Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. If you sign up through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which platform we recommend. We have recommended against both exchanges on this page where the evidence pointed that way.
How we compared these two
We pulled fees from each exchange’s own published schedule rather than from third-party listicles, which recycle numbers that went stale years ago. Security claims are sourced to incident reports, court filings and CERT-In-notified disclosures. Tax rules are taken from the Income Tax Department and the Budget 2026 text. Where an exchange does not publish a number, we say so instead of guessing. That absence is itself a finding, and you will see it below.
TL;DR — If you ever want to move crypto off the platform, the comparison is already over: CoinDCX lets you withdraw to an external wallet, CoinSwitch does not. Not on the main app, and not on CoinSwitch PRO either. CoinSwitch is a closed loop; you buy, you sell, you take rupees out of a bank account. CoinDCX also publishes an explicit maker/taker schedule (0.1% / 0.15% on spot) while CoinSwitch does not publish a comparable public spot table at all. CoinDCX is the better choice for anyone who intends to self-custody, trade futures, or audit what they are paying. CoinSwitch remains the gentler first app if you only ever plan to hold and cash out in INR, provided you accept that your coins live inside its walls.
CoinSwitch vs CoinDCX: the short answer
Both are Indian exchanges, both are registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND), and both will happily take your rupees over UPI. They stopped being interchangeable somewhere around 2024, and most comparison articles still on the first page of Google have not noticed.
Fees are part of it, and we will get to those. The bigger question is whether the crypto you buy is yours to move. CoinDCX behaves like a conventional exchange: buy Bitcoin, send it to a wallet you control, done. CoinSwitch does not offer that. You can put crypto in (CoinSwitch PRO accepts deposits from other exchanges and wallets), but the only way value comes back out is as INR into your bank account.
For a lot of first-time Indian buyers that restriction never bites. For anyone who reads a sentence like “not your keys, not your coins” and takes it seriously, it is disqualifying.
CoinSwitch vs CoinDCX charges: what each one actually costs
CoinDCX publishes its schedule. Spot trades carry a 0.1% maker fee and a 0.15% taker fee at the standard tier. Futures are cheaper in percentage terms at 0.025% maker and 0.075% taker. Options are 0.01% on both sides, and tokenised commodities (gold, silver, crude, Brent, natural gas) were cut to a flat 0.01%. VIP tiers drop these further and re-calculate every Monday off your trailing 30-day volume, so the rate you pay is a moving target rather than a fixed grade.
INR movement is free in both directions on CoinDCX: no fee on deposits via IMPS, NEFT, RTGS or UPI, and no fee on withdrawals. Crypto withdrawals are charged at the network fee of the day, so the cost of sending Bitcoin out rises and falls with congestion rather than sitting at a fixed number.
CoinSwitch is harder to pin down, and that is the honest finding here. Its options product is advertised from 0.015%, and CoinSwitch PRO runs a tiered maker/taker model for active traders. But there is no public spot fee table on CoinSwitch’s own site comparable to CoinDCX’s. The simple app prices trades through the spread you are quoted at the moment of purchase, which means the cost is embedded in the rate rather than itemised on a receipt. Third-party sites quote tier ranges for PRO; none of them trace back to a CoinSwitch-published schedule, so we are not going to repeat those numbers as if they were verified.
The practical consequence: on CoinDCX you can calculate your cost before you trade. On CoinSwitch’s main app you find out by comparing the quoted buy price against the market price yourself. If “what are the charges” is the question that brought you here, that difference in legibility matters more than any single percentage.
| Cost item | CoinDCX | CoinSwitch |
|---|---|---|
| Spot maker / taker | 0.1% / 0.15% standard tier, lower on VIP | No public spot schedule; priced into the quoted spread |
| Futures maker / taker | 0.025% / 0.075% standard | Available on PRO, INR-margined and INR-settled; rates not publicly tabled |
| Options | 0.01% / 0.01% | Advertised from 0.015% |
| INR deposit | Free (IMPS / NEFT / RTGS / UPI) | Free |
| INR withdrawal | Free | Free |
| Crypto withdrawal to your own wallet | Supported, charged at network fee | Not supported, on the app or on PRO |
| Fee transparency | Published schedule and VIP ladder | Spread-based on the main app |
The difference that decides it for most people
CoinSwitch’s own product documentation states that PRO does not support crypto withdrawal and that all withdrawals must be made in INR. Crypto deposits work; the door opens inward only.
