Uphold is an intuitive crypto exchange and digital wallet for trading and securing cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, foreign fiat currencies, utility tokens, and precious metals.
Business Insider's personal finance team compared Uphold to the best cryptocurrency exchanges and found it stands out for its ease of use, transparent fee structure, and asset-to-asset swaps.
Uphold Pros and Cons
Uphold Pros
- Large selection of crypto assets, including new tokens
- Instant asset-to-asset trading
- Transparent fee structure
- Crypto-baskets offer instant diversification
Uphold Cons
- High spread fees on crypto, especially for those with low liquidity
- Basic charting tools and features
- No futures or options contracts
Open an Account
$1
Spread fees ranging from 0.25% to 2.95%
- Supports 300+ cryptocurrencies
- Allows direct trading between different asset classes
- Transparent fees
- High spread fees on cryptocurrencies and precious metals
- Doesn’t provide advanced trading or charting features
- Limited account and portfolio options
- No longer support US equities and stocks
Uphold is good for crypto traders interested in discovering emerging coins and tokens and asset-to-asset trading. Compared to other exchanges, however, Uphold lacks advanced charting features and charges high fees.
- Trade over 250 different cryptocurrencies
- Available in 150 countries
- Allows direct trading between different asset classes
- Transparent fees
Compare Uphold
$2
0.50% spread for buy/sell transactions; transaction fee from $0.99 to $2.99; up to 0.60% for Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Advanced Trade
- Buy, sell, or store more than 170 cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and dogecoin
- Educational investment resources, mobile access, digital storage, and customer support
- Low account minimums
- Can earn rewards for certain cryptocurrencies
- Coinbase card lets you spend crypto or USD anywhere and earn crypto rewards; can deposit your paycheck into your account and convert from USD to crypto with no fees
- Pay more for lower balances
- High trading and transaction fees
- Limited staking options
Coinbase is one of the best investment platforms for crypto trading, staking rewards, and crypto storage. The crypto exchange offering nearly 250 coins and tokens and is great for active real investors who can utilize Coinbase's services, account options, and investment tools.
Coinbase- Promotion: Get $5 of bitcoin when you join Coinbase; earn up to $200 when you set up a new account and make your first purchase
- Features: Coinbase Earn rewards, Coinbase Pro advanced account, user-controlled storage, stablecoins, staking, and institutional trading tools.
- App store rating: 4.7 iOS/ 4.1 Android; Coinbase Pro: 4.7 iOS/ 4.1 Android
- Awards: Named Best Prime Broker in Hedgeweek's annual European Digital Assets Awards
$10
1/5%; 0% - 0.40% maker/taker fees
- Can exchange 200+ crypto assets
- Margin trading available
- Variety of educational resources and tutorials on cryptocurrencies
- Over-the-counter (OTC) trading and account management support available
- Kraken's futures and staking isn't currently available in the US
- Not available to residents of New York and Washington
- Features: More than 100 cryptocurrencies, margin and futures trading, OTC trading, account management for HNW individuals and institutional clients, multiple trading platforms, and educational resources.
- App store rating: 4.7 iOS/ 4.2 Android
$0 ($1 for fractional shares; $2,000 for margin trading)
0% ($5/month for Robinhood Gold)
- Free stock, option, ETF, and cryptocurrency trades; 0.01% APY on uninvested cash for non-Gold users and 4.00% for Gold members
- IPO investing available
- Cash management accounts available
- Website is easy to navigate; advanced charts for all users
- Lack of investing research and trading tools; can only take advantage of professional research if you're a Robinhood Gold member
- No joint accounts, education savings accounts, or mutual funds
- App store rating: 4.2 iOS/4.0 Android
- Consider it if: You want to trade crypto and invest in a wide range of stocks and ETFs.
Uphold Overview
Uphold is a crypto trading platform for diversifying your investment portfolio with popular and emerging cryptocurrencies. It is especially good for investors looking for early access to less popular coins. Uphold offers individual, institutional, and enterprise crypto services.
