Exchange Rank

CoinMarketCap ranks and scores exchanges based on traffic, liquidity, trading volumes,  confidence in the legitimacy of trading volumes reported, and qualitative factors such as longevity, reputation, public audits (e.g. PoR), licenses, and user feedback. Highly-ranked exchanges will possess the aforementioned traits and have markets that score well across Liquidity Scores, Volume, and Web Traffic Factor and have high Confidence scores.

Exchange Score

Exchanges will be given a score from 0.0 to 10.0 based on the above-mentioned factors, with weights attributed to each factor. The output score is then used to rank the exchanges accordingly. To preserve the data integrity of the ranking algorithm, we will not disclose the weights given to each individual factor.

In addition, we penalize exchanges and market pairs that have suspicious volumes based on the data model we employ. This is reflected in the final exchange score that an exchange receives.

Web Traffic Factor 

Web Traffic Factor of an Exchange is a score given to exchanges as a gauge for their web traffic. The score is a relative point scaling system from 0 to 1,000. The top exchange will always be given 1,000 points, and the rest of the exchanges are given scores based on a relative comparison against that exchange. High scores would reflect high amounts of web traffic, which is a good indication of high user count. The score will be updated on a monthly basis. For more info, click here.

Liquidity Score

The Liquidity Scores of Exchanges reflect the average of the Top 25 Trading Pairs listed on the exchange. 

These Trading Pairs do not include stablecoin/stablecoin pairs.

An average of the Top 25 Trading Pairs is used as simply summing up the Liquidity Scores of all exchanges would unfairly favour exchanges that have a lot of trading pairs. We wanted to prioritize exchanges that have good liquidity amongst the top trading pairs as those exchanges would serve the needs of our users best.

Qualitative Factors

A host of qualitative factors such as longevity, reputation, public audits (e.g. PoR), licenses, and user feedback are also factored into the exchange score.

For FAQs on Exchange Rankings, please click here for more info.