What is the Coinbase premium?
The Coinbase premium is the gap between the bitcoin price on Coinbase, quoted in US dollars, and on Binance, quoted in the USDT stablecoin, as a percentage of the Binance price. When bitcoin costs more on Coinbase the premium is positive; when it costs less it is negative, a discount. The same comparison works for ether. The Coinbase premium index page shows it live with hourly history (see also the glossary entry).
How we compute it
- US price. The last trade on Coinbase Exchange for BTC-USD (ETH-USD), polled about every 15 seconds.
- Global price. The live Binance spot price for BTCUSDT (ETHUSDT).
- Compare.
premium = (Coinbase price − Binance price) ÷ Binance price × 100, and the dollar gap is the plain difference.
The averages on the data page (24h, 7d, 30d) are means of hourly closes from both exchanges, and the hourly series is free as JSON from the history API.
Worked example (made-up numbers)
Bitcoin last traded at $105,150 on Coinbase and at 105,000 USDT on Binance.
- The gap is $105,150 − 105,000 USDT = +$150.00.
- Premium = ($105,150 − 105,000 USDT) ÷ 105,000 USDT × 100 = +0.143%.
Why it is read as US demand
Coinbase is the largest US exchange and the custodian for most US spot bitcoin ETFs, so a large share of US institutional and retail buying passes through its USD order books. Binance has few US customers and trades mainly against USDT. When US buyers lift Coinbase offers faster than arbitrage traders can sell into them, Coinbase trades above Binance and the premium turns positive; when US holders sell harder than the rest of the world, it turns negative. That is why traders often call a positive premium bullish and a discount bearish.
The USDT vs USD caveat
Coinbase prices are in dollars and Binance prices are in USDT, and we do not convert between them. USDT usually trades within a few hundredths of a percent of one dollar, but whatever gap there is sits inside the premium. In the example above, if one USDT is worth $1.001, Binance's price is really $105,105, and the premium against that is only +0.043% instead of +0.143%. So a small premium can come from USDT drifting off its peg rather than from bitcoin demand, and in a stablecoin scare the premium can jump while bitcoin buyers do nothing.
How to read it: persistence, not spikes
- One-hour spikes are noise more often than signal. A single large order, a short Coinbase outage or a fast move on one venue can open a gap of a tenth of a percent for minutes, and arbitrage closes it.
- Persistence matters. A premium that stays positive (or negative) across the 24-hour, 7-day and 30-day averages shows a steady flow, and it means more when the live reading agrees with them.
- Watch the sign change. A move from a sustained discount to a sustained premium, or the reverse, is the shift traders look for, not the size of any one print.
What it does not show
- It is not a measure of ETF flows, volume or who is buying: only where two prices sit against each other.
- It compares two venues only. Other US and global exchanges can differ, and derivatives positioning is not part of it; see basis and funding rates for that.
- A last-trade price can lag on a quiet market, so one reading can be off by a trade.
- It is not a forecast and not financial advice.
Data sources checked on 19 October 2026: Coinbase Exchange API: product ticker · Binance spot API: market data endpoints. Not financial advice.