8 Differences Between Binance and Coinbase Pro

What are the differences between Binance and Coinbase Pro? You must be aware of the ongoing debate on Binance and Coinbase Pro if you follow different websites on crypto news and events.

Undoubtedly, these are two of the largest crypto exchanges in the world but still, they come with their characteristics pros and cons and differences.

This article will take you through it and make you more knowledgeable about the two platforms. It will make your job of choosing one among the two comparatively easier.

The significance of Binance and Coinbase Pro can be well determined by the fact that these two crypto exchanges cover a large part of the crypto market which is worth more than $250 billion, as of now.

If you are a crypto trader or investor or just an ardent follower, it is good to know these differences so that you can make the right choice according to your needs and conditions.

Both these platforms cater to the needs of the experienced traders and investors as well as the beginners in the crypto market.

This article will differentiate between these two platforms on the basis of different factors, namely, security, currencies supported, customer support, fees charged, and more.

A brief overview and the parameters in the end will also help you to choose the right platform for you. Check out Differences Between Binance and Binance US.

8 Differences Between Binance and Coinbase Pro

The differences between Coinbase Pro and Binance will help you know how each of these platforms works and understand which one will suit you the best.

Therefore, skipping the initial greetings, here are the major differences for you to know the answer to the question, ‘Which is better.’

1. Basics

Coinbase Pro is actually an online trading platform and an addition of Coinbase. This is one of the most favored places for the crypto users to buy Ethereum and Bitcoin online.

Based in the United States, this platform is regulated and offers a reasonably good number of crypto trading pairs using some of the biggest crypto coins available in the market.

The most significant aspect of this platform is that it is backed by some of the most prominent names and companies such as Union Square Ventures, Andersen Horowitz, and others and also has some serious smart money in NYSE.

On the other hand, the Binance crypto exchange is an independent company based in Asia. This exchange focuses mainly on catering to the needs of the users in English and Chinese speaking markets.

It is younger than Coinbase Pro by a couple of years but is considered to be one of the best places to trade with different types of Altcoins.

In terms of influence on the crypto space, Binance beats Coinbase Pro because every time with its listing it causes a massive and an instant boost in the price of a crypto coin.

2. Fee Structure

When it comes to the fees, there are usually three different types of fees charged when you trade on a crypto exchange platform. These are the trading fees, deposit fees, and withdrawal fees.

In this aspect, the Binance exchange seems to offer its services at a comparatively lower rate of fees. Ideally, for all types of trades made on this platform, it charges no more than a 0.1% fee on the exchange.

If you use the native token of the platform you can even lower the fees to half. The best part is that this crypto exchange platform does not charge any fee for making a deposit or withdrawal. As for the maker and taker fees, it is 0% for the makers, and for the takers, it is based on the 30-day volume.

In comparison, the fee structure of Coinbase Pro is also quite low as compared with other crypto exchanges but when compared with Binance it is a tad higher.

The fees range between 0.1% and 0.25% for the takers but as for the maker fees, it is usually zero. However, if you know what you are doing and the specific ways, you may not have to pay the trading fees.

This platform also allows its users to place different types of orders such as limit orders, a market order, and a stop-limit order.

3. Currency Support

The Binance crypto exchange does not support fiat trading but when it comes to crypto coins support it typically provides a much wider array of them as compared to that of Coinbase Pro.

A few of the crypto coins supported by Binance include EOS, NEO, Cardano, Lisk, Bitcoin, Steem, Gifto, USDT, Binance Coin, Ethereum, and lots more. The platform even has its own native coin BNB which the users can use to lower the trading fees on this exchange.

On the other hand, Coinbase Pro supports a wide range of fiat as well as crypto pairs. Some of these are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, ETC, XRP, ZRX, BAT, DNT, MANA, LOOM, and CVC. However, the currency portfolio of this exchange is considered to be quite small.

The platform strictly adheres to the US regulation which is the primary reason for it offering such a low number of currencies for trade. However, the company now is contemplating on expanding its pool of Altcoins in the future.

4. Security

As for the security factor, the users feel that it is much better for Coinbase Pro because it is more honest and open regarding storing funds of the users.

On the other hand, it is not very clear about how Binance manages the funds of the users which is a significant concern for the customers.

5. Customer Support Service

As for Binance, customer support service is quite slow, especially when it is busy. However, you can avail it in 4 different languages such as English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

On the other hand, the customer support service of Coinbase Pro is even slower. It may take as long as 2 to 3 days to get a reply to your email query. However, there is a detailed FAQ section on their website that may prove to be quite useful for the traders.

Apart from that, the platform also offers support over their telephone helpline but that is restricted for the users based in the United States and not accessible by the international users.

6. User Friendliness

The interface of Coinbase Pro is more compact and easy to use. It offers useful features and functionality to the users which include price charts and order books, buy and sell buttons, order and trade history, everything on one single page. This allows the users to analyze the data in a short time without needing to switch between screens.

Binance, on the other hand, is a bit complicated for the beginners to use this platform. This is primarily because it comes with two specific user settings – one for the basic users and an advanced one for the more experienced users.

