- The strongest security story of the big exchanges: no known loss of customer funds to a hack since 2011, quarterly audited proof of reserves, and client pounds held via ClearBank at the Bank of England.
- Its famous cheap fees are history: base Kraken Pro fees quadrupled in July 2026 to 0.40% maker / 0.80% taker. The new cheap route is the £4.99/month Kraken+ subscription: zero trading fees up to about £10,000 a month.
- 600+ coins, staking on 30+ of them for UK users, free GBP deposits and £1.95 withdrawals. As everywhere: crypto is not FSCS-protected.
Kraken is the exchange people graduate to. Where Coinbase optimises for the first purchase, Kraken has always courted people who know what an order book is: deeper tools, more coins, a security record it wears like a medal, and until recently, conspicuously low fees. That last pillar moved this summer, which is exactly the kind of thing a review checked in August 2026 exists to tell you: most of the internet still describes Kraken’s pricing as it was, not as it is.
Everything below was checked against Kraken’s own fee schedule and support pages, regulator documents and its published proof-of-reserves in August 2026. We have no affiliate relationship with Kraken and no position in it; if that ever changes, it will be disclosed on this page.
What you get
For UK users: 600+ cryptoassets (a handful are geo-blocked here), the consumer Kraken app plus the genuinely excellent Kraken Pro platform on the same account, recurring buys, Lightning-network bitcoin, and staking on more than 30 coins, advertised at around 2.5% on Ethereum, up to 5% on bonded Solana and more on smaller networks, with weekly payouts. That last one is a real differentiator: US customers lost exchange staking to a regulatory settlement in 2023, while UK law explicitly cleared it in 2025.
New this July: the Krak Card, a Mastercard debit card that spends from your crypto or cash balances with up to 2% cashback paid in bitcoin. What UK retail customers don’t get: futures and margin (professional investors only, under FCA rules) and Kraken’s US stocks, which exclude the UK. Expect the sign-up to include an appropriateness quiz and a 24-hour cooling-off period; that’s the FCA’s doing, not Kraken’s, and every registered exchange now has the same ritual.
What it costs
| Route | Cost | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer app | 1% instant buys, 1.5% custom orders, plus a spread | Balances too small to trade convert at a punchy 3% flat. The app is the expensive door. |
| Kraken Pro | 0.40% maker / 0.80% taker at base, falling with volume | Quadrupled from 0.16/0.26 in July 2026; ignore any review still quoting the old numbers. Still drops fast: 0.22%/0.38% from £8k-a-month volumes. |
| Kraken+ | £4.99/month or £49.99/year | Zero trading fees in the consumer app up to ~$10,000 a month. Spread and card fees still apply, but for regular buyers this is now the cheapest way to use Kraken. |
| Card / Apple Pay | 3.75% + a small fixed fee | Fund by bank transfer instead. First card purchases also carry a 72-hour withdrawal hold. |
| GBP in and out | Deposits free; withdrawals £1.95 by Faster Payments | Near-instant both ways in our experience of the rails. |
| Staking | Commission baked into advertised rates | Rates shown are estimates and move with the networks. |
Is your money safe?
Kraken’s security record is the real thing, carefully stated: in fifteen years no customer funds are known to have been lost to a hack, a claim widely reported rather than one Kraken formally guarantees, but no counterexample exists. The one public wobble proves the system worked: in 2024 security researchers found a bug that let balances be credited from thin air, extracted $3m from Kraken’s own corporate treasury (not customer funds), and Kraken patched it within the hour and recovered the money. Since 2022 it has published quarterly proof-of-reserves attestations by an outside accounting firm (the December 2025 edition covered over $21.5bn of client assets at over 100% backing), which remains rarer among exchanges than it should be.
Structurally: the vast majority of coins sit in , your pounds are safeguarded by Kraken’s FCA-authorised e-money arm with client funds held via ClearBank at the Bank of England, and Kraken’s own UK homepage says the quiet part plainly: “Cryptoasset services offered by Payward Ltd are unregulated and not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.” Believe both halves: the engineering is excellent, and the backstop doesn’t exist. Our self-custody guide is the answer for money that must survive anything.
The history you should know
Kraken’s rap sheet is short and mostly American. The 2023 SEC settlement ($30m, staking shut for US customers) never touched UK users: staking here continued and is now explicitly lawful. A 2022 US sanctions settlement over geo-blocking failures cost it a modest $362,000, self-disclosed. In the UK: FCA-registered since November 2021, no enforcement action on record. The company drama is corporate rather than customer-facing: founder Jesse Powell handed the CEO seat to co-chiefs in recent years, and an IPO was filed in late 2025 then paused in March 2026, worth knowing only because listed-company scrutiny would be a further point in its favour if it lands.
The honest counterweight to all this is the customer-experience gap: Kraken’s app-store ratings are strong (4.7–4.8), but its Trustpilot sits mid-table around 3.3, and the complaint themes are the compliance-shaped ones: account holds, verification delays, slow support when frozen. That’s the personality: a platform that would rather freeze first and apologