The two starting points compared: opening your own affiliate account, or joining an existing one as a sub-affiliate.
How do you actually become a crypto exchange affiliate?
There are two real paths, not one. You can open your own affiliate account directly with an exchange, or you can join an existing affiliate's tree as a sub-affiliate. Both are legitimate, both pay you directly from the exchange, and which one is better depends on whether you already have a track record with that exchange.
Path 1: go direct
- Sign up for the exchange's own affiliate program (OKX, Binance, Bitget and MEXC each run one).
- You start at that exchange's own published default rate for a brand-new affiliate. On OKX that is a published 30%.
- Your rate rises over time as your own invitees' trading volume and count grow, reassessed by the exchange on its own schedule.
- You are paid directly by the exchange, on its own settlement cadence, with no one else in the chain.
Going direct is the better path if you already hold, or expect to quickly earn, a high tier in your own name, since nothing is shared with anyone else along the way.
Path 2: join as a sub-affiliate
- An existing affiliate at a high tier (ReturnFee holds a Level 5, 65% OKX tier) can promote you into their own tree as a sub-affiliate, a normal, documented feature of OKX's own console.
- You get a rate carved from their tier, confirmed at up to 50% on ReturnFee's own OKX console this pass, from your first referred trader, without first building volume alone.
- The exchange still pays your share directly into your own account. ReturnFee is not the payer and does not hold your share before passing it on.
- OKX's own maintenance rule applies either way: fewer than five actively trading referred users over a trailing two months drops the rate to 0% until that is met again.
Joining as a sub-affiliate is the better path if you are starting from zero: it puts you above OKX's own 30% default from your first referral, instead of building toward a comparable tier alone over months.
Where going direct wins outright: if you already run a high-volume OKX affiliate account in your own name, opening it yourself and negotiating your own tier keeps 100% of your own negotiated rate, with nothing carved out for hosting the relationship. This page is written for someone deciding where to start, not for someone who already has a tier to protect.
The full numbers, exchange by exchange
See affiliate commission rates compared for what each of OKX, Bitget, Binance and MEXC actually publishes, and where ReturnFee's own confirmed sub-affiliate rate stands today.
Say yes
No earnings are promised anywhere on this page. What you receive depends entirely on the trading activity of the users you actually refer, and on each exchange's own rules.
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