With Uphold, you can invest in environmental assets, including UPCO2, the world's first tradeable carbon credit token. You can also buy gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and over 20 kinds of fiat money.
Novice crypto traders can benefit from Uphold's comprehensive learning hub, fee transparency, and easy onboarding process. More experienced traders can still access advanced order types, including limit orders, take-profit orders, and trailing stop orders. However, charting features are limited compared to competitors.
Uphold's main perk is its cross-asset trading feature, which allows users to trade directly between different asset classes. For example, you could directly exchange your bitcoin assets for gold without converting to cash.
US investors now have access to staking on Uphold again. Investors can stake up to 19 on-chain assets (including ether, Cardano, Tezos, and Solana) for weekly rewards of the same-staked cryptocurrency.
One downside of Uphold is that its variable spread fee structure can be costly, especially for low-liquid cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin.
Uphold provides a detailed customer support center with FAQs on various topics and a support request form. The Uphold mobile app has a chat function.
Uphold has a rating of 4.7/5 on the Apple Store and a 4.5/5 on Google Play.
Ways to Invest with Uphold
Uphold's setup process is fairly straightforward and designed to be completed in about five minutes. Like most crypto exchanges, you must enter a valid email and password. Uphold also requires you to provide a government-issued ID and selfie certification. Because of the selfie requirement, opening an Uphold account is easiest on mobile.
Uphold Personal Crypto Trading Account
A Personal Crypto Trading Account through Uphold provides retail traders access to features like automatic recurring trades, built-in wallet storage, and limited stop orders. You can also access fast deposits and 0% deposit fees and withdrawal fees.
Your Uphold multi-panel dashboard helps you navigate your account balance, crypto watchlist, recent transactions, Vault, USD Interest Account, and staking features. The Uphold mobile app displays dashboard panels one at a time but otherwise appears the same as the Uphold web platform.
The take-profit feature allows you to automatically sell assets when the price increases by the profit percentage you choose. Similarly, the trailing stop-loss feature helps limit potential losses by automatically selling a security when it hits the predetermined stop price.
Another perk of Uphold is its AutoPilot option, which utilizes dollar-cost averaging to lessen volatility for crypto trading. Investors can also benefit from automatic recurring trades and Uphold's DCA calculator.
Uphold's charting capabilities are limited to price tracking. You can view an asset's market cap, 24-hour trading volume, and all-time high price. Sophisticated traders who like analyzing trade fluctuations to identify trends and trading opportunities probably won't find Uphold to be a good fit, as the exchange lacks charts like candlesticks, range trading, ascending triangles, and other technical indicators.
Uphold Staking
US investors can now stake with Uphold. Staking involves locking up your crypto assets for a set period of time in exchange for rewards. Staking is essential to the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism.
Uphold had previously offered staking services to retail investors but stopped when the SEC started enforcing regulatory actions for staking and claimed exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken were violating securities laws. In 2025, the SEC dropped most of its lawsuits, allowing crypto exchanges like Uphold to reopen staking services.
On Uphold, you can stake: Kusama, Cosmos, Casper, Polkadot, Solana, Flare, Injective, Songbird, Near Protocol, Zilliqa, Axelarm, Aptos, Avalanche, Tezos, Polygon Ecosystem Token, Cardano, Oasis Network, Ether, and Hedera. Each token has its own minimum token per transaction amount.
How much you earn depends on which asset you stake and the demand for that asset. Uphold distributes rewards automatically every Thursday using the same cryptocurrency you've staked. You can track your staking rewards on your portfolio page.
You can unstake anytime, but the unstaking period varies by asset. For example, Cardano instantly unstakes while Avalanche has a staking period of 30 days.
Uphold USD Interest Account
Uphold's USD interest-bearing account is an FDIC-insured brokerage account that earns interest over time, similar to the best high-yield savings account. Unlike a regular brokerage account that allows investors to buy and sell securities like stocks and ETFs, Uphold's USD Interest Account earns interest on the USD held in the account. To invest funds from your USD Interest Account into crypto, you have to move money out of your account back to Uphold's trading platform.
