Short answer: A crypto trading bot price depends on the pricing model. As of November 2026, the official pages read for this guide list free tiers, paid plans shown here from $15 to $149 a month on monthly billing, volume fees and profit commissions. Vendors' own marketing puts custom builds in the thousands of dollars and up. The list price is often the smaller part of the cost, because exchange fees, slippage, hosting and supervision continue whatever the bot earns. No price buys a profit, and these price lists change.
Calculate it with your own figures: Crypto trading fee calculator and Subscribe or build calculator.
Comparing bots by sticker price is hard because vendors charge for different things: some by the number of bots, some by trading volume and some by a share of profit. This guide groups published prices by model, so you can see what scales with what.
Each price below was read on the vendor's official page on 3 November 2026 and is shown as of November 2026; price lists change, so check the page before relying on one. Vendors appear alphabetically within each model. This is not a ranking, there are no referral links, and naming a vendor is not a recommendation. Availability depends on your jurisdiction.
What is a crypto trading bot, and how is it priced?
A crypto trading bot is software that places orders on an exchange through its API according to preset rules, and vendors charge for it through seven common models.
| Model | What you pay | Cost scales with | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat subscription | Fixed fee by tier | Bots, accounts, features | 3Commas, Bitsgap, Cryptohopper |
| Credit plan | Fixed fee for monthly bot credits | Credits needed | Gainium |
| Subscription plus volume fee | Fixed fee and a share of volume | Trading activity | Coinrule |
| Exchange-embedded | No bot fee; trading fees instead | Trading activity, sometimes profit | Pionex |
| Profit commission | A share of profit, nothing on a loss | Results | Veles |
| Self-hosted or open source | A license or nothing; you run it | Your own infrastructure and time | Freqtrade, Gunbot, Hummingbot |
| Custom build | One-off build plus maintenance | Scope | Development vendors |
Crypto trading bot subscription prices, November 2026
Flat-subscription vendors charge more as limits on bots, accounts and features rise; the three below list $20 to $149 a month on monthly billing as of November 2026.
| Vendor and plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing, per month | Main limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3Commas Starter | $20 | $15 | Spot only; 5 DCA, 2 signal, 2 grid bots; 1 account |
| 3Commas Pro | $50 | $38 | Spot and futures; 20 DCA, 20 signal, 10 grid bots; 5 accounts |
| 3Commas Expert | $140 | $105 | 1K of each bot type; 25 accounts |
| Bitsgap Basic | $29 | $23 | 3 grid, 10 DCA bots |
| Bitsgap Advanced | $69 | $55 | 10 grid, 50 DCA bots |
| Bitsgap Pro | $149 | $119 | 50 grid, 250 DCA bots |
| Cryptohopper Explorer | $29 | $24.16 | Up to 15 coins; 80 positions per exchange |
| Cryptohopper Adventurer | $69 | $57.50 | Up to 50 coins; 200 positions |
| Cryptohopper Hero | $129 | $107.50 | Up to 75 coins; 500 positions |
Two notes on reading these pages. The 3Commas page shows two unlabeled prices per plan, so the split above is inferred from its stated savings: Starter's $60 a year equals 12 times the $5 difference. Cryptohopper's page says its prices exclude VAT where applicable. On hosted platforms your exchange API key also sits with the vendor, so limit its permissions as described in API key security for trading bots.
Credit plans and volume fees
These plans tie part of the price to how much the bot does rather than to how many bots you hold.
| Vendor and plan | Price | Allowance |
|---|---|---|
| Coinrule Investor | $29.99 a month or $359 a year, plus 0.02% of traded volume | 7 live rules; 3 exchanges; $500k monthly volume |
| Coinrule Trader | $59.99 a month or $719 a year, plus 0.02% | 25 live rules; 5 exchanges; $10M monthly volume |
| Gainium Mini to Legend | $15, $22, $33, $49, $73 or $109 a month; annual billing saves 20% | 1,000, 2,000, 4,000, 8,000, 16,000 or 32,000 bot credits a month |
Coinrule's Pro tier is left out because its pricing page and homepage showed different prices on 3 November 2026, and its Business tier is quoted on request. A volume fee is easy to estimate: on a hypothetical $100,000 of monthly volume, 0.02% adds $20 on top of the subscription and on top of exchange fees. Availability can matter more than price. Coinrule's homepage, read on 3 November 2026, says it does not currently serve customers in the EU or EEA, citing the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation.