This is not a bug or a temporary maintenance state. It is the design. It keeps the product simple, it sidesteps a large amount of compliance overhead, and for a user who wants an app that behaves like a mutual-fund tracker it is arguably a feature. But it also means three things are permanently off the table:
- You cannot move funds to a hardware wallet if you decide you want cold storage.
- You cannot arbitrage to another exchange, or shift to a venue with deeper liquidity, without selling to INR first, which is a taxable transfer in India.
- Your coins cannot do anything on-chain. No staking outside the app, no DeFi, and no spending them anywhere.
That second point is quietly expensive. Because every exit from CoinSwitch is a sale, every exit is a taxable event under India’s flat 30% regime, even when you only wanted to change venue.
Security: a $44M breach and a hack next door
Neither exchange has a clean recent history, and any comparison written before mid-2025 is missing the most important facts about both.
CoinDCX, July 2025
On 19 July 2025, attackers compromised a single internal CoinDCX account used for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange and drained roughly $44 million in a matter of minutes, routing funds through Solana addresses and bridging to Ethereum. Co-founder Sumit Gupta confirmed the breach publicly the same day. Customer assets, held separately in cold storage, were not touched, and CoinDCX absorbed the entire loss from its own treasury rather than passing it to users. CERT-In was notified, external forensics firms were engaged, and a recovery bounty of up to $11 million was offered.
Two criticisms are fair. The disclosure came roughly seventeen hours after the attack, and it came after independent researcher ZachXBT had already surfaced it, so the exchange was not first to tell its own users. And an operational account with that much reach is a structural weakness, not bad luck. Two things in CoinDCX’s favour: the segregation between operational and customer funds did exactly what segregation is supposed to do, and the company paid rather than socialised the loss. We go through the detail in our separate write-up on whether CoinDCX is safe in 2026.
CoinSwitch and the WazirX collapse
CoinSwitch was not hacked. It was standing next to the exchange that was. When WazirX lost roughly $235 million in July 2024, about $9.7 million of CoinSwitch’s own funds were parked there and got frozen with everything else. CoinSwitch covered its users from treasury, kept reserves at 1:1, and then went to court, eventually securing recovery through Bombay High Court rulings. It also ran a ₹600 crore recovery programme aimed at WazirX users generally.
Read that how you like. It is evidence that CoinSwitch had counterparty exposure it had not disclosed to users, and evidence that when the exposure went bad it made users whole out of its own pocket. Both readings are true. If the episode makes you want alternatives to Indian custodial platforms altogether, that is a defensible conclusion.
One asymmetry worth stating plainly: after a breach, CoinDCX users could move their coins somewhere else. CoinSwitch users, structurally, cannot.
Regulation and tax: what changed for Indian traders in 2026
Both exchanges are FIU-IND reporting entities: CoinDCX through Neblio Technologies, CoinSwitch through Bitcipher Labs. That regime did not exist when most of the older comparison articles were written; registration for crypto businesses only began in March 2023, and the register has grown from 28 entities to roughly fifty since.
The tax picture in 2026 is unchanged where it hurts and newly strict where it is easy to overlook:
- The flat 30% tax on virtual digital asset gains and the 1% TDS both survived Budget 2026 intact, despite sustained lobbying.
- Losses still cannot be set off against other VDA gains or any other income, and cannot be carried forward. Only cost of acquisition is deductible, not exchange fees and not gas.
