Independent exchange research · not financial advice
Which crypto exchange should you use?
Plumbline ranks crypto exchanges on the things you can actually check — security, fees, regulation and custody — and never on where a price might go. Independent research, dated facts, and one rule: a payout never buys a place.
Ranked on security · fees · assets · regulation · custody · ease
100 points, split across six things you can check — none of them a price prediction.
Security carries the most weight because the worst outcome on an exchange is not a bad trade — it is the exchange failing with your money on it, as FTX did in 2022.
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Guide →Picking a crypto exchange is the first real decision anyone makes in this market, and most guides get it backwards — they rank whichever venue pays them best and call it a review. Plumbline does the opposite. We score every exchange the same way, on six factors you can verify for yourself, to answer one plain question: which crypto exchange deserves your trust? Not which coin to buy — that is never our call to make.
Start with trust, not price
An exchange is a custodian first and a trading screen second. When your crypto sits in an exchange account, that company holds the keys and you are trusting it to stay solvent, stay unhacked, and let you withdraw when you ask. FTX looked like a top-three exchange right up to the week in November 2022 when it collapsed with billions of dollars of customer money missing. That is why security and track record carry the most weight in our scoring, and why 'which exchange' is a more important question than most beginners realise.
The six factors that decide it
We grade on security and track record, regulation and licensing, the all-in cost of trading, the range of supported assets and fiat rails, how freely you can move funds to your own wallet, and everyday ease of use. Fees hide more than any other line — a simple 'buy' button can cost several percent in spread while a pro screen charges a fraction of that, which is why we pull exchange fees apart in detail. If you want the framework before the ranking, our guide to how to choose a crypto exchange walks through each factor with the questions to ask.
What we won't tell you
We will not tell you what coin to buy, whether to buy now, or what any price will do. Those are the questions that fill the search box and empty wallets, and the honest answer to all of them is the same: nobody knows, so learn to judge risk for yourself. What we can do is help you avoid the venues that lose people money before the market even moves — the ones with the red flags of a bad exchange. Getting the exchange right is the part of this you can actually control.
Where to begin
Two pages cover most readers. The ranked list of the best crypto exchanges gives you a scored table and a short, honest write-up of each — including one venue that pays us nothing and still earns its place. And because a review site lives or dies on its independence, our affiliate disclosure spells out how we make money and why it never moves a ranking. Read both before you open any account, and remember the whole site is research, not financial advice.