Best perpetual dexs
On-chain perpetuals and derivatives. We scored 15 of them 0–10 from public data — tvl and audits of the perp venue (defillama) — and ranked the 8 we could measure well enough to place fairly. No affiliate links: the order reflects the evidence, nothing else.
Last collection 2026-08-25: probed 252 services, measured 233, over a 90-day window. Collected by our own script, not by hand — reproducible, and reproducibly boring.
The full ranking
| # | Service | Score | TVL | Audits | Age | Chains | Latency | Status feed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GMX | 7.56100% | $206.8M | 2 | 3.0y | 4 | 89 ms | none |
| 2 | Gains Network | 6.76100% | $9.7M | 2 | 4.7y | 5 | 76 ms | none |
| 3 | Ostium | 6.58100% | $17.2M | 2 | 2.1y | 1 | 173 ms | none |
| 4 | Jupiter Perps | 6.16100% | $767.6M | 0 | 2.6y | 1 | 164 ms | unknown |
| 5 | Drift | 6.08100% | $642,618 | 2 | 4.7y | 1 | 243 ms | none |
| 6 | Extended | 5.46100% | $121.5M | 0 | 1.5y | 2 | 44 ms | none |
| 7 | dYdX | 4.9382% | $73.1M | 0 | — | 1 | 299 ms | unknown |
| 8 | Synthetix | 4.86100% | $0 | 0 | 2.4y | 3 | 70 ms | unknown |
Every figure carries the date it was taken, on the service’s card below, linked to its open source. Score is out of what we could measure — the % beside it is coverage.
How we scored perpetual dexs
These weights belong to this category alone. Signature measurement here: TVL and audits of the perp venue (DefiLlama) — Perp venues need deep liquidity backing the book and audited engines.
How much value the market trusts it with — TVL, reserves or market cap.
Published third-party security audits, with links to the findings.
How long it has run and survived — time is signal.
How many chains it is deployed across.
Response latency we measure ourselves from a public endpoint.
Whether it publishes a status page anyone can audit.
Latency in this category is timed at the live interface for every service, so the comparison is like-for-like. We never compare latency across categories — a DEX interface and an exchange API are not the same thing, and pretending otherwise would just reward whoever we happened to probe more cheaply.
The brief also defines FEES and UX (0%, 0%). We don’t publish them: we can’t measure them ourselves, and an estimate dressed as a measurement is worse than a gap. Full methodology
The services
GMX
$206.8M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
2 published audits with links (DefiLlama) — read the findings yourself. Audits reduce risk, they do not remove it.
Live 3.0 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 4 chains (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 89 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Status transparency: No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Anyone who needs to know when it breaks: no status feed, so you find out it is down by discovering it yourself.
$9.7M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
2 published audits with links (DefiLlama) — read the findings yourself. Audits reduce risk, they do not remove it.
Live 4.7 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 5 chains (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 76 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Status transparency: No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Anyone who needs to know when it breaks: no status feed, so you find out it is down by discovering it yourself.
Ostium
$17.2M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
2 published audits with links (DefiLlama) — read the findings yourself. Audits reduce risk, they do not remove it.
Live 2.1 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 1 chain (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 173 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Status transparency: No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Anyone who needs to know when it breaks: no status feed, so you find out it is down by discovering it yourself.
$767.6M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Live 2.6 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 1 chain (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 164 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
A status page exists but publishes no feed we could parse — readable, not auditable. Part of that may be our blind spot (we read three platforms).
Security audits: No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Anyone putting size into it: it holds funds in smart contracts with no published audit. Fine to experiment with, not to trust with a position you cannot afford to lose.
Drift
$642,618 in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
2 published audits with links (DefiLlama) — read the findings yourself. Audits reduce risk, they do not remove it.
Live 4.7 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 1 chain (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 243 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Status transparency: No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Anyone who wants a battle-tested venue. Little value sits here yet, so it has not been stress-tested at scale — early-adopter territory.
Extended
$121.5M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Live 1.5 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 2 chains (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 44 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
No public status page found. Nothing about its reliability can be verified from outside — including by us.