- New penalties for reporting failures took effect on 1 April 2026: ₹200 per day for non-filing and a flat ₹50,000 for disclosures left incorrect.
- The consolidated Income Tax Act, 2025 came into force on 1 April 2026, renumbering the crypto provisions and writing “crypto-asset” explicitly into the statutory VDA definition.
- India has adopted the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework. Domestic reporting duties began 1 April 2026; cross-border exchange of that data with other CARF countries starts 1 April 2027.
Transfers still have to be reported line by line on Schedule VDA. If you trade with any frequency on either platform, reconstructing that by hand at filing time is miserable. Our roundup of crypto tax software and our primer on crypto tax in India both cover the mechanics.
Features and products: two companies going different places
CoinDCX has widened into a full trading stack: the main app for spot, CoinDCX Pro with TradingView charting and API access, futures, options, staking, and tokenised commodities. Its DeFi arm, Okto, is a self-custodial wallet effort running on its own track. Corporately it has been the more acquisitive of the two: it bought Dubai-based BitOasis in July 2024, and an October 2025 investment from Coinbase valued it at about $2.45 billion. It reports 1.4 crore-plus users.
CoinSwitch went sideways into other asset classes instead. Its parent, now PeepalCo, launched Lemonn in April 2024, a separate app for stocks, mutual funds and IPOs, run under its own broking compliance. The crypto app itself has gained PRO, with INR-margined futures that settle in rupees so you never need to hold USDT, plus an options product. It markets 2 crore-plus users.
A small thing worth knowing if you are searching for the old name: the front-facing brand is now just CoinSwitch. “Kuber” survives in the Play Store package ID and the legal entity, but the product stopped being called CoinSwitch Kuber some time ago. Both companies also went through layoffs during the post-2022 downturn.
One ratings oddity deserves a flag rather than a verdict: CoinSwitch sits around 4.5 stars on the Play Store and 1.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot. That spread is wide enough that neither figure should be taken at face value. App-store ratings are prompted at happy moments, Trustpilot skews toward people with a grievance. Read a sample of the recent one-star reviews yourself before deciding what the number means.
CoinSwitch vs CoinDCX: which is better for you?
| If you are… | Pick | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Buying your first ₹5,000 of Bitcoin and holding | Either, slight edge CoinSwitch | Simpler onboarding; the withdrawal limit will not affect you yet |
| Planning to self-custody | CoinDCX | CoinSwitch cannot send crypto to your wallet at all |
| Trading actively or on leverage | CoinDCX | Published fee ladder, deeper product set, API and charting |
| Wanting INR-settled futures without USDT | CoinSwitch PRO | Margin and settlement both in rupees |
| Cost-sensitive and want to audit what you pay | CoinDCX | Itemised maker/taker rather than an embedded spread |
| Holding stocks and crypto in one place | CoinSwitch | Lemonn sits alongside it under the same parent |
Pros and cons
CoinDCX
- ✅ Withdraw crypto to any external wallet
- ✅ Published maker/taker schedule with a VIP ladder
- ✅ Free INR deposits and withdrawals
- ✅ Futures, options, staking, tokenised commodities
- ✅ Absorbed the 2025 breach loss from treasury; customer funds untouched
- ❌ Suffered a ~$44M operational breach in July 2025
- ❌ Disclosed it ~17 hours later, after a third party surfaced it
- ❌ Broader product range is more than a beginner needs
CoinSwitch
- ✅ Genuinely easy for a first-time buyer
- ✅ Free INR deposits and withdrawals
- ✅ INR-margined, INR-settled futures on PRO, with no USDT needed
- ✅ Made users whole from treasury after its WazirX exposure
- ❌ No crypto withdrawal to external wallets, on the app or PRO
- ❌ No public spot fee schedule; cost sits inside the quoted spread
- ❌ Had undisclosed counterparty exposure to WazirX
- ❌ Trustpilot rating of 1.3/5 sits far below its app-store score
Expert tip
Test the exit before you need it. Buy a small amount on whichever platform you choose, then immediately try to withdraw it the way you eventually intend to: a wallet address, or your bank. You will learn more about a platform in that one round trip than from any review, including this one. On CoinSwitch, run the INR path; the crypto path does not exist, and finding that out with ₹500 at stake beats finding it out with ₹5 lakh.
