Coinbase
4.0/10 total
The largest US exchange and a public company, which means maximum regulatory compliance and minimum privacy. Easy fiat access and strong custody, at the cost of full identity disclosure and extensive transaction reporting.
Scores
Weights are published in the method and applied identically to every entry.
For
- Easiest fiat on-ramp in the US, publicly traded and audited
- Strong institutional custody
- Deep liquidity on major pairs
Against
- Full KYC plus extensive reporting to tax and law enforcement
- Default buy flow is expensive because of the spread
- Has frozen accounts and restricted withdrawals to flagged addresses
- No privacy coins
Agent access 5/10
Best-in-class agent tooling on paper: Base MCP launched May 2026 lets agents swap tokens and touch six DeFi protocols. It authenticates over OAuth 2.1 against a Coinbase account, so a KYC'd human must exist first.
Reported separately and not counted in the total. It measures what an autonomous agent can do unattended, not whether the service is safe to use.
Fees
0.05% – 0.60% taker, ~0.5% spread on simple buy
The Advanced Trade fees are reasonable. The default simple buy flow adds a spread that can widen toward 2% in volatile markets.
Specification
- Type
- Custodial exchange
- KYC policy
- KYC required
- Custody model
- custodial
- Account required
- yes
- Assets
- 250+
- Chains
- 20+
- Operating since
- 2012
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- Onion service
- no
- Works without JS
- no
- Open source
- no
- Facts checked
- 2026-07-31
Links
Plain links, no referral parameters. Verify the domain yourself; phishing clones of every service in this table exist.