A perpetual future has no expiry, so nothing forces its price back to the spot index the way settlement forces a dated future. Funding is the substitute: a recurring cash transfer between traders (the exchange is not a party to it) that makes holding the crowded side cost money. When the perp trades above the index, the rate is positive and longs pay shorts; below the index, negative, and shorts pay longs.
At each settlement, everyone holding a position at the settlement timestamp pays or receives:
payment = position notional × funding rate
The rate on the ticker before settlement is an estimate computed from the perp-index premium over the current period (clamped within each exchange's caps); it can drift until the settlement moment, when it is fixed and applied.
The classic cycle is 00:00 / 08:00 / 16:00 UTC, but in our
July 2026 census 47–63% of USDT perps
(depending on venue) settle every 1h or 4h instead — and 22% of cross-listed coins use
different intervals on different exchanges. To compare rates at all, annualize each contract
with its own interval: rate × (24 / interval_h) × 365. The same 0.01% ticker
number is ~11% APR at 8h, ~22% at 4h, ~88% at 1h.
Funding is set independently on each venue by that venue's own order flow. A single snapshot from our monitor (BTC-USDT perp, July 18, 2026, 07:15 UTC — all six venues on an 8h interval for BTC):
| Venue | Rate / 8h | Annualized |
|---|---|---|
| KuCoin | +0.0100% | 10.9% |
| Binance | +0.0079% | 8.6% |
| OKX | +0.0052% | 5.7% |
| Bitget | +0.0044% | 4.8% |
| Bybit | +0.0037% | 4.1% |
| Gate | +0.0024% | 2.6% |
Identical coin, identical moment, and the cost of holding the long ranged from 2.6% to 10.9% annualized depending on where the position sat.
Summing the actual settled rates (not predictions) for the 30 days ending July 18, 2026 — 90 settlements per venue, pulled from each exchange's funding-history API:
| Venue | Cumulative 30d funding | Paid by a $100k long |
|---|---|---|
| Binance | +0.474% | ≈ $474 |
| OKX | +0.388% | ≈ $388 |
| Bitget | +0.374% | ≈ $374 |
| Gate | +0.366% | ≈ $366 |
| KuCoin | +0.330% | ≈ $330 |
| Bybit | +0.287% | ≈ $287 |
Two things worth absorbing: the month's funding bill on $100k ($287–474) was several times larger than the fee to open the position (a $40–75 taker order), and the venue choice alone moved the bill by ~65%. The same table read from the short side: shorts collected those amounts. Note this was one month in one market regime — rates flip sign in downtrends and the ranking reshuffles by coin and by month.
On new listings the premium can be violent: the most extreme contract in our July 18 snapshot settled hourly at −0.36% per period — an annualized −3,200% — meaning shorts were paying longs at an extraordinary rate to stay short. Such rates normalize within days, but they are exactly when misreading the interval hurts most: −0.36% "per period" reads mild if you assume it's per 8 hours.