New coin listing: how to get your coin on an exchange

Listing goes in four steps: price trackers, a first market, a small exchange, then a large exchange. Each step needs the one below it, because every venue checks that your coin already trades and has real users.

The order is not a rule anyone wrote down. It falls out of the requirements: the trackers want a market, and the big exchanges want trading volume and holders before they spend engineering time on you.

A token on Ethereum or Solana can be added by an exchange that already supports that network. A coin with its own blockchain cannot: the exchange has to run your node, learn your address format and build a new integration, so big exchanges say it takes longer.

Coinbase says new or unsupported chains take longer because its engineers build "custom node infrastructure" and new tooling for each one. For new blockchains, it reviews the technical design, consensus, network resilience and governance. Kraken says unsupported or novel chains add engineering lead time.

A small exchange does the same work at a smaller scale. One that lists new blockchains asks for a block explorer and says your wallet software must pass a security review before it lists you.

CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap are free to apply to. Both want a working website, a block explorer and an exchange where the coin already trades. Both also sell faster reviews: $1,000 for a CoinGecko Fast Pass and $5,000 for a CoinMarketCap Priority listing, with no promise of approval.

CoinMarketCap's criteria ask for a functional website and block explorer, active trading with material volume on at least one exchange it tracks, and a contact person from the project. It says the free route can take "days to months/years" and that meeting the guidelines does not guarantee a listing.

The paid routes speed up the review, not the decision. CoinGecko's Fast Pass gets a coin listing request looked at within 24 hours, and you pay it whether or not you are approved. CoinMarketCap Priority works the same way, and only for a coin that already trades on an exchange feeding data to CoinMarketCap.

Every CoinGecko requirement, quoted and explained, is in our guide on how to get listed on CoinGecko.

A brand new chain has no exchange on it yet. On a smart-contract chain you can open your own swap and seed it with your coin and a base token. A Bitcoin-style coin has no smart contracts, so its first market is usually a small exchange that lists new blockchains.

If your coin runs on an EVM, Cosmos or Avalanche base, a swap on your own chain is the first place anyone can trade it. The swap add-on is $599 one-time. A bridge ($999) lets holders bring in tokens from bigger chains to trade against it.

Small exchanges that take new blockchains often publish their prices. NonKYC, for example, lists a new coin from $3,499 for a known codebase such as a Bitcoin fork, $4,499 for another codebase and $9,999 for a custom design, and asks for $400 of locked liquidity for each market.

Check how long an exchange has been running and who runs it before you pay anyone. A small exchange holds your holders' coins, and if it fails, so does your only market.

Coinbase, Kraken and Binance each take applications through one official form. Coinbase and Kraken say listing is free. All three review legal, security and demand, and none promises an answer or a date.

Coinbase asks for your whitepaper, team, tokenomics, source code, block explorers and any audits, then runs legal, compliance and technical security reviews. After that it weighs demand: trading volume, holders, active wallets and community.

Binance says it has "no set requirements" but wants a proven team, a useful product and a large user base, and that you should not apply without at least a minimum viable product. It asks for a one-way NDA at first contact.

Kraken weighs market cap and liquidity, market fit, technical and security strength, regulatory posture and community. In the EU it also needs a MiCA whitepaper, filed with a regulator at least 20 business days before listing. Our crypto whitepaper guide covers that rule.

Applying to Coinbase, Kraken, CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap is free. The trackers sell optional fast reviews ($1,000 and $5,000). Small exchanges that list new blockchains publish fees, such as $3,499 to $9,999 at NonKYC. The cost most people forget is liquidity: the coins and money you put up so trades can happen.

Many fee figures you will find elsewhere, such as "tens of thousands to a million dollars", come from reports written around 2018 and are not stated by the exchanges themselves. Treat them as history, not prices.

• Liquidity for every market and every pool you open
• A market maker, if an exchange asks for steady order books (Coinbase offers referral discounts on these)
• Legal advice on whether your coin could count as a security
• A MiCA whitepaper if you want to be listed in the EU
• A security audit of your contracts or wallet, if you have them

Nobody can guarantee you a listing. Coinbase, Kraken, Binance and CoinMarketCap all say they take applications only through their own forms, and all warn about people who claim inside connections.

Before you apply anywhere, have a live chain with a public explorer, a website on your own domain, published supply numbers, a whitepaper, wallet software, at least one market and a named contact person.

Writing the whitepaper? See how to write a crypto whitepaper. Setting the supply? See tokenomics.

HeroRPC builds the parts every listing form asks about: your blockchain, its block explorer, wallets and, on smart-contract chains, your own swap and bridge. We do not run an exchange, sell listings or promise one.

The block explorer is $149 one-time, the web wallet $149 and the desktop wallet $199 for Bitcoin-style coins. See every add-on on the add-ons page.

Still choosing between a coin and a token? Coin vs token explains why the listing work is different for each.