However, you may find the switch option to be a bit non-intuitive. You will find it under the ‘Exchange’ button located at the top left corner of the screen.

The Advanced setting comes with a dark theme but offers a few more tools than the basic setting to help in your technical analysis and quick check-ups. It has bigger charts with the latest prices displayed on the right.

There are buy boxes placed below it. However, even if you use the basic features, it will appear to be more advanced if you are a beginner.

Therefore, it can be said that the Binance exchange platform is typically designed for the more experienced traders to provide them with all the relevant information and useful features that they need, in a much simpler and clearer way.

7. Account Creation Process

You will need to have a separate account for each to use these platforms for your crypto needs. The process of creating the account on each of these platforms differs a little as well and needs to be explained in detail.

According to the user agreement of Coinbase Pro, you will be allowed to have one personal and one business account. The difference between these two accounts is that in the business account you will need to provide distinct data such as the name and the location of your business as well as the CEO of the business.

While creating the regular account you will need to click on the ‘Create Account’ button on the home screen of Coinbase Pro to go to the sign-up page. Here you will need to fill up the form with all relevant data and then click on ‘create.’

It will take you to a confirmation screen. This page will tell you that a verification email has been sent to the email address you provided during sign-up. After you open your e-mail and click on the ‘Verify Email Address’ link you will be taken to the user terms screen of Coinbase Pro.

Read those terms and conditions, if you are not familiar with them already, or skip them and click on the ‘I Accept’ button. When you do so, a screen will appear where you will need to enter your phone number in the specified field for an enhanced 2FA security though you can skip it if you wish for now.

Your account then will be in a limited state till you link your phone number with it. This will allow you to gain complete access to your account and enjoy the funding and trading options offered by Coinbase Pro.

Phone verification will be done by Coinbase Pro. The automated response bot will send a 7 digit SMS code to your phone number furnished which you will need to enter in the specified field.

It is only after that you will need to provide further details as asked when you wish to open an ‘individual” or ‘institutional’ account. The entire process of creating an account on Coinbase Pro is unique because you can even create it by linking your Coinbase account if you have one created already.

As for the Binance exchange, most of the process to create an account on the platform is almost similar to that of Coinbase Pro with the requirement of an email address and a strong password.

You will optionally require furnishing the referral ID if an existing Binance account holder refers you to the platform so that the person gets the referral bonus.

When you are done with the form fill-up process, you will need to click on Registration. Here a slide verification screen will pop up and you will have to complete it. It is then you will get the verification email in your inbox. After you click on the link to verify, you will be asked to log in again.

Here the safety risk notice will come up to indicate that your account has been created and is fully secured. You will find several boxes here.

Click on all those boxes and ‘continue’ to unlock the Level 1 account on the exchange platform. Here you will have to submit further data for verification to upgrade your personal or business account to levels 2 and 3.

8. Limits and Options

The Coinbase Pro exchange does not have any limits on deposits when it is related to cryptocurrency or wire transfers. You are also allowed to make fiat deposits on this exchange by using the ACH bank transfer system.

However, there is a wait time of 3 to 5 business days associated with it. If you make the transfer on a weekend or if there are other bank holidays, it can take as many as 7 to 10 days in order to complete the transaction.

The support section of this platform is quite intuitive and will tell you how exactly you can make wire transfers almost instantly on this exchange.

And yes, you can also transfer funds from your Coinbase account, if you have it, for free. As far as withdrawal on this particular crypto exchange is concerned, the limit is typically up to $10,000 in a day.

As for Binance, you can deposit in and trade with cryptocurrencies only on this exchange platform. However, as said earlier, there are no limits imposed on deposits but for making withdrawals, the platform limits it to 2 BTC for the Level 1 account holders and up to 50 BTC for the Level 2 users.

When it comes to the trading options on Binance you can place only market orders and limit orders here but no stop-loss orders. This specific feature is not favored by the more advanced users though.

However, the interface is quite good enough to support making a quick purchase of an Altcoin for BTC. Moreover, this particular platform does not allow depositing or trading with fiat currencies. However, the newly launched Binance Jersey supports it.

Which is Better – Binance and Coinbase Pro?

If you are given the option to choose from Binance and Coinbase Pro, you should ideally go with Coinbase Pro first, gain some experience, and then move on to Binance. There are several good reasons to say so.

Both these platforms have distinctive advantages and some drawbacks but Coinbase Pro is perhaps a bit more convenient to use for the beginners in the crypto market space.

It comes with a simpler interface and a relatively low coin support. The best part of it is that Coinbase Pro is the direct pipeline to its parent company, Coinbase.

However, this does not mean Binance is extremely difficult or impossible to master. In fact, any trader who is looking for a great variety of Altcoins to trade with will not find it to be disappointing since it has got a lot to offer.

Both these platforms are excellent for the more experienced crypto traders and investors. You can use fiat currency on Coinbase Pro to purchase BTC/ETH and then send them to Binance so that you can buy some new Altcoins.

There are also several other utilitarian features of the two crypto exchanges that make it quite difficult to mark one better than the other.

Here is a brief overview of both these exchanges that will help you know why Coinbase Pro should be the preferred choice for the beginners in crypto space.

