What is a funding rate? A plain guide with real numbers

A funding rate is a small payment between the two sides of a perp. When it is positive, longs pay shorts; when it is negative, shorts pay longs. On Hyperliquid, in the middle hour longs paid shorts 1/8 of a basis point, which equals 1 basis point per 8 hours. Holding a 1x BTC long cost a middle 2.5 basis points for a day, 0.16% for a week and 0.68% for a month, from April 2025 to September 2026. These are past cases, not a forecast.

For how often funding was negative on 24 Hyperliquid coins, month by month, see Hyperliquid funding rate history.

What is a funding rate?

A perp is a futures contract that never expires (perps explained simply). Because it has no end date, nothing forces its price to meet the coin's regular price. Funding is the fix. It is a regular payment between traders on opposite sides of the perp.

A long gains when price rises. A short gains when price falls. A basis point (bp) is one hundredth of one percent, so 1 bp on a $10,000 position is $1.

The exchange does not keep funding. One side pays the other.

Who pays whom?

Who pays whom?

Funding rate	Who pays	Who receives
Positive	Longs	Shorts
Negative	Shorts	Longs

The idea is simple. If the perp trades above the coin's regular price, longs pay shorts. That makes holding a long cost more and a short cost less, which pushes the perp back down. If the perp trades below, the payments flip.

For BTC on Hyperliquid, negative hours were the minority: 15.37% of 13,152. The middle hourly rate was positive. Even so, negative funding is not rare, and it varies a lot by coin.

How is hourly funding different from 8-hour funding?

Hyperliquid pays funding every hour. Its hourly payment is one eighth of the 8-hour rate it would otherwise use. Many other exchanges settle every 8 hours, and rules differ by exchange and contract, so check each one.

A rate quoted per 8 hours looks 8 times bigger than the same rate quoted per hour. Convert before you compare.

How is hourly funding different from 8-hour funding?

You have	You want	Do this	Example
Rate per 8 hours	Rate per hour	Divide by 8	1 bp per 8 hours is 1/8 bp per hour
Rate per hour	Rate per 8 hours	Multiply by 8	1/8 bp per hour is 1 bp per 8 hours
Rate per hour	Rate per day	Multiply by 24	1/8 bp × 24 is 3 bp per day
Rate per hour, in percent	Simple yearly rate	Multiply by 8,760	BTC's average hour came to 7.93% a year

The yearly figure is annualized funding. It is a simple stretch of an observed average. It does not add up like a return you could have earned.

On a $10,000 long, 1/8 bp is 12.5 cents an hour, or about $3 a day, if every hour paid the middle rate. The measured middle day was a bit lower, because some hours paid less or were negative.

Funding is charged on the full size of the position, not on the money you put in. If you borrow to hold a position five times your own money, every cost here is five times larger as a share of your own money.

How often is funding negative, and does it differ by coin?

Yes, a lot. Here are four coins on Hyperliquid, April 2025 to September 2026. Every coin has 13,152 hourly records. The "mean yearly" column is each coin's average hourly rate times 8,760.

How often is funding negative, and does it differ by coin?

Coin	Hours negative	Middle hourly rate	Mean yearly	Middle 30-day cost for a long	30-day windows where the long was paid
BTC	15.37%	1/8 bp	+7.93%	0.68% ($6.84)	4.01%
ETH	16.99%	1/8 bp	+7.47%	0.64% ($6.37)	2.87%
SOL	30.47%	0.11 bp	+2.92%	0.39% ($3.86)	33.68%
HYPE	7.76%	1/8 bp	+13.34%	0.97% ($9.65)	0.00%

The dollar figures are per $1,000 of position. Across the 24 coins we measured, the share of negative hours ran from 0.79% (AI) to 58.59% (BERA). 11 of the 24 had a negative mean yearly rate, which means shorts paid more than longs over the period. ACE was lowest at −70.01%. HYPE longs paid the most of the four big coins; see what holding a HYPE perp cost.

Funding also moves by month. BTC was negative in 0.67% of hours in July 2025 and 47.36% in April 2026, when its mean yearly rate was −0.85%. For more coins and months, see our Hyperliquid funding rate history.

What did it cost to hold a long for a day, a week or a month?

We summed each hour's rate over every 24-hour, 7-day and 30-day window in BTC's records. A 1x position is as large as your own money. A positive cost means the long paid. Costs are per $1,000 of position.

What did it cost to hold a long for a day, a week or a month?

Hold time	Middle cost	Middle 80% of windows	Worst 1% of windows	Windows where the long was paid
1 day	2.5 bp ($0.25)	−0.004% to +0.03%	+0.11% ($1.08)	12.50%
1 week	0.16% ($1.56)	+0.01% to +0.26%	+0.52% ($5.24)	8.02%
1 month	0.68% ($6.84)	+0.08% to +1.18%	+1.60% ($16.05)	4.01%

"Middle 80%" runs from the 10th to the 90th percentile. A short was on the other side of each payment, so in the middle case it was paid what the long paid. In its worst 1% of 30-day windows, a BTC short paid 0.05%.

For scale, a 0.05% taker fee on each side is 0.10% in total, or $1 per $1,000. A taker fee is paid when an order trades right away. A month of BTC funding was a bigger cost than that in the middle case. A single day was a smaller one.

Be careful with the month row. The records hold 18 separate months, even though they hold 12,433 overlapping 30-day windows. So "worst 1%" for a month really means the worst month of the 18.

What does funding not tell you?

• It does not say where price will go. Funding is a payment, not a price move. For a separate test, see whether high funding came before price drops.
• It is only one cost of holding a perp. Fees, spread and price moves are not in these numbers.
• Rates change fast. A month of high funding does not say what the next month holds.
• Our coins are a chosen set that still trades today, not a random sample.

How we measured this

We used Hyperliquid's recorded hourly funding for 24 coins from April 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026: BTC, ETH, SOL and HYPE, plus 20 other coins picked only because their records were complete. Many coins tied, so ties went in alphabetical order. That is why small coins like ACE and AI appear: they are not the biggest coins. Each had all 13,152 hours. We converted the archive's 8-hour basis points to hourly by dividing by eight, and we never filled a missing hour. For each start hour we added up the next 24, 168 or 720 hourly rates at 1x size, with no compounding. This is funding only.

Try this in Comparand

Connect Comparand to your AI app and ask:

• "Show Hyperliquid BTC funding rates for September 2026, and count the negative hours." The hl_funding tool returns funding rates for one coin over a time window you choose. It is $0.005 a call on pay-as-you-go, and unlimited under fair use on a plan. Check the unit in the answer, then convert it with the table above.
• "Show funding settlements for a perp on another exchange for the last 90 days." The venue_funding tool returns settlements for one perp, up to 400 days per call, and it is free on every key. Ask venue_coverage which exchanges have funding data.

Each answer says where its data came from. You can try 3 coins free, read the docs, or see pricing.

The short version

• Funding is a payment between longs and shorts of a perp. Positive means longs pay. Negative means shorts pay.
• Hyperliquid pays hourly, at one eighth of an 8-hour rate. Multiply or divide by 8 to compare.
• BTC funding was negative in 15.37% of 13,152 hours.
• A BTC long paid a middle 2.5 bp for a day, 0.16% for a week and 0.68% for a month.
• Past cases, not a forecast.