---
title: Is crypto more volatile on weekends? Our measured answer
url: https://comparand.xyz/blog/crypto-weekend-volatility
description: Binance Bitcoin moved 0.29% per hour on weekends vs 0.42% on weekdays, and all 10 coins we measured were calmer. Saturday vs Sunday, and the limits.
updated: '2026-10-21'
category: Data
---

# Is crypto more volatile on weekends? Our measured answer

Binance Bitcoin moved 0.29% per hour on weekends vs 0.42% on weekdays, and all 10 coins we measured were calmer. Saturday vs Sunday, and the limits.

No. In every market we measured, crypto moved less on weekends. On Binance, Bitcoin's BTCUSDT perp averaged a 0.29% hourly move on Saturdays and Sundays versus 0.42% on weekdays (ignoring direction), so a weekend hour moved about 0.69 times as much as a weekday hour. That is 17,814 weekend and 44,544 weekday hourly moves from September 8, 2019 through October 20, 2026, and all 10 Binance coins we checked showed the same gap.

These are averages over past hours. They do not tell you how large any single weekend jump or fall could be.

For which weekday had the best returns, see [Best day of the week to buy Bitcoin?](https://comparand.xyz/blog/best-day-of-week-to-buy-bitcoin).

## What does “calmer on weekends” actually mean?

Volatility means how much prices move. We measure the **absolute hourly move**: the size of each hourly price change with the plus or minus sign removed, so a rise and a fall of the same size count the same and do not cancel out.

We compare each hourly closing price (the last price in the hour) with the one before. That leaves out swings inside the hour that reverse before the close.

We define weekends as Saturday and Sunday in UTC, the shared world clock. Your local weekend may start at a different moment (in New York, the UTC weekend starts Friday evening), so some of these hours may fall on a different day for you.

## Were weekends quieter for every coin we measured?

Yes. The table shows Binance USDT perpetual contracts, or **perps**: futures contracts that never expire. A futures contract is an agreement linked to a coin’s price. USDT is the currency used to show these prices.

Every row runs through October 20, 2026. Start dates differ by market. The counts in parentheses are hourly moves, not weekends. “Mean” means average.

| Binance market | History starts, UTC | Weekend mean (hours) | Weekday mean (hours) | Weekend ÷ weekday |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| BTCUSDT | 2019-09-08 17:00 | 0.29% (17,814) | 0.42% (44,544) | 0.69 |
| ETHUSDT | 2019-11-27 07:00 | 0.42% (17,280) | 0.56% (43,168) | 0.75 |
| SOLUSDT | 2020-09-14 07:00 | 0.66% (15,264) | 0.83% (38,176) | 0.80 |
| XRPUSDT | 2020-01-06 08:00 | 0.51% (16,992) | 0.66% (42,495) | 0.78 |
| DOGEUSDT | 2020-07-10 09:00 | 0.64% (15,744) | 0.75% (39,278) | 0.85 |
| ADAUSDT | 2020-01-31 08:00 | 0.60% (16,848) | 0.73% (42,039) | 0.82 |
| AVAXUSDT | 2020-09-23 07:00 | 0.70% (15,216) | 0.84% (38,008) | 0.83 |
| LINKUSDT | 2020-01-17 08:00 | 0.63% (16,944) | 0.77% (42,279) | 0.82 |
| BNBUSDT | 2020-02-10 08:00 | 0.42% (16,752) | 0.53% (41,895) | 0.79 |
| TRXUSDT | 2020-01-15 08:00 | 0.40% (16,944) | 0.46% (42,327) | 0.86 |

The last column divides the weekend average by the weekday average. Lower means a bigger weekend drop. Bitcoin had the biggest gap (0.69) and TRX the smallest (0.86).

We also checked spot prices (the coin itself, priced in US dollars) on Coinbase. BTC-USD hourly bars from July 20, 2015 averaged 0.35% on weekends versus 0.45% on weekdays, a ratio of 0.77. ETH-USD from May 18, 2016 averaged 0.50% versus 0.63%. So the weekend gap is not only a Binance perp effect. Coinbase Bitcoin's gap was smaller than Binance Bitcoin's, but its history starts about four years earlier, so the two are not a clean comparison.

We compare the average move per hour, so having five weekdays and two weekend days does not tilt the result.

The coin matters more than the day. Solana's weekend average (0.66%) was above Bitcoin's weekday average (0.42%). And because the histories start on different dates, differences between coins mix the coin with the period covered.

*Diagram: Show paired weekend and weekday mean absolute hourly moves for each Binance market in the table, with each history's date range beside it.*
## Is Saturday different from Sunday?

Yes. Putting them together as “the weekend” hides a difference in our measured history.

Here are Binance BTCUSDT hourly moves by UTC day, September 8, 2019 through October 20, 2026.

| UTC day | Mean absolute hourly move | Hourly moves counted |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Monday | 0.44% | 8,928 |
| Tuesday | 0.42% | 8,904 |
| Wednesday | 0.42% | 8,904 |
| Thursday | 0.42% | 8,904 |
| Friday | 0.42% | 8,904 |
| Saturday | 0.27% | 8,904 |
| Sunday | 0.32% | 8,910 |

Saturday had the smallest average hourly move. Sunday was more active than Saturday, while still below every weekday. Monday was the busiest day for Bitcoin, and for 7 of the 10 Binance coins.

The same order held in all 10 Binance markets and both Coinbase markets: Saturday was the quietest day, and Sunday stayed below every weekday. That is an average over years. It does not mean every Saturday was quieter than the Sunday after it. For a closer look at the clock within each day, see [which hours move crypto the most](https://comparand.xyz/blog/most-volatile-hours-crypto-utc).

## Has the weekend gap changed over the years?

We cannot answer that from these results. We put all available years together before taking each average. We do not have a separate weekend result for each year.

A long history mixes busy and quiet periods. If their weekend patterns differ, the combined average hides that. To answer the question, you would repeat the same calculation one year at a time on the same exchange and contract, and mark partial years. Until then, we cannot say whether the weekend gap is growing or shrinking, or what applies now.

## Does a quieter average mean less risk?

An average does not tell you the largest move. Many small changes can pull the average down even if there are also a few large changes. These tables do not report the worst weekend hour or how often an unusually large weekend move happened.

They also do not measure how easy it was to trade: we did not look at order books, fees, or slippage (the gap between the price you expect and the price you get). And they cannot explain why the gap exists, because we did not measure how many people traded or when news arrived.

Move size also does not tell you direction. An absolute move treats a rise and a fall alike. For the separate question of what followed a sharp fall, see [Bitcoin after big one-hour drops](https://comparand.xyz/blog/bitcoin-after-big-one-hour-drops).

## How can you use this in your own research?

If your research uses one all-week average move, for example to guess how far price might travel in an hour, that number hides a real split. For Binance BTCUSDT it mixes Saturday hours that averaged 0.27% with Monday hours that averaged 0.44%. A simple check is to measure weekend and weekday hours separately for your coin and exchange, then see whether your rule treats them the same. This is a way to test your own setup, not a reason to trade on any day.

## How we measured this

We used public Binance hourly price bars for the contracts, dates, and counts shown above, plus Coinbase hourly spot bars for BTC-USD and ETH-USD. For each hourly bar, we calculated the percentage change from the previous bar’s close to its close and removed the sign. We grouped that change by the UTC hour and weekday when the current bar opened, then averaged the changes in each group. Missing closing prices stayed missing, and the first close was left out because it had no earlier close to compare with.

We did not test a trading rule or subtract trading costs. These markets are still traded, their histories differ in length, and the combined averages cannot explain the cause or show what happened in every year.

## Try this in Comparand

Ask your connected AI agent: “Get completed hourly bars for Binance BTCUSDT perps over my chosen dates. Compare the average size of hourly moves on Saturday, Sunday, and weekdays in UTC. Show counts and missing hours.”

- **venue_bars** returns opening, highest, lowest, and closing prices, plus trading volume: the amount traded. It returns only completed bars and is free on every key.
- Your agent calculates the hourly changes and weekday averages from those prices; the tool does not return a weekend report.
- Each answer includes where the data came from and what the call cost.

For a separate Hyperliquid check, ask: “Show Bitcoin's measured volatility for my chosen day and explain its volatility label.”

- **hl_stats** returns realized volatility, meaning movement measured from past price changes, and a volatility regime: a label describing its level.
- This is Hyperliquid data, separate from the Binance averages above. It does not answer whether the weekend gap changed each year.

See the [tool docs](https://comparand.xyz/docs) to connect your agent. You can also [try 3 coins free](https://comparand.xyz/try) to explore past charts. These are past cases, not a forecast.

## The short version

- Every market we measured had smaller average hourly moves on weekends. For Binance BTCUSDT: 0.29% versus 0.42%.
- Bitcoin had the biggest weekend gap of the 10 Binance coins; TRX had the smallest.
- Saturday was quieter than Sunday; Sunday remained below every weekday.
- A smaller average does not describe the worst move, trading costs, or price direction.
- These combined histories cannot tell us whether the weekend gap changed year by year.

## Questions people ask

**Is crypto more volatile on weekends?**

No. In our test, all 10 Binance perps and both Coinbase spot markets moved less per hour on weekends. Binance BTCUSDT averaged 0.29% per hour on weekends versus 0.42% on weekdays, from September 2019 to October 2026. That is an average, not the largest possible weekend move.

**Is Saturday calmer than Sunday for Bitcoin?**

Yes, in our Binance BTCUSDT hourly history from September 8, 2019 through October 20, 2026. Saturday's average move, ignoring direction, was 0.27% across 8,904 hourly moves. Sunday's was 0.32% across 8,910.

**Does lower weekend volatility mean Bitcoin usually rises?**

No. This study measures the size of hourly moves after removing their direction, so it cannot tell you whether price usually rises or falls.

**Has crypto's weekend volatility changed over the years?**

This measurement combines the available years for each market. Without a separate result for each year, it cannot show whether the weekend gap grew, shrank, or reversed in a particular year.