BITCOIN COINBASE PREMIUM INDEX
Is Coinbase paying more for Bitcoin?
The gap between Coinbase's price and the other exchanges', every day since 2015. It used to be worth watching.
Coinbase against Bitstamp and Kraken, every settled day since 17 August 2015. Both sides price Bitcoin in dollars, so this is the honest Coinbase premium. Before Kraken began reporting daily closes the comparison is Bitstamp alone, which is why the line is made of one exchange for most of its length and two now.
Latest displayed reading: -0.002 on Sep 4, 2026. This view shows 4,037 dated readings from Aug 17, 2015 to Sep 4, 2026. The latest displayed reading is lower than the first. The displayed low is -3.794 on Jun 20, 2016. The displayed high is 6.487 on Dec 12, 2017. Every day in this range has a reading.
Pick two to four dates and read this chart's values side by side.
Is Coinbase paying more right now?
Level with the restOver the last 30 days Coinbase has been level with the other exchanges that price Bitcoin in dollars, within 0.0003% of them.
Measured against Bitstamp and Kraken. Direction is stated in words as well as sign, because a gap this small is easy to read backwards.
Measured the usual way instead, against Binance and OKX, the same thirty days come out at -0.047%. That is the bigger, more quotable number, and the third step below is about why it is not really about Coinbase.
What happened to the premium?
13.4%was the widest gap, in 201725days that year passed 2%7full years since one hasThe gap was real and it was large. It has not passed 2% on a single day since 2019. Firms whose whole business is closing gaps like this one got faster and better funded, and what used to last hours now lasts seconds. We keep drawing it daily anyway: a number being boring is a finding, and the day it stops being boring is the day worth seeing.
Each year’s average gap and how often it went wide Year Average vs dollar exchanges Widest that year Days past 2% 2015 0.2534% not measured 0 2016 0.2978% not measured 0 2017 0.5416% 13.35% 25 2018 -0.0189% 5.79% 35 2019 0.0124% 1.38% 3 2020 0.0111% 1.22% 0 2021 -0.0077% 0.47% 0 2022 -0.0110% 0.21% 0 2023 -0.0009% 1.01% 0 2024 0.0001% 0.25% 0 2025 -0.0004% 0.18% 0 2026 -0.0022% 0.05% 0 Why is the published number bigger?
Most versions of this measure compare Coinbase, which prices Bitcoin in dollars, against exchanges that price it in a dollar-linked token. When the token is worth a fraction under a dollar, a price quoted in it comes out a fraction higher, and that shows up as Coinbase trading below the rest.
The check is simple. If the gap were about Coinbase, only Coinbase would show it. Over the same recent stretch Coinbase sat about seven hundredths of a percent below the token-priced exchanges. So did Bitstamp. So did Kraken. All three within a rounding error of each other, and all three agreeing among themselves to about a thousandth of a percent. A number every dollar exchange shows identically is telling you about the token.
That is why the chart above has two tabs rather than one line. The dollar-against-dollar tab is the Coinbase premium. The other is drawn beside it and labelled for what it is, because it is what you will see elsewhere.
What does this mean for you?
Treat a live Coinbase premium reading with suspicion, particularly a large one. Check what it is measured against. If the comparison crosses from dollars into a dollar-linked token, most of what you are looking at is the token.
And do not shop between exchanges on this. A gap of a few thousandths of a percent is smaller than the fee you will pay to go and get it. The premium was a signal in 2017. Today it is a nice illustration of a market that got efficient.
Understanding The Bitcoin Coinbase Premium
Where it stands today
The Bitcoin Coinbase Premium is Level with the other dollar exchanges as of .
The Coinbase premium is the gap between what Bitcoin costs on Coinbase and what it costs elsewhere. The idea behind it is reasonable: Coinbase is one of the largest exchanges that prices Bitcoin directly in dollars, so if its buyers were pushing hard you might expect its price to run ahead of everyone else's. For a while that is exactly what happened. In 2017 Coinbase averaged half a percent above the other exchanges and touched thirteen percent on its widest day.
It stopped. From 2020 onward there is not a single day in our record where the gap passed two percent, and since 2023 the yearly average has been within three thousandths of a percent of zero. The reason is not mysterious: firms that make their money closing gaps like this one got faster and better funded, and a gap that used to last hours now lasts seconds. The page still draws it every day, because a number being boring today is a finding, and because the day it stops being boring is worth seeing.
There is a catch in how this is usually measured, and it is the reason this page draws two lines instead of one. Most published versions compare Coinbase, which prices Bitcoin in dollars, against exchanges that price it in a dollar-linked token. That comparison is dominated by the token rather than by Coinbase. We checked it: over the same three months Coinbase sat about seven hundredths of a percent below those exchanges, and so did Bitstamp, and so did Kraken, all three within a rounding error of each other. A number that every dollar exchange shows identically is not telling you anything about Coinbase.
So the honest measure is the other line: Coinbase against the exchanges that also price in dollars. That is the one to read as a Coinbase premium. The token-based line is drawn beside it and labelled for what it is, because it is what most other sites are showing you and it is worth being able to see the difference.