Funding Rate Board Screensaver
The Funding Rate Board screensaver ranks perpetual futures funding rates across major crypto pairs on a live board, drawn key-less from Binance's public market data API. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Funding Rate Board screensaver works
The saver fetches real current funding rates for major perpetual futures pairs from Binance's public API, with no key required.
Pairs rank by real funding rate, positive rates paid by longs, negative paid by shorts.
Each bar's size and color reflect the real rate's magnitude and direction.
The board refreshes on a schedule to track real market conditions.
How perpetual futures stay near spot
A futures contract normally expires on a set date, and its price converges to the spot price as that date approaches. A perpetual future has no expiry, which removes that natural anchor. To keep the contract price close to the underlying price, exchanges use a funding rate: a periodic payment exchanged directly between traders holding long and short positions. On Binance, for example, the exchange does not charge fees on funding payments.
When the funding rate is positive, longs pay shorts; when it is negative, shorts pay longs. Binance describes the rate as built from a premium index, which compares the contract’s order-book prices with a price index, plus an interest component that is fixed at 0.03% per day by default for most contracts. The default settlement interval is every 8 hours, at 00:00, 08:00 and 16:00 UTC, though Binance can change the interval for some contracts, and only positions open at the settlement moment pay or receive.
The payment equals the position’s nominal value, meaning mark price times contract size, multiplied by the funding rate. Because it is based on the full size of the position and not the margin posted, funding on a leveraged position can add up to a meaningful cost over days. A persistently high positive rate suggests many traders are leaning long, but it is a gauge of positioning, not a prediction, and rates differ between exchanges. None of this is advice.
A worked example
A stretch of sharply positive real funding rates suggests the market is heavily long and paying up for it — a genuine positioning signal straight from live exchange data.
Settings & tips
- Accent recolours the positive-rate bars.
- Funding rates reset periodically on real exchanges, typically every few hours.
- Extreme rates in either direction often draw trader attention as a contrarian signal.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a funding rate?
- A real periodic payment between long and short traders on perpetual futures, keeping the contract price anchored near spot.
- Is a key needed?
- No. Binance's public market data API is free and key-less.
- Which exchange is this?
- Binance's public perpetual futures data, one of the largest and most-watched crypto derivatives markets.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- Who receives the funding payment?
- Traders on the opposite side of the market. On Binance, longs pay shorts when the rate is positive and shorts pay longs when it is negative, and the exchange charges no fee on funding payments.
- Why does leverage make funding matter more?
- The payment is based on the nominal value of the position, not just the margin put up, so a small deposit supporting a large position can be eroded by funding.
- Can funding rates be negative?
- Yes. A negative rate means shorts pay longs. It reflects the premium index, which is driven by how the contract’s order-book prices compare with the underlying price index.