Interest is accrued daily and paid out on the 15th of each month.
Funds aren't locked up in your account, making it simple to transfer money between crypto assets and your USD interest account. The minimum to open is $1, but only investors with more than $1,000 in their account can get the highest interest rate.
Uphold Wallet
Uphold's regular wallet option is full custody, which is generally easier to set up and offers recovery options in case you lose your private keys. Those new to investing in crypto may prefer this option for its accessibility and affordability. Also, assets stored in a Uphold wallet are 100% reserved, meaning Uphold doesn't loan out customer funds.
Uphold Vault
Vault is Uphold's assisted self-custody solution offering enhanced digital asset security using a multi-signature framework. Your crypto assets can only be moved using your personal Vault key (plus a backup key). Uphold offers assisted key replacement services and 24/7 instant trading access.
Vault supports BTC, XRP, SOLO, CORE, RLUSD, and HBAR.
You must be subscribed to use Uphold Vault.
Uphold UpHODL
UpHODL is a multichain, self-custodial Web3 wallet for storing crypto, NFTs, and other digital assets. Unlike Uphold Vault, you have complete control of the UpHODL wallet, so not even Uphold can access assets in your account. However, if you lose your private keys, you may lose access to your assets altogether.
You can directly buy crypto from your UpHODL wallet and get a 0% commission on certain DeFi venues.
UpHODL has its own app with a rating of 3/5 on the Apple Store and 3.3/5 on Google Play.
Uphold Baskets
Uphold Baskets offers instant diversification across multiple cryptocurrencies for greater growth opportunities and reduced risk.
Uphold's pre-curated baskets are centered on different themes and strategies, such as:
- The Big Three Basket: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP)
- Metaverse Basket: The Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), Immutable X (IMX), Axie Infinity (AXS), and ApeCoin (APE)
- AI Basket: Bittensor (TAO), Avalanche (AVAX), Fetch.ai (FET), Render Token (RNDR), Ocean Protocol (OCEAN), and Numeraire (NMR)
- Meme Basket: Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Pepe Token (PEPE), Dogewifhat (WIF), Floki (FLOKI), and Bonk (BONK)
- Finance Basket: Ripple (XRP), Stellar Lumens (XLM), XinFin (XDC), hbar (HBAR), Casper (CSPR), and Adshares (ADS)
- Future of Blockchain Basket: Kaspa (KAS), Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), Solana (SOL), Aleph Zero (AZERO), and NEAR Protocol (NEAR)
- Infrastructure Basket: Ethereum (ETH), Avalanche (ACAX), Cosmos (ATOM), Polkadot (DOT), Chainlink (LINK), and Quant (QNT)
If you want to sell any assets purchased through Uphold Baskets, you must sell each asset individually.
Uphold Business Account
As part of Uphold's Enterprise services, Uphold offers a Business Account for on-chain finances, including access to 300+ digital assets across over 39 chains. Business owners can use Uphold's Business Account to securely and quickly transfer assets instantly to workers worldwide. This account offers free asset storage, asset and data protection, and low-cost currency conversion between different currencies and precious metals.
Other account features include Uphold's know-your-customer verification feature, anti-money laundering features, and financial risk controls.
An Uphold Business account is designed for businesses with multi-currency transactions, gig economy platforms, and self-directed IRAs.
Uphold Fees
Although Uphold's fees are higher than alternative services, it's transparent about its fee structure. The platform also calculates its fees differently than most exchanges, continuously surveying 30 underlying trading venues to determine prices.
Uphold's trading fees are typically:
- Stablecoins: 0.2%
- Major market FX: 0.25%
- Bitcoin and ethereum: 1.4-1.6%
- Altcoins: 1.9% - 2.95%
- Precious metals: 1.9% - 2.95%
When staking, Uphold takes a 20-25% cut, which is already factored into the estimated APY rate for each asset.
Uphold charges higher fees for cryptocurrencies with lower liquidity (such as Dogecoin or Ripple) and during high trading volume periods.
