Binance vs Bitfinex: Revenue, Profit and Business Model
Binance reported $16B of revenue in FY2025 and — of net income. Bitfinex does not publish annual revenue.
Latest financial snapshot
Financial summary
Binance
Binance does not publish audited accounts, so every revenue figure is an outside estimate. Fortune put 2022 revenue at about $12 billion. Bloomberg's billionaires index estimated $9.8 billion for the 12 months to March 2024, using tracked trading volume and published fee rates. In March 2026 Forbes quoted an Artemis analyst estimating $16 billion to $17 billion a year in 2024 and 2025, about two and a half times Coinbase's $6.6 billion. Forbes valued Binance at about $100 billion and estimated CZ's stake at roughly 90%. The only disclosed outside equity investment is MGX's $2 billion minority stake from March 2025, settled in the USD1 stablecoin. The largest known cost was the roughly $4.3 billion US penalty agreed in November 2023.
Bitfinex
Bitfinex does not publish audited accounts, so hard numbers are rare. The best-known disclosure came in May 2019, when it reported 2017 gross profit of $333.5 million, net profit of $326 million and $246 million in dividends, according to Bloomberg. That year iFinex also raised $1 billion selling LEO tokens after about $850 million held by payment processor Crypto Capital was frozen. In December 2025 the exchange said it had been consistently profitable for many years when it removed trading fees. The largest swing factor is the 94,643 BTC seized by US authorities from the 2016 hacker: January 2025 court filings supported returning it to Bitfinex in kind, and under the LEO white paper at least 80% of net recovered funds, after Recovery Right Token holders are paid, go to LEO buybacks within 18 months.
Revenue and profit by year
Binance
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $16B | — | 0.0% | +0.0% | Source |
| FY2024 | $16B | — | 0.0% | +63.3% | Source |
| FY2023 | $9.8B | — | 0.0% | -18.3% | Source |
| FY2022 | $12B | — | 0.0% | — | Source |
Bitfinex
Bitfinex does not publish annual revenue. What is known about its finances is in the summary above.
Full Bitfinex financialsBusiness model and strategy
Binance
How it makes money
Binance earns most of its money from trading fees. Regular spot traders pay 0.1% per trade, or 25% less when they pay in BNB, and futures fees start at 0.02% for makers and 0.05% for takers, falling for high-volume VIP tiers. Derivatives carry most of the volume, so they carry most of the fee income.
Growth strategy
Under Richard Teng, and since December 2025 co-CEO Yi He, Binance has swapped its old borderless model for licences and a single home regulator. The ADGM authorisation, effective January 5, 2026, puts the main platform under Abu Dhabi's FSRA.
Competitive advantage
Liquidity is the moat. Binance has the most traders, so its order books are the deepest and its spreads the tightest, which draws more traders and market makers. Forbes put its share of global crypto trading at about 38% in early 2026.
Bitfinex
How it makes money
Bitfinex earns money from the services around trading rather than from trades themselves. On 17 December 2025 it set maker and taker fees to zero on spot, margin, perpetual derivatives, Bitfinex Securities and OTC trading.
Growth strategy
Bitfinex is growing through licences in friendly jurisdictions and through price. It moved its derivatives arm from the Seychelles to El Salvador in January 2025, added a licence for the main exchange in May 2026, and uses Bitfinex Securities to list tokenised bonds and equities. In Latin America it invested in Chilean exchange Orionx in 2023 and launched peer-to-peer trading in Venezuela, Argentina and Colombia.
Competitive advantage
Bitfinex's edge is depth and longevity. It has run continuously since 2012, lists more than 250 spot pairs and over 60 perpetual contracts, and operates one of the best-known peer-to-peer margin funding books in crypto, which keeps lender capital parked on the platform.
Questions about Binance vs Bitfinex
Which company has higher revenue — Binance or Bitfinex?
Binance reported $16.0B (FY2025). A verified revenue figure for Bitfinex was not available at the time of this comparison.
Which is more financially efficient — Binance or Bitfinex?
Binance generates $3.20M / employee in revenue per employee. A comparable figure for Bitfinex requires matching employee and revenue data from the same reporting period.
How do Binance and Bitfinex make money?
Binance and Bitfinex generate revenue in fundamentally different ways. Binance: Binance earns most of its money from trading fees. Bitfinex: Bitfinex earns money from the services around trading rather than from trades themselves.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Binance vs Bitfinex overview