The first step when it comes to trading or investing in cryptocurrencies is first finding the best crypto exchange in South Africa for you. Though there may be dozens of crypto exchanges and platforms available, it’s necessary to get the platform that best compliments your trading style, strategies, and experience.

In this best crypto exchange South Africa review, we’ll help you find the best South African crypto exchange by reviewing different platforms’ features, fees, and interfaces.

Best South African Crypto Exchanges List 2023

To give an overview in finding the best crypto exchange South Africa, we’ve listed down below the best crypto trading platforms.

1. OKX– Best Platform For Beginners And Experienced Traders
2. Capital.com – Overall Best Crypto Trading Platform in South Africa
3. Binance – Best Crypto Exchange for New Coins
4. Coinbase – Best Crypto Trading Platform for Beginners South Africa
5. Coinmama – Best Crypto Exchange with High Spending Limits
6. Kraken – One of the Most Established Crypto Exchanges South Africa
7. Crypto.com – Fast and Secure Cryptocurrency Exchange

Best South African Crypto Exchanges Reviewed

Whether you’re looking for the best-decentralized crypto exchange, best crypto exchange for bot trading, or best crypto exchange low fees, below are the reviews of our recommended best crypto platforms. It’s up to you to decide what the best crypto exchange South Africa is for you.

1. OKX- Best Platform For Beginners And Experienced Traders

As a first option, we have OKX. On this platform, you will have access to more than 100 cryptocurrencies. Within the offer, you can find Bitcoin and Ethereum. One of its biggest advantages is that it constantly updates its offer with new cryptocurrencies.

OKX is an ideal choice for both beginner and expert traders. For beginners, it offers several educational resources that can be useful for gaining knowledge about the market. The experts can find different tools and advanced charting.

The platform has a mobile application available for both iOS and Android. Through the app, you can trade for any cryptocurrency instantly. Security is very important for OKX. The platform stores 95% of its clients’ digital assets offline.

OKX fees:

Your money is at risk.

2. Capital.com - Overall Best Crypto Trading Platform in South Africa

We chose Capital.com as our overall best crypto trading platform in South Africa because of its easy-to-use platform, zero commissions, and low spreads. For most investors and traders, the Capital.com platform provides exceptional value with its contract for difference (CFD) trading uses as well as a handy mobile application. Account creation is also fast, simple, and easily accessible.

Because of its low fees and leverage offerings, Capital.com is also known as one of the best forex trading platforms out there. Additionally, the platform also offers various other trading instruments such as stocks, commodities, and indices through CFDs as well.

All of these instruments available combined with an intuitive platform and mobile app make Capital.com a great all-in-one trading platform. They even offer users a demo account with access to all the trading instruments for beginners to better understand the markets with real-time prices. It may very well be the best crypto trading platform in South Africa that also offers the best metaverse crypto coins as well as other instruments.

Later on, we’ll discuss how to start your crypto investing journey with Capital.com. The minimum deposit to start on the platform is $20.

Capital.com fees

Your money is at risk.

3. Binance - Best Crypto Exchange for New Coins

Second on our list is Binance, the best crypto coin exchange as it features some of the newest coins available. This best crypto exchange South Africa for new coins has over 500 tradable cryptocurrencies and virtual tokens. Through Binance, you can invest in crypto, exchange, and convert different digital assets and fiats either through their peer-to-peer exchange or their central exchange.

The Binance peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange is a platform that looks to match different crypto buyers with sellers. An advantage of the Binance P2P exchange is zero costs, an escrow service for funds, and multiple payment methods available to mention a few.

Another great feature on the Binance platform is Spot Grid Trading which makes it the best-automated crypto trading platform.. Essentially, Spot Grid Trading is an algorithmic trading bot that automates trading within a certain range. If you’re looking to buy crypto on Binance, the minimum limit for buying digital coins (through Simplex) is 500 ZAR for Visa or Mastercard. 

Binance fees

Cryptoassets are speculative and carry high volatility levels. Always consider the risks involved. 

