How we review crypto exchanges (withdrawal-first methodology)

We review exchanges in this order: can you get your money out, is the exchange allowed to serve you, what does it really cost, and only then what it offers.

We research; we do not test. WithdrawFirst does not open exchange accounts, deposit or withdraw funds. Every page is built from official exchange pages, regulator records and, where those are missing, clearly labelled press or secondary sources, each one linked with the date we checked it. Where we could not confirm something that matters to your money, the page says “not yet verified”. We do not fill gaps with guesses.

What “withdrawal-first” means

The fear we see most often is not high fees. It is a frozen account, or a withdrawal that never arrives. An exchange with low fees and hundreds of coins is a poor choice if you cannot get your money out when you need it.

A small sample we took shows how often this comes up. In a sample of 95 Trustpilot reviews of Bybit, Binance, MEXC and Bitget (every review on page 2 of each exchange's page, all star ratings, read on 9 October 2026), 47 were mainly about frozen accounts or withheld withdrawals, and 53 mentioned the problem. This is a small, self-selected sample of mostly one-star reviews, not a measure of how often accounts are frozen. The full method is in how we count complaints below.

So withdrawals are the first thing we research, and they carry the most weight in our component scores. For each exchange we record, from its own pages:

• Its published withdrawal rules: how long the exchange says a withdrawal takes, what can hold, block or reject one (security changes, compliance reviews, risk controls), and its withdrawal limits by verification level. We always write these as the exchange’s own statement (“Bybit says…”), never as a time we measured.
• Its withdrawal fees for four common routes: BTC, ETH on Ethereum (ERC-20), USDT on TRON (TRC-20) and USDT on BNB Smart Chain (BEP-20), with the date we read them.
• Its appeal route: the official way to challenge a held withdrawal or a frozen account, and any formal complaints procedure with deadlines (some EU companies publish one).
• Its withdrawal-status history: suspensions, partial reopenings and the times the exchange itself published.
• Incidents: hacks, regulatory actions and service exits, written from official notices.
• A complaint sample: a dated count of user reviews about freezes and blocked withdrawals, with its method stated next to it.

Our evidence label: Researched (not tested)

Every review and comparison carries the label “Researched” near the title. It means the page contains no first-hand claims. We never write “we tested”, “we withdrew”, “our withdrawal took 20 minutes” or “we found the app easy to use”, because we have not done those things. Withdrawal sections open with a short note that says exactly this.

How we score exchanges

We give component scores only. We do not give any exchange an overall score, and our pages carry no star ratings.

These are our current weights for the components, set by the WithdrawFirst Editorial Team.

Scroll sideways to see all columns

Two rules sit on top of the weights:

1. No overall score, for any exchange. Our heaviest criterion rests on what exchanges publish, not on our own withdrawals, so a single overall number would claim more certainty than we have.
2. Higher leverage never earns points. We list maximum leverage as a risk, not a feature, and only where the exchange’s own page states it.

How we verify every number (the data sheet)

Every fee, licence, restriction, incident and date on this site comes from one master data sheet. Pages read from it; writers do not retype numbers by hand. Each value in the sheet carries a source link, the date we checked it, and a confidence level. Before publication, every page is fact-checked against the sheet and checked against our compliance rules (risk and leverage warnings, country rules, disclosure).

Confidence levels, in plain language

• A: we read the official exchange or regulator page, or the exchange’s own public data feed (for example, its published withdrawal-fee settings), on the date shown. A dated screenshot of an official page, showing the address and the date, also counts. If that official page is itself old (for example, a fee article from several years ago), we say so next to the number.
• B: the value comes from a secondary source, or we could not open the official page in full and saw it only as quoted in a press release or search results. We say who reported it.
• Unverified: a value we have not re-checked. We do not publish these as fact.
• Not yet verified: what you see when we have no reliable source for something you need to know, such as a fee or whether an exchange serves your country. We never guess to fill the gap.

Standard fees and promo fees are kept apart

Promotional rates are shown in their own column with their expiry date. They never replace the standard rate. When a promotion expires, or has no published end date, we do not show it.

How often we re-check

Scroll sideways to see all columns

Every change updates the “verified” date shown on the page.

A note on India

India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND) requires crypto service providers to register as reporting entities, but it does not publish a public list of registered exchanges. So we can only establish registration through FIU-IND orders, government releases and exchange announcements. Our confidence in any India registration status is never higher than B, and we say this on every page that discusses India.

How we decide who sees an exchange link (availability rules)

An exchange that is excellent elsewhere is the wrong answer if it does not legally serve you. Our pages adjust to the country you are visiting from. The article text stays the same for everyone; only the links and availability boxes change.