The Binance exchange was founded by Changpeng Zhao and Yi He in 2017 when it raised nearly $15 million via an ICO in July, the same year.

Both the founders started their careers in crypto at the OK Coin exchange. Binance has its headquarters in Malta but there are also other offices in Japan, Taiwan and China.

Binance is typically a crypto-to-crypto exchange. This means that buyers and sellers can interact via this platform for crypto trading.

It has its own native coin, Binance Coin, represented as BNB. This coin is now the third-largest crypto coin in the world with only BTC and ETH beating it.

The Binance platform also supports several ICO projects that help them in listing new coins on the platform.

However, this particular aspect of the platform has resulted in some serious criticism from the crypto market experts.

They feel that the platform does not research well or do its due diligence to know whether a particular coin is a scam or not.

This is not unjustified because there have been a lot of scam coins traded on this platform before.

Over time, Binance has also added several new services to offer to its users. It offers a wide range of trading pairs which is a significant aspect of it that has helped it to become one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. It has even been able to beat Coinbase in that matter.

Here are a few of the useful services that are included and now offered by Binance to its users:

• It supports a wide range of fiat currencies that the users all over the world can use to trade with. It is much unlike its earlier days when it was difficult for the investors to get access to the crypto market and their favored virtual currency by using their local currency.
• It supports an extensive array of payment methods which allows the users to choose an option according to their convenience and depending on their location.
• It also offers a cryptocurrency futures option which is especially useful for the more advanced and experienced crypto traders. They can now have the ability to use quarterly futures or perpetual contracts in order to develop their crypto trading strategies.
• Then there is the Binance DeFi feature that allows its community to access several Decentralized Finance solutions and applications.

Finally, there is the Binance Smart Chain which has allowed it to create a larger network of projects, solutions, and initiatives as opposed to Coinbase Pro.

This has also helped it to evolve rapidly from a simple spot trading platform to one of the largest crypto exchanges in the market.

In fact, there are more than a dozen projects that are functioning on top of this Smart Chain and providing better DeFi solutions to the crypto users.

Coinbase Pro, on the other hand, was launched in 2015 by Coinbase which was founded by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam in 2012 with its headquarter based in San Francisco, California.

This platform allows making instant trades at a low cost. And, if you are an experienced trader and know the trick, you may not even have to pay any fees at all on this platform while trading.

This crypto platform is also good for the experienced traders since it offers institutional solutions in addition to DeFi and other solutions. This has also helped this platform to get some prominent companies onboard.

There are also lots of additional features in Coinbase Pro that are quite useful for the new traders as well as the retail users. One such useful feature is its support for those users who want to stake their coins.

When it comes to the security aspect of the two exchanges, both of them use a two-factor authentication mode which protects the accounts of the users.

This system needs two types of passwords where the second password is sent to the mobile phone of the users or is created by an application such as Google Authenticator.

In addition to that, both these platforms maintain a solid security record as compared to any other crypto exchange.

However, the Binance exchange was not as secure as it is today since the beginning.

Within a year of its launch, there have been a lot of incidents of hacking and funds being stolen or went missing from the Binance platform by malicious actors.

This happened when there was a planned upgrade made in the system.

Due to this, Binance was compelled to apologize to the users and along with that also had to offer a discount of up to 70% on trading fees to the users for causing the trouble due to the upgrade.

The exchange was again targeted on May 7, 2019, and this time it lost 7,074 Bitcoin that was worth nearly $54 million.

Learning from these incidents, the security team of the platform updated the security system and was able to protect the money of the users from the hackers.

The exchange has also created a separate fund to repay those users and investors who are affected by such attacks.

In March 2020, the hackers logged into this platform by stealing the login details of the users and tried to steal money from the exchange.

The security system however was able to detect it in time and prevented it. Therefore, users did not lose any funds and those of the hackers were donated to charity.

In comparison, Coinbase Pro is a much safer and secure crypto platform to use because it is a regulated firm.

The funds of the customers are insured by FDIC or Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Moreover, the platform stores more than 98% of the crypto funds in a cold storage which makes it more secure.

Typically, there has been no record of this platform being hacked or endangered in any way by any malicious actors from the outside.

It is much more open, honest and has better security records than Binance.

Therefore, if you are looking for one of the most secure crypto exchanges to store your coins and trade with them safely, Coinbase Pro should be your first choice.

As for customer support, like most of the crypto exchanges, both Coinbase Pro and Binance need to make some serious improvements.

This is one aspect that is seriously affecting the utility of these two crypto exchanges and there are lots of complaints from the users saying that they cannot access customer support on these two platforms.

Both of these platforms prefer communicating with their respective users over email since they do not have a live chat support option.

However, both of these platforms provide ‘Support Bot’ services to answer the general inquiries of the users.

However, barring the downsides, it can be said that both these platforms are quite good crypto exchanges that are up there against some of the best ones available in the market.

It is up to your needs and preferences as to choose which among these two you will want to go with.

Conclusion

When it comes to trading crypto, it can be a bit scary and frustrating for the beginners. Add to that, it can be even a bit expensive if you do not pick the right exchange to trade your crypto coins. This article will surely help you avoid all that.