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Speculate’s fees are simple, and mostly gasless. Before the numbers, understand the two kinds of money on the platform:
The trading is simulated, the stakes are real. Your $10,000 practice balance inside a competition isn’t real money — it’s simulated capital on Speculate’s own engine, priced off live Kraken market data. What’s real is the USDC that moves through entry fees, prize pools, duels, and HyperStake. Your maximum real loss in any paid competition is capped at your entry fee.
This page is the full rulebook: every fee, every rate, no surprises.

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Competition platform fee

Speculate takes an 8% platform fee on the prize pool of every paid competition. The other 92% is distributed to winners. Prize Pool=Entry Fee×Max Participants×0.92\text{Prize Pool} = \text{Entry Fee} \times \text{Max Participants} \times 0.92
The fee comes out of the pool once, up front — it’s already baked into the prize pool you see before you join. There’s no separate charge at entry or at payout.
Worked example — a 20-player competition at $50 entry:
Entry fee$50
Max participants20
Gross pool (entry × players)$1,000
Platform fee (8%)$80
Distributable prize pool (92%)$920
That $920 is what gets split across paid ranks. See Payouts for how the curve divides it up.

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Duels

Duels charge no platform fee at all. Both players post the same entry fee into escrow. The winner takes the entire pot — 2× the entry fee — with nothing skimmed off the top.
Entry fee (each player)$E
Total escrow2 × $E
Platform fee$0
Winner receives2 × $E
Losing is capped at your entry — there’s no way to lose more than you put in. See Duels for the full 1v1 format.

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Simulated trading fees

Every trade you place inside a competition pays a small simulated fee, deducted from your practice balance only — never from your real USDC.
Order typeFee
Maker0.02%
Taker0.04%
These fees exist to make the simulated engine behave like a real market — they affect your ROI and your rank, but they never touch your wallet. Read more on how orders execute in The Trading Engine.

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Withdrawal fees

Withdrawals are gasless. You sign an authorization, and Speculate’s relayer submits the transaction and pays the network gas on your behalf.
1

You sign

No ETH required — just a signature.
2

Relayer pays gas

Speculate’s relayer covers the on-chain gas cost.
3

Deducted in USDC

The gas cost, plus a small operational buffer, is deducted from your USDC. If you’re withdrawing cross-chain, a bridge fee is added too.
Withdrawing on the same chain you’re funded on is the cheapest path. Bridging to a different chain adds a bridge fee on top of the gas buffer. See Withdrawals for the full flow.

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HyperStake fees

HyperStake is different from competitions — it executes real trades on Hyperliquid, not the simulated engine. Fees follow Hyperliquid’s own fee schedule.
ActionFee
Entry (taker)~0.045%
Exit (taker)~0.045%
Speculate’s platform builder fee on HyperStake is currently off — you pay Hyperliquid’s standard taker fee and nothing extra on top. See HyperStake for how bets work.

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$SPEC token benefits

**Paying with SPECpaysyouback.∗∗Post−launch,buyingintocompetitionswithSPEC pays you back.** Post-launch, buying into competitions with SPEC gets you up to a 5% discount on your entry fee. And if you hold SPEC,youshareintheplatform′srevenue:∗∗1.5SPEC, you share in the platform's revenue: **1.5% of the 8% competition fee** is distributed to SPEC holders every month.
Full tokenomics — supply, allocations, and utility — live on $SPEC Tokenomics.

Payouts

How the 92% prize pool splits across ranks.

Duels

1v1, winner-take-all, zero platform fee.

Withdrawals

Gasless withdrawals, fee breakdown, and bridging.

$SPEC Tokenomics

Supply, allocations, and holder utility.