant deposit (即時入金 or クイック入金) pulls money from a partner bank’s online banking and lands in minutes, often free. A convenience-store payment (コンビニ入金) lets you pay cash at the till, for a fee of several hundred yen or more.

The practical upshot: the cheapest exchange for you depends on the bank you already have. If your account is at Japan Post Bank (ゆうちょ銀行) or PayPay Bank, GMO Coin’s free instant deposit is hard to beat. Rakuten Bank customers get free real-time deposits at Rakuten Wallet. Docomo SMTB Net Bank (formerly Sumishin SBI Net Bank) works with bitbank, BitTrade, Binance Japan and bitFlyer. Transferring from the same bank the exchange uses to receive money is often free or cheaper, depending on your bank.

Whichever route you use, the money must come from an account in your own name, and the sender name has to match the name on your exchange account. For foreign residents that usually means the katakana or romaji name your bank holds. Convenience-store deposits are handy if you don’t want to use your bank, but expensive: ¥770 on a ¥10,000 deposit at Coincheck is 7.7% before you have bought anything. More on each method in ways to pay for crypto in Japan, and the PayPay route in buying crypto with PayPay.

Domestic exchanges don’t sell crypto against credit cards. The one exception we found is Zaif’s own card, usable only for its coin savings plan at 3.5%.

The 7-day hold after instant deposits

This one isn’t a fee, but it can cost you. bitFlyer’s official page (archived April 2025) says money from a quick deposit is restricted for 7 days, and GMO Coin applies a 7-day restriction to money deposited by Pay-easy. During that week you may not be able to withdraw that yen or send the coins you bought with it off the platform.

The reason is fraud: criminals deposit from hijacked bank accounts, buy crypto and send it away within minutes. In August 2026 the FSA and the National Police Agency asked the crypto industry to go further, with measures such as holding periods on outgoing transfers after a deposit or purchase, pre-registered withdrawal addresses with a waiting period, and stricter name matching. Expect holds like these to become more common, not less.

If you plan to move coins to a hardware wallet or another platform right after buying, fund the account by normal bank transfer instead, or read the exchange’s help page on holds before you deposit. Our wallet guide covers what Japanese exchanges ask for when you withdraw to your own wallet.

Yen withdrawals and bitcoin send fees

Getting money out costs a flat fee per yen withdrawal at most exchanges, while sending bitcoin costs either a fixed amount of BTC or a fee that floats with network congestion.

Watch the bitcoin column more than the yen column. A fixed fee in BTC gets more expensive in yen as the price rises: at ¥10 million per bitcoin, 0.0005 BTC is about ¥5,000. If you plan to move coins to self-custody regularly, free sends at SBI VC Trade and GMO Coin are worth more than any trading rebate.

Sending abroad has its own friction. Since June 2023, Japan’s Travel RuleRules requiring exchanges to pass sender and recipient details along with crypto transfers. In Japan they apply from June 2023; some routes between exchanges are blocked as a result. requires exchanges to pass sender and recipient details with each transfer. Exchanges use different messaging systems, so some exchange-to-exchange routes don’t work, and withdrawals to a personal wallet require you to declare who owns the address. For converting back to yen, see how to cash out crypto in Japan.

What ¥100,000 costs there and back

Putting the layers together: buy ¥100,000 of bitcoin with a market order on the order book (taker), sell it the same way, and withdraw the yen. Bank transfer fees, price moves and tax are left out. Change the amount or the dealer spread in the calculator to see your own case.

↑ The calculator is at the top of this page. Plug in your own numbers.

Here is the arithmetic behind the bars. GMO Coin and SBI VC Trade charge 0.05% each way (about ¥100 in total) and nothing to withdraw, so roughly ¥100. Coincheck charges 0% to trade BTC, so you pay only the ¥407 withdrawal fee. Binance Japan comes to about ¥350 (¥200 in trading plus ¥150), BitTrade about ¥530, OKJ about ¥680, bitbank about ¥970 (¥200 plus ¥770 for withdrawals over ¥30,000) and bitFlyer about ¥1,070.

Now do the same on a dealer desk. Using the range Coincheck publishes, a 0.1% spread each way costs about ¥200 for the round trip, and a 5.0% spread about ¥10,000. Fund the account at a convenience store and add another ¥1,018. In short, order-book fees differ by hundreds of yen; spreads and deposit methods differ by thousands.

The cheapest way to buy bitcoin in Japan, step by step

If you live in Japan and simply want to buy bitcoin as cheaply as possible, the recipe is short. It works whether you are buying ¥5,000 or ¥5 million.

• Pick the exchange that matches your bank. Free instant deposits beat any trading discount: Japan Post Bank or PayPay Bank point to GMO Coin, Rakuten Bank to Rakuten Wallet, Docomo SMTB to bitbank or BitTrade.
• Trade on the order book. Find the 取引所 (exchange) screen, not the 販売所 (dealer) screen.
• Use limit orders when you can wait. You pay the maker rate, which is a rebate at three exchanges.
• Skip konbini deposits for regular buying. They are fine for a one-off, costly as a habit.
• Withdraw in larger, less frequent amounts. Flat fees hurt small withdrawals most; mind the minimums.
• Hold coins you will move at an exchange with free sends. That saves thousands of yen per transfer at today’s prices.

Fees are one factor among several. An exchange with the lowest fees is no use if it doesn’t list your coin on its order book, or doesn’t take your bank. For the overall picture, see our comparison of exchanges in Japan; for the sign-up process with a residence card, see how to buy bitcoin in Japan.

No Japanese bank account? What visitors pay

Everything above assumes you live in Japan, with a residence card and a Japanese bank account. Tourists and short-term visitors can’t open accounts at domestic exchanges, so none of these fee tables apply to them. Most visitors simply keep using the platform they use at home, or buy with a foreign card on an international platform. Card purchases there usually cost noticeably more than a Japanese order book, because card processing fees are added on top of the trading fee.

CEX.IO is one such international platform. It holds a US FinCEN MSB registration and a UK FCA cryptoasset registration and accepts Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay. It is not registered with Japan’s FSA, does not support yen, and lists Japan among its unsupported countries, so it is not an option for people who live here. If you are moving to Japan, read crypto for foreigners in Japan first.

Fees and your tax return

Fees are not the only cost of trading. Crypto gains in Japan are usually taxed as miscellaneous income at progressive rates of up to 55% including resident tax, and every sale or crypto-to-crypto swap is a taxable event. Each exchange issues an annual transaction report (年間取引報告書) that you will need when you file, so download it every year even if you only traded a little. Our Japan crypto tax guide explains the rules, and the glossary decodes the Japanese terms you will meet on fee pages.

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