Business Accounts can also be integrated with an API for automated payouts to employees, vendors, and more. However, this feature requires a $500 monthly minimum. You'll be charged a 3% fee plus $0.50 for every transaction.
Vault subscriptions cost $4.99 per month ( or $49.99 per year) after a 30-day free trial period.
Uphold Trustworthiness and Security
Uphold employs various security protocols, including data encryption, regular US State audits, third-party due diligence checks, 24/7 security watch, and a Bug Bounty Program that rewards users who report security vulnerabilities.
Uphold complies with regulatory practices in the US, Europe, and other regions. The platform is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, IOS 27001 certified, and PCI/DSS certified.
Uphold HQ Inc. has an NR rating from the Better Business Bureau. The BBB assigns businesses grades from A+ to F, representing how well a company interacts with its customers. An NR rating means the business is currently being reviewed by the BBB. Previously, Uphold had an F rating for hundreds of complaints filed against it and the length of time it takes for Uphold to respond.
On February 25, 2022, a class action lawsuit was filed against Uphold, alleging that unauthorized third-party users stole customers' funds due to faulty two-factor authentication. Uphold denied these claims but agreed to a settlement in 2024 that would grant affected Uphold members a cash payment. The court must still give final approval of this settlement.
Uphold vs. Other Crypto Exchanges
Here's how Uphold compares to similar platforms.
Uphold vs. eToro
Similar to Uphold, eToro USA is a great option for investors looking to invest in crypto and other digital assets. However, its offerings, account options, and fees differ.
Overall, Uphold is a better option for crypto traders since eToro's crypto selection is significantly more limited than Uphold's. Unlike eToro, Uphold also offers three digital wallet options (full custody, assisted custody, and self-custody).
EToro is better for investors interested in buying and selling stocks and ETFs (investment options that Uphold does not provide). EToro also has a pre-built Smart Portfolio and CopyTrader system suitable for passive investors.
Uphold vs. Coinbase
Both Uphold and Coinbase offer cryptocurrencies, built-in wallet storage, educational resources, and user-friendly trading solutions. Uphold's fees and pricing differ from Coinbase.
Coinbase is a more comprehensive cryptocurrency exchange that offers hundreds of digital assets, an advanced trading platform, a retirement savings account, commerce services, ESG portfolio options, and margin trading. It only requires a $2 minimum to start investing, and spread fees are generally lower.
Uphold may be the better option for traders who frequently buy and trade national currencies or for individuals who prefer easy trading between multiple asset classes.
FAQs about Uphold
Uphold is a safe platform equipped with encryption technology, due diligence checks on third-party providers, routine security audits, and its BugBounty program. However, Uphold is involved in a class-action lawsuit that alleges faulty two-factor authentication led to the theft of users' cryptocurrency. Uphold has denied these claims.
Uphold charges relatively high fees, ranging from 0.25% to 2.95%, depending on asset class, liquidity, and trading volume. Cryptocurrencies with lower liquidity typically have higher spread fees. Uphold Vault costs $4.99 per month ( or $49.99 per year).
US-based investors can no longer use Uphold to buy and sell stocks. In 2023, Uphold terminated its equity trading services in the US. If you're interested in traditional investment options, consider trading with one of the best stock trading apps.
Why You Should Trust Us: How We Reviewed Uphold
When reviewing cryptocurrency exchanges, we apply Business Insider's rating methodology for rating investment products to compare pricing, account options, supported coins and tokens, security, ethics, and overall customer experience. Top crypto exchanges offer multiple assets, account features, and market access for different trading needs.
Some cryptocurrency exchanges are best for beginners, while others are more suitable for advanced investors. Uphold was evaluated based on its performance in each category compared to similar platforms. We give each product a rating between 1 and 5.
Business Insider's Uphold Rating
| Feature | Insider rating (out of 5) |
| Fees | 3.50 |
| Investment selection | 4.50 |
| Access | 4.50 |
| Ethics | 2.00 |
| Customer support | 4.00 |
| Security | 4.00 |
| Overall score | 3.78 |
Uphold: Terms Apply. Cryptoassets are highly volatile. Your capital is at risk. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong