What is a perpetual future
A perpetual future is a futures contract with no expiry, held close to the spot price by a funding payment between longs and shorts, which makes funding a cost of time rather than a fee on trading.
A perpetual future is a futures contract that never expires. You can hold it indefinitely, which is the whole appeal and also the thing that creates the mechanism people find confusing.
The problem an expiry normally solves
An ordinary futures contract converges on the spot price because it settles on a known date. Remove the expiry and nothing forces the two together, so the contract can drift away from the asset it is supposed to track. Something else has to do that job.
That job is the funding rate
At regular intervals, one side pays the other. When the perpetual trades above spot, longs pay shorts, which makes holding a long more expensive and pulls the price down. When it trades below, the payment reverses. It is a continuous nudge rather than a settlement, and it is why the price stays close to spot without ever being forced there.
What that means if you hold one
Your profit is not only the price moving your way. If you hold a long while funding is positive, you are paying to hold it, every interval, whether or not the price moves. Over a long enough hold that cost can exceed the move you were right about. Funding is not a fee on trading, it is a cost of time.
Reading it live
The funding column below is the real, current rate on each market. Positive means longs are paying shorts right now. Watching it move is a faster way to understand the mechanism than any explanation, including this one.
How the funding payment is actually calculated
The rate is derived from the gap between the perpetual price and an index of spot prices, and it is charged at fixed intervals rather than continuously. Exactly how it is derived differs by venue, so a rate on one exchange is not directly comparable to a rate on another without checking the interval and the formula. The figures on this page are one venue's, at that venue's interval, which is why the interval is labelled next to the number.
What a very high funding rate usually means
That positioning has become crowded on one side, not that the price is about to move. A sharply positive rate means longs are paying meaningfully to remain long, which is information about traders rather than about the asset. It is most useful read alongside open interest: high funding with rising open interest is a crowded trade being built, while high funding with falling open interest is often a crowded trade being unwound.
Live, right now, on this page
| Market | Price | Funding | 24h volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | $79,657.50 | 0.0006% | $203,532,857 |
| ETH | $2,487.35 | 0.0013% | $138,334,875 |
| SOL | $105.81 | -0.0012% | $46,858,638 |
| HYPE | $87.60 | 0.0013% | $11,072,399 |
Live perpetual markets with their current funding rates, read at render. Positive funding means longs are paying shorts right now. Read at 2026-09-06 17:30 UTC; accurate as of that time and not afterwards.
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