Is there free crypto trading bot software?
Yes, but free usually means limited, or paid for through trading fees, a share of profit or your own infrastructure.
| Offer | What is free | What remains |
|---|---|---|
| Bitsgap Free | $0; 20 demo bots and 3 COMBO bots on one venue | No live grid or DCA bots on this plan |
| Coinrule Starter | $0; 2 running rules | 1 exchange; $3k monthly volume cap |
| Freqtrade, Hummingbot | Open-source software (GPL-3.0, Apache-2.0) | Your server, maintenance and time |
| Gainium Free | $0; 250 bot credits a month | Limited to some exchanges and single-pair bots |
| Pionex | Built-in bots with no bot fee | Runs only on its own exchange; spot fee 0.05%, futures 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker; 20% of total profits on Futures Moon, Leveraged Grid and Margin Grid |
| Veles | Bots and terminal with no subscription | 20% of profit up to $250, then a fixed $50, per month and trading type; exchange fees are separate, and advanced backtesting needs a separate PRO plan |
Hypothetical profit commission on the Veles terms above: a month with $100 of profit costs $20; a month with $400 of profit costs $50, which is 12.5%; a losing month pays the vendor nothing, but the exchange fees on those losing trades are still paid.
A profit commission changes when you pay, not whether the rules work. Separately, a provider that trades a customer's account for a share of the result may be carrying on a regulated activity, depending on the jurisdiction.
An AI label describes how a product builds or adjusts its rules, not what it costs or whether it makes money, so the formula below applies to it too. A bot with no subscription still trades on your capital, and a CFTC release warns that scammers use AI claims to sell bots with huge promised returns.
Self-hosted licenses and open-source bots
With self-hosted software the license may be cheap or free, but the server, the updates and the failures become your responsibility.
Gunbot, for example, lists €29 a month through PayPal, or $174 for 6 months and $348 for 12 months prepaid in crypto, as of November 2026. Its page offers no lifetime license to new buyers and says the trading core runs on your own computer or server. Freqtrade and Hummingbot cost nothing to download; Freqtrade's README warns that users act at their own risk and suggests a dry run first.
The trade-off is control against work. Your API key stays on your machine, but you handle uptime, restarts, exchange API changes and monitoring yourself. What a production system needs is covered in trading bot development.
Custom trading bot cost: published ranges are vendor marketing
Published development ranges come from sellers, so treat them as what vendors advertise and not as quotes; no independent survey of these prices was found.
| Vendor marketing source | Scope as described | Published range |
|---|---|---|
| CloudHouse Technologies guide (updated 5 October 2026), prop-firm scope | Proof of concept | $5,000 to $25,000 |
| Production execution engine | $25,000 to $60,000 | |
| Multi-strategy platform | $60,000 to $150,000+ | |
| Quant Scripts blog post (February 2026) | One strategy, one platform | $3,000 to $5,000 |
| Multi-timeframe or portfolio logic | $7,000 to $12,000 | |
| Multi-asset, machine learning or low latency | $15,000 to $25,000+ |
CloudHouse calls its figures planning estimates, and Quant Scripts adds 10% to 15% of the build cost a year for maintenance. The ranges overlap because the scopes do. What actually moves effort is covered in trading bot cost. Disclosure: Fincode, which publishes this guide, builds such software to rules the customer writes, so it is not a neutral party on build costs. Its fixed-scope packages, in preparation as of November 2026, are described on its products page.
