Coinbase is the exchange most beginners meet first, and it earns that spot fairly. We opened an account, funded it two ways, bought and sold four coins across a week, staked a small amount of ETH and moved the rest to cold storage before writing a word of this review.

Getting in the door

Signing up asked for an email, a phone number and a photo ID, then approved us inside an hour. A bank transfer cleared in three business days; a debit card purchase landed instantly, at a noticeably worse price. Apple Pay worked on the first attempt on mobile, something we could not say for two of the exchanges we tested alongside it. Nobody on our team needed a support ticket to get money in or a coin out, which is rarer than it should be at this size.

What a trade actually costs you

Here is the part Coinbase would rather you skimmed. Buy $100 of Bitcoin through the plain green button and you pay a flat fee plus a spread that can run close to 2%, according to independent fee breakdowns we cross-checked against our own receipts. Nansen's CEO Alex Svanevik called the structure "outrageous compared to what competitors charge for the same service," and our numbers back the complaint: Kraken's retail tier and Binance's flat 0.1% rate both undercut Coinbase's simple screen by a wide margin.

Route the identical order through Advanced Trade instead and the story changes. Maker fees start near 0.40% and fall toward 0% as volume climbs; taker fees run from 0.05% to 0.60%. Pay $4.99 a month for Coinbase One and trading fees disappear altogether, which pays for itself after two or three simple trades. The tools exist. Coinbase simply does not put them in front of a first-time buyer, and that choice is the whole review in one sentence.

Finding an asset without getting lost

The Explore tab lists hundreds of coins with live prices, market cap and short write-ups, and it is where most of our team actually price-checked a purchase before confirming it.

Search worked, filtering by market cap worked, and nothing here felt like it was built for traders rather than shoppers. That is by design: Coinbase treats discovery as a retail problem, and on that narrow measure it succeeds.

The legal record, in numbers

A first-time buyer weighs trust as much as price, so the regulatory history matters. The SEC sued Coinbase in June 2023 for allegedly operating an unregistered exchange; both sides jointly moved to dismiss the case with prejudice in February 2025, meaning it cannot be refiled. That is the cleanest outcome any large US exchange has produced from a major SEC action. Set against that, Coinbase paid New York's financial regulator $100 million in January 2023 over anti-money-laundering gaps dating back to 2015, and state regulators in California, New Jersey, South Carolina and Wisconsin still block new customers there from staking on the platform. Existing stakers in those states were grandfathered in; new ones were not.

Coinbase One and where the upsell lands

Coinbase's answer to its own fee problem is a subscription.

At $4.99 a month or less depending on region, Coinbase One removes trading fees and boosts staking rewards, and for anyone trading more than a couple of times a month it is the better deal over the plain buy button. It does not touch withdrawal fees or the network cost of moving a coin off the exchange, so read the fine print before assuming it covers everything.

Verdict: pay for the polish, not the trades

Judge Coinbase on ease of use and legal standing and it is close to the best beginner exchange available in the US and UK today. Judge it purely on price and it loses to Kraken and Binance at nearly every volume tier unless you route trades through Advanced Trade or pay for Coinbase One. Our recommendation splits the difference: open the account for the onboarding and the compliance record, then spend five minutes learning Advanced Trade before you fund it. Skip that step and you are paying a beginner tax indefinitely, not just on day one. This review reports what we measured; it is not financial advice, and your own tax and regulatory situation may change the math.