4. Coinbase - Best Crypto Trading Platform for Beginners South Africa

Established in 2012, Coinbase is the best trading platform for crypto newcomers with a beginner-friendly platform where you can buy new crypto coins and over 50 different cryptocurrencies to trade from. Available in over a hundred countries, Coinbase offers a secure platform with its own crypto wallet called the Coinbase crypto wallet.

To add to this, the Coinbase crypto wallet offers support for over 4,000 crypto assets and decentralized applications. In other words, it’s like a passport to the decentralized web. This means you can gain yield with your tokens, grow an NFT collection, and much more. For trading cryptocurrencies, commissions would start at 0.5% on lower volumes.

Coinbase fees

 

Your money is at risk.

5. Coinmama - Best Crypto Exchange with High Spending Limits

Launched in 2013, Coinmama is the best crypto exchange that offers high buying and selling limits to invest in bitcoin. The platform’s transaction limits vary depending on your verification level, payment method, and regulations, but for second-level accounts, the total account transaction limit is $50,000.

When it comes to actually fund the account to buy the best crypto, choose from a wide array of options such as credit card, debit card, bank transfer, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. There are also five currencies that you can use to exchange crypto on Coinmama which are:

• United States Dollar - USD
• Euro - EUR
• British Pound Sterling - GBP
• Australian Dollar - AUD
• Canadian Dollar - CAD

Coinmama fees

 

Your money is at risk.

6. Kraken - One of the Most Established Crypto Exchanges South Africa

Having been created just two years after Bitcoin’s launch and commencing operations in 2013, Kraken is one of the most established crypto exchanges out there. As such, the platform has plenty of experience and work done towards being a secure exchange as well. There are over 50 cryptocurrencies that are offered on the platform and the number only seems to be growing.

In our review, Kraken is the best crypto trading platform in South Africa that offers both basic and advanced crypto trading features. Users can actually switch between the basic trading view and the pro trading view. Kraken even has integrations with iOS and Android - having two different apps for pro and classic trading.

You can create an account with the Kraken crypto platform in just minutes with a minimum deposit requirement of $10.

Kraken fees

67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

7. Crypto.com - Fast and Secure Cryptocurrency Exchange

Lastly, we wouldn’t leave out Crypto.com as it is one of the fastest and most secure cryptocurrency exchanges. It can owe its extremely fast growth in the past few years thanks to its large teams of marketers and computer scientists.

Perhaps what could put Crytpo.com as a general best crypto exchange in South Africa is its extensive integrations with decentralized finance (DeFi). DeFi is a growing trend in the crypto sphere as it offers opportunities to earn from staked coins like how lent capital earns interest. Don't miss our article about the best defi coins available now. 

Generally speaking, Crypto.com offers decent prices for crypto and is very forward-looking when it comes to blockchains and to crypto lending. Aside from offering derivatives trading which allows for leveraged crypto positions, Crypto.com already has an NFT marketplace for selling and buying NFTs. The minimum investment per transaction at Crypto.com is 1 USD. 

Crypto.com fees

Your capital is at risk.

Best South African Crypto Exchanges - Fee Comparison

How to Choose the Best Cryptocurrency Trading Platform for You

To find the best crypto exchange in South Africa for your needs, there are many different things to consider. In this section, we’ll go through the different aspects of the best crypto exchange South Africa so that you can find for yourself the best South African crypto exchange.

Regulations and Safety

One of the first things to look out for when looking for the best crypto platform South Africa for you is its regulations and overall security. Although cryptocurrencies are still an instrument that is being regulated by corresponding regulatory bodies, several groups have already put out regulations.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) is one of the leading regulatory bodies in South Africa and the news is they have plans of regulating crypto in 2023. For now, it's best to look for platforms that have already been regulated in other countries. Crypto assets are volatile and finding a platform that is tried and tested and offers security measures like two-factor authentication is key.

Assets

Your money is at risk.

Are you looking to trade multiple crypto assets, keeping up to date with the latest ones? Or are you looking to focus on only one or two of the biggest coins that you want to invest in or trade? Your answer to these questions will help you understand your best crypto platform South Africa.

Most platforms can offer the most popular cryptos if that’s what you’re looking for, even if you want to buy Lucky Block coin. However, if you want to be one of the first ones to access lower-cap coins that tend to trend, then you might want to look for a platform that offers a wide variety of new coins. This aspect will depend on your trading strategy as some crypto investors are fine with a smaller selection of coins.

Fees

One of the most common ways to think about your trading journey, whether or not it be full-time or on the side, is like a business. Even the best crypto platform South Africa will have fees that any investor would treat as their business cost. Though you might think that lower fees mean a better platform, you could also argue that the fees a platform gives are a measure of its value.

In any case, you’ll need to assess your potential best crypto platform South Africa by seeing if the features that it offers are worth the fees it gives. For example, a platform that might have more fees for you might have great security features and an excellent user interface. In this situation, it’s really up to you to balance the fees and features.

 Deposit and Withdrawal Fees

Perhaps one of the most fixed types of fees for trading platforms is the deposit and withdrawal fees. Often, the rates of these fees are flat to encourage withdrawal or deposit of large amounts. 

There are some platforms that don’t require any fees for depositing and withdrawal but the platforms that do often don’t charge too much. Still, the deposit and withdrawal fees are worth taking a look at when searching for the best South African crypto exchange for you.

Commission Fees

A lot of the fees from trading platforms and crypto exchanges come through the transactions as they do function as the middle man in the entire trading process. Normally, crypto exchanges charge maker and taker fees, charge through a spread, or require a commission.

A zero commission channel seems to be one of the more attractive options as many brokers want to be the best crypto platform South Africa tends to implement. But as we mentioned earlier, lower fees might not necessarily mean a superior platform for you. Generally, though, platforms that offer zero commissions like Capital.com are favorable as the commissions fee costs no longer have to be taken into account when you trade.

Other Fees to Consider

Some of the other fees to consider are inactivity fees as well as exchange rates for platforms that require the use of foreign currency. Inactivity fees are quite uncommon, especially for crypto exchange platforms. You’ll likely experience costs from exchange rates.

If you mainly have a South African bank account in ZAR, then you might want to consider the currency used in finding the best crypto exchange in South Africa for you. Most platforms use the common USD, EUR, and even GBP - so withdrawing from a foreign currency will likely use the exchange rate of your bank.

Trading Tools & Features

75.26% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Your trading experience can also affect your choice of the best crypto trading platform in South Africa. For example, an extremely advanced platform with the most trading tools and features might not benefit beginners as they might not be able to even access all the tools. Furthermore, it's easy for newcomers to get overwhelmed and even get analysis paralysis from an overload of information.

Depending on the trading strategy, a simple interface could be ideal. For example, those looking to invest in the long term might only need a couple of indicators and know the history of prices as well as other fundamental analysis resources. Traders with tools to use in mind should definitely look into the available indicators and trading features when finding their best crypto exchange in South Africa.

Support for Crypto Trading Robots

Some of the best crypto platforms we mentioned earlier use trading bots or some kind of algorithm to help in trading - whether that be during or after the trading itself. For example, the crypto exchange Binance has Spot Grid Trading which is basically a trading robot that makes positions automatically during live prices.

On the other hand, Capital.com uses artificial intelligence after trades to help its users find better opportunities or make better trading decisions in the future. If you know what you want to get out of your trading bot, then crypto trading bot functionality is something you might want to look for in finding the best crypto platform in South Africa.

Copy Trading

Copy-trading allows users to copy the trading positions of other users on the same platform. Although some of the best crypto platforms might not explicitly have copy trading options, you can still practice copy trading manually as long as you can see the positions of traders that you want to mimic.

However, some platforms offer a more automatic way to copy trade and it can be very advantageous as you won’t need to worry about making your own positions. If you think a more automated way of copy trading will benefit you maybe because you lack some trading knowledge or experience, then you might want to consider it for your best crypto platform South Africa. It might seem like a quick and easy way of making money, but you still need to be savvy about who you wish to copy.

Leverage and Short-Selling

Using leverage is a great way to make the most out of a small position. It essentially increases the size of your position by offering a fraction of the amount. For example, Capital.com offers a 20:1 leverage on crypto, meaning using $10 on a buy position would be worth $200.

Users can also open short positions on certain cryptocurrencies. This basically means that you are betting against the price of the coin and you will earn if the price of the coin you shorted goes down.

Leverage and short-selling are great tools you can use to make the most out of your trades, but they are extremely risky as well. Make sure you have proper risk management and trade responsibly when using these practices. If done correctly, then consider using them in your best crypto platform South Africa.

Education, Research & Analysis

67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Educational resources such as research articles and analyses can be overlooked by some traders, so it’s important to find a great platform that offers unbiased and updated news on the market. If you’re a beginner, it might be worth investing in a platform that offers a very in-depth educational experience like video courses and extensive research. Some of the best crypto platforms offer this.

Liquidity

Liquidity allows you to easily pull your money out of the platform and it's quite important when considering the best crypto exchange in South Africa for you.  As an entirely separate contract from actually buying an underlying crypto asset, there’s plenty of liquidity when CFD trading crypto-like in Capital.com.

Centralized exchanges often have lots of liquidity as well because they have lots of money stored from different accounts. But liquidity can also depend on what asset you’re trading and the amount of volume of the instrument.

User Experience

Another important aspect when finding the best crypto platform South Africa is user experience. A basic example is having a beginner use a platform with a hundred technical indicators and advanced trading tools. You can argue that it might be a trial by fire of sorts, but more often than not, the beginner will be overwhelmed.

User experience is important as some platforms are designed for new traders while others are designed with advanced traders in mind.

Mobile App

As the crypto markets run 24/7 having a mobile app is already the standard for any crypto exchange. A great mobile app is one that is responsive, easy to use, and offers most if not all of the features as the web platform exchange. Consider the review and overall performance of your potential best crypto platform’s mobile app.

Payment Methods

You’ll also need to pay close attention to the payment methods available per crypto exchange or trading platform. The best crypto exchange South Africa for you should have your preferred payment method. As mentioned earlier, if you’re worried about a lot of the exchange fees, then you might want a platform that offers crypto in ZAR. However, if these exchange fees are alright with you, then you can explore other options.

Customer Service

The standard customer service for the industry is a 24/5 operations length. However, it's definitely a plus to have 24/7 customer support. The quality of customer support also matters as some platforms only offer ticketing services or basic FAQs. A platform with a dedicated chat or call agent is definitely of great quality.

Having a dedicated account manager for you on a platform might make it the best crypto exchange platform in South Africa in terms of customer service.

How to Start Crypto Trading - OKX

Once you found your best crypto platform South Africa, then you can start trading with it. For this step-by-step tutorial, we’re using the best overall crypto exchange South Africa, OKX.

Step 1: Open an Account

67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

First, head to the OKX website and press the Trade Now button. Simply fill in your email and password or use an existing Facebook, Google, or Apple account to register.

Step 2: Upload ID

Next, you’ll need to verify your account so that you can later fund it. You’ll need to upload a valid ID such as a passport or driver’s license then wait for your account to finish being verified.

Step 3: Deposit Funds

After your account has been verified, you can now deposit funds into your account. Some of the deposit methods available are through wire transfer, Visa, MasterCard, and many local third-party channels.

Step 4: Trade Cryptos

With your account fully funded, you can now trade crypto on the site! If you want to buy Bitcoin, just search ‘BTC’ or ‘Bitcoin’, click the buy button, and complete the trade.

Capital.com – Overall Best Cryptos Trading Platform in South Africa

75.26% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

FAQs

What is a crypto exchange?

A crypto exchange is a platform that offers the buying and selling of different cryptocurrencies. These exchanges can be centralised (one authority controls the liquidity and rules of the exchange) or decentralised where no single governing authority controls how crypto assets are moved and spent.

Which crypto trading platforms offer the most leverage?

Capital.com is a trading platform that offers crypto leverages at 20:1 straight after verifying your account.

What is the cheapest crypto trading platform?

The cheapest crypto trading platform is Capital.com as it has zero commissions, low spreads, and competitive overnight fees.

What is the best crypto exchange for South Africans?

Overall, the best crypto exchange for South Africans is Capital.com as for most use cases, it will bring the most value. It’s platform is very easy to use, offers CFD trading, and has zero commissions.

How do I start crypto trading?

Start crypto trading by creating an account in a crypto trading platform, adding funds, and buying the digital coins. Sign up for a platform like Capital.com to get started.