The total cost of a crypto trading bot: a formula
The list price is often the smaller part of the cost, because fees, slippage, hosting, data and supervision are paid whether or not the bot makes money.
monthly cost = subscription + hosting + data
+ volume x (exchange fee + slippage + vendor volume fee)
+ vendor profit commission
+ supervision hours x hourly value| Item | Assumption | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Hypothetical plan | $50 |
| Hosting | Hypothetical small server | $20 |
| Data | Exchange candles only | $0 |
| Exchange fees | $100,000 of fills at 0.100% | $100 |
| Slippage | Hypothetical 0.05% of volume | $50 |
| Supervision | 2 hours at a hypothetical $25 | $50 |
| Total | $270 |
The 0.100% is the regular-user spot rate on Binance's global fee page as of November 2026, used only as a published reference figure; other platforms and tiers differ. In this example the bot must earn 2.7% a month just to break even, and only $50 of the $270 is the subscription.
The formula leaves out failure risk: a software bug, an API change, an outage or a vendor changing its terms or closing. Loss limits and a kill switch, covered in trading bot risk management, can limit damage that a price tag cannot show.
Are crypto trading bots profitable and legal?
A bot can lose money like any other way of trading, and whether you may use one depends on your jurisdiction and the platform's terms.
A bot executes rules consistently; if the rules have no edge after costs, automation loses money faster. Backtests do not guarantee future results. A January 2024 CFTC release warns that scammers claim AI-assisted bots can generate huge returns, and says that promised high returns, with or without a guarantee, are red flags of fraud. A promised return is a reason to walk away, at any price.
On legality, many exchanges offer APIs for automated trading, but the rules vary. For readers in Turkey, Article 99/A of Capital Markets Law No. 6362 treats activity by foreign platforms directed at Turkish residents as unauthorized, and being named here says nothing about whether a platform may serve you. Market abuse such as wash trading or spoofing is prohibited whether done by hand or by a bot.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a crypto trading bot cost?
As of November 2026, the official pages read for this guide list free tiers and paid plans shown here from $15 to $149 a month on monthly billing, plus models based on volume or profit. Exchange fees and slippage come on top.
Can I buy a trading bot?
Yes, in three forms: a hosted subscription, a self-hosted license or open-source package, or a custom build. In each case you are buying software and not a result, and the trading and any losses remain yours.
Do crypto trading bots work?
They work as software: they execute the rules they are given. Whether those rules make money is a separate question, and many can lose money after fees.
Which crypto trading bot is the cheapest?
This guide does not rank vendors. Run the total-cost formula on your own volume, because a lower subscription with a volume fee or profit commission can cost more than a higher flat price.
Do I still pay exchange fees with a bot subscription?
Usually yes. Subscriptions, credits and profit commissions pay the bot vendor, while the exchange charges its own trading fees on every fill.
Why do bot prices differ between websites?
Vendors change their price lists, offer annual discounts and run promotions, and third-party listings can lag behind. Check the vendor's own pricing page and note the date.
Sources
- 3Commas: Pricing (opens in a new tab)
- Bitsgap: Pricing (opens in a new tab)
- Cryptohopper: Pricing (opens in a new tab)
- Gainium: Pricing (opens in a new tab)
- Coinrule: Pricing (opens in a new tab)
- Coinrule: Homepage (EU and EEA notice, plan prices) (opens in a new tab)
- Pionex Help Center: Trading fee overview (opens in a new tab)
- Veles: Prices (opens in a new tab)
- Gunbot: Plans (opens in a new tab)
- Freqtrade on GitHub: README and license (opens in a new tab)
- Quant Scripts (vendor marketing): How much does custom algo trading development cost in 2026 (opens in a new tab)
- CloudHouse Technologies (vendor marketing): Crypto trading software development cost (opens in a new tab)
- Binance: Trading Fee Rate (spot, regular user) (opens in a new tab)
- Capital Markets Law No. 6362, consolidated text, Article 99/A (Turkish) (opens in a new tab)
- CFTC Release 8854-24 (January 25, 2024): customer advisory on AI investment scams (opens in a new tab)
This guide is general information about software and markets, not investment, legal or tax advice. Automated trading can lose money, past or backtested performance does not guarantee future results, and the rules that apply depend on your jurisdiction and your exchange's terms. Sources, checks and corrections: see the editorial policy.