Which is better, CoinDCX or CoinSwitch?
CoinDCX for most people, because it lets you withdraw crypto to your own wallet and publishes its fees. CoinSwitch is the friendlier first app if you only ever plan to buy, hold and cash out in rupees.
What are the charges on CoinSwitch vs CoinDCX?
CoinDCX charges 0.1% maker and 0.15% taker on spot at the standard tier, 0.025%/0.075% on futures and 0.01% on options, with free INR deposits and withdrawals. CoinSwitch does not publish a comparable public spot schedule. Its main app builds the cost into the price you are quoted. Its options product is advertised from 0.015%.
Can I withdraw crypto from CoinSwitch to another wallet?
No. CoinSwitch does not support crypto withdrawal to external wallets, on the main app or on CoinSwitch PRO. Its own documentation states all withdrawals must be made in INR. You can deposit crypto in, but you cannot send it out.
Is CoinDCX safe after the 2025 hack?
Customer funds were not affected by the July 2025 breach. The attackers reached an internal operational account used for liquidity on a partner exchange, and CoinDCX covered the roughly $44 million loss from its own treasury. The incident was reported to CERT-In. The fair criticisms are that disclosure took about 17 hours and came after an independent researcher had already flagged it.
Are CoinSwitch and CoinDCX legal in India?
Yes. Both are registered reporting entities with the Financial Intelligence Unit of India: CoinDCX via Neblio Technologies and CoinSwitch via Bitcipher Labs. Crypto is taxed rather than banned: a flat 30% on gains plus 1% TDS, both retained in Budget 2026.
Is CoinSwitch still called CoinSwitch Kuber?
Not publicly. The brand is now simply CoinSwitch. “Kuber” persists in the Google Play package identifier and in the legal entity name, but the app and marketing dropped it.
Do I pay tax when moving crypto between exchanges?
Moving crypto between wallets you own is not itself a sale. But because CoinSwitch cannot send crypto out, leaving it always means selling to INR first, and that sale is a taxable transfer at 30% with 1% TDS. It is a real cost of the closed-loop design.
Bottom line: CoinDCX is the more complete exchange and the safer default, mainly because it does not trap what you buy. It publishes its fees, it survived a serious breach without passing the bill to users, and it gives you a door out. CoinSwitch is a well-built on-ramp with one structural catch that its marketing does not lead with — your crypto cannot leave. If you are certain you only want INR in and INR out, that catch costs you nothing. If you are not certain, assume you will want the door eventually, and start where the door exists.
Fees, product availability and regulatory status change often. Figures here were checked against each exchange’s published material and Indian tax provisions in force as of August 2026. Verify current rates on the exchange before you trade. And treat any comparison article that has not been updated since the July 2025 CoinDCX breach as out of date.
Related reading
These two exchanges in depth
- CoinDCX review (full walkthrough of the platform)
- CoinSwitch review (features, limits and who it suits)
- Is CoinDCX safe in 2026? (breach detail and risk assessment)
- CoinDCX US futures review (the derivatives side)
Other Indian comparisons
- Coinbase vs CoinDCX (global versus domestic)
- WazirX vs CoinSwitch (the older rivalry)
- Best WazirX alternatives in India
- Binance in India (using an offshore exchange from India)
Buying and storing in India
- How to buy Bitcoin in India
- P2P crypto exchanges in India
- Best Bitcoin wallets in India
- Best hardware wallets (for getting coins off an exchange)
Tax and compliance
- Crypto tax in India (30%, TDS and Schedule VDA)
- Best crypto tax software
- CEX vs DEX after WazirX (why self-custody matters)