Security audits: No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Anyone putting size into it: it holds funds in smart contracts with no published audit. Fine to experiment with, not to trust with a position you cannot afford to lose.
dYdX
$73.1M in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
No documented launch or listing date to measure age from.
Deployed on 1 chain (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 299 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
A status page exists but publishes no feed we could parse — readable, not auditable. Part of that may be our blind spot (we read three platforms).
Security audits: No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Anyone putting size into it: it holds funds in smart contracts with no published audit. Fine to experiment with, not to trust with a position you cannot afford to lose.
$0 in value locked (DefiLlama). Capital is the market voting with its money — scored on a log scale, so the jump from $10M to $100M counts for more than $10B to $20B.
No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Live 2.4 yr (time since DefiLlama listing (a floor on true age)). Most failures happen young, so time survived is real signal.
Deployed on 3 chains (DefiLlama). Breadth is a minor tie-breaker — a focused single-chain protocol can still be excellent.
Median 70 ms to first byte from the live interface, our own probe, slowest sample discarded, single location. Compared only within this category.
A status page exists but publishes no feed we could parse — readable, not auditable. Part of that may be our blind spot (we read three platforms).
Security audits: No published audits on DefiLlama. Not proof of insecurity, but an unaudited contract holding funds is a red flag.
Anyone putting size into it: it holds funds in smart contracts with no published audit. Fine to experiment with, not to trust with a position you cannot afford to lose.
Who we left out, and why
We looked at 15, ranked 8, and could not measure 7.
| Service | Status feed | Why it isn’t ranked |
|---|---|---|
| Hyperliquid | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| Vertex Protocol | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| Aevo | unknown | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| ApeX Protocol | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| MUX Protocol | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| Paradex | unknown | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
| edgeX | none | 2 of 4 criteria measurable, 16% of this category’s weight — under the 25% a place in the ranking needs. Left unranked on purpose: the less we measure, the fewer criteria there are to dock points on, so a thinly-measured service drifts upward for no reason but our ignorance. |
Head to head
How to choose perpetual dexs
On-chain perpetuals and derivatives — and the honest truth is that no single ranking fits everyone. Our scores tell you what is best-evidenced on public data: tvl and audits of the perp venue (defillama). Use them as a shortlist, not a verdict.
Start at the top of the table, then open the full breakdown for any service you are considering. Read the coverage figure beside its score — a high number on thin coverage is a narrower claim than the same score fully measured. Check the “where we docked points” and “who it’s not for” notes on each card; the service that scores highest overall is not always the one that fits your specific need. And remember what these scores deliberately leave out — fees and support quality — which you should weigh yourself before committing.
Perpetual DEXs ratings — FAQ
How are perpetual dexs ranked on this page?+
Each service is scored 0–10 from public data — tvl and audits of the perp venue (defillama) — weighted for what matters in this category, plus our own latency and status checks. 8 of 15 are ranked; the rest we could not measure enough to place fairly. Every figure is dated and links to its source.
What is the best perpetual dex?+
On the data we could measure, GMX scores highest at 7.56/10, ahead of Gains Network (6.76/10). "Best" here means best-evidenced, not most advertised — open each service below for the full breakdown and decide what fits your needs.
Why isn’t the biggest name at the top?+
Size is not a criterion. A large service that publishes no audits or status page cannot demonstrate its safety from the outside, so it scores below a smaller one that can — even if it is perfectly sound. We rate what is verifiable, not what is famous.
What does the "% measured" figure under a score mean?+
It is the share of this category's criteria weight we could actually fill for that service. Anything we could not measure is marked n/a and its weight is redistributed across the rest — never counted as zero — so the percentage tells you how complete the verdict is.
Do you earn money from these rankings?+
No. There are no affiliate links, no paid placements and no sponsored entries anywhere in the ratings section. That is what lets this list put a smaller, audited service above a bigger, opaque one.
No affiliate links, paid placements or ads anywhere on this site. How this is funded · Methodology