• If an exchange does not serve your country, we remove the link and show “Not available in [your country]”, a link to the exchange’s own restricted-countries page, and a legal alternative where we have one. We say “not available” only where we have confirmed it.
• If we could not confirm whether an exchange serves your country, we say “not confirmed” and show no link. We never present an unconfirmed status as fact.
• If an exchange serves your country but we choose not to link it, we say “available; we don’t link to it”, never “not available”.
• Futures and copy trading: we link to them only where the exchange’s own page confirms the product is open to new customers in your country, and never in India or the EU (copy trading counts as futures for this rule). Today that means no futures or copy-trading links anywhere on this site.
• India: only exchanges with evidence of FIU-IND registration get a link for Indian visitors, and only for spot trading.
• United Kingdom: we link no crypto exchange for UK readers and show no bonuses or referral offers. Every article carries the FCA’s standard crypto risk warning for UK readers.
• European Union: only exchanges whose EU company appears on ESMA’s interim register of MiCA-authorised crypto-asset service providers, the link goes to that EU company, and only for spot trading. MiCA does not cover futures or other derivatives, which need a separate investment-firm licence, so we describe an exchange’s EU futures only where we have confirmed that licence.
• United States and Canada: only locally licensed services.
• Singapore: no exchange links at all.
• Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and the UAE: no exchange links. If your country is not in our availability list at all, we also show no exchange links.
• OKX: OKX lists prohibited jurisdictions; our OKX links refuse to work from those countries and from any country we cannot identify.

How we handle incidents, hacks and freezes

• Official notices first. We report the amount, timeline and status that the exchange itself publishes, and we link that notice.
• Press figures are labelled. Where press reports give different numbers or claims, we show them separately and say where they came from.
• No speculation. We do not estimate user losses. We name an attacker only when a government source does, and then we say which one (for example, “according to the FBI”).
• Living pages. Incident pages carry a “status as of” date and a dated change log. We update them on each new official notice. Incident pages never carry sign-up links. See all incidents at /incidents/.

How we count complaints

A complaint sample tells you what unhappy users write about. It does not tell you how often something goes wrong, and we never present it that way.

Our first sample was taken on 9 October 2026. The method:

• Source: Trustpilot. For each exchange, we read every review on page 2 of its Trustpilot page, at all star ratings, in Trustpilot’s default order.
• Coverage: Bybit (24 reviews), Binance (24), MEXC (24) and Bitget (23): 95 in total. Other exchanges have not been sampled yet, and their reviews say “not yet compiled”.
• Coding: each review gets one main topic, taken from its title or opening sentence. “Freeze” means an account or funds frozen, restricted or banned, a withdrawal held, or a “risk control” hold. Separately, we mark whether a review mentions held funds or a blocked withdrawal anywhere.
• Who did it: the sample was collected and coded as part of the WithdrawFirst Editorial Team’s research process, using the rules above.
• Limits: the reviews were coded in a single pass, not double-coded. A separate recount of “mentions” gave 51 to 55, against 53 in the sample. Reviewers choose to post, and 92 of the 95 reviews were one or two stars. Trustpilot pages change daily, and no archived copy exists for the collection date, so the sample cannot be re-read exactly.
• What we do not do: compare exchanges with it. About 24 reviews per exchange is too few to rank them, so we never write that one exchange “has the most freeze complaints”, and single-exchange reviews quote only the combined figure.

We re-sample every quarter, and before any page calls complaints “recent”. We do not show a Trustpilot or other review-site star score as a trust badge. A star average depends on who chooses to post, and it says nothing specific about whether withdrawals work.

How we make money, and how we keep it from changing scores

WithdrawFirst currently has no affiliate relationships with any exchange: no exchange pays us, and links go to official homepages. If we join an affiliate programme in future, every page with a paid link will say so above the first link. Details: How we make money.

• Commission, now or in future, never changes a score or the order of a list. Lists are ordered by availability, then safety record, then how much the exchange publishes; our lowest-fee page is ordered by fee and says so.
• Exchanges cannot pay for placement or for a review.
• If we ever earn from some exchanges, we will still list the ones we earn nothing from when they are the right answer for your country.

Who reviews our pages

Every page is written and reviewed by the WithdrawFirst Editorial Team. We do not put individual names on pages, and we do not publish author photos, job titles or credentials for team members. This is how a page is checked before it is published and each time it is updated:

1. Official sources first. Facts come from the exchange’s own pages (fees, terms, withdrawal rules, restricted-countries lists, announcements, proof of reserves) and from regulators’ registers and notices. Press reports are used only where we say so, and labelled.
2. One data sheet. Every fee, licence, restriction, incident and date is entered once in our data sheet with its source link, the date we checked it and a confidence level. Pages read from the sheet; nobody retypes numbers by hand.
3. Fact-check. A second pass compares every figure on the page with the data sheet and its source, re-opens the official page for high-stakes claims such as incidents, licences and country restrictions, and checks that dates, amounts and wording match.
4. Compliance review. Before publication we check the affiliate disclosure, risk and leverage warnings, country availability rules, incident notes, and that the page makes no claim we cannot support, such as a test we did not run.

WithdrawFirst does not open accounts or run deposit or withdrawal tests. All findings are researched from official pages, regulators and public complaints, and we give component scores only, never an overall score.

Corrections and requests from exchanges

If you find an error, or you represent an exchange and believe a fact is wrong, contact us through our contact page with a link to an official source. We check the source, update the data sheet, and add a dated line to the page’s change log. Exchanges can correct facts; they cannot buy a different score. More in our editorial policy.

What we will never do

• Cover ways around an exchange’s country restrictions, including VPNs.
• Predict prices.
• Promise returns, describe trading as “passive income”, or call any exchange guaranteed safe.
• Write “up to” bonus headlines without the base reward and the conditions.
• Use exchange logos without permission.
• Show Trustpilot or app-store star ratings as trust badges.
• Say we deposited or withdrew when we did not, or claim any other first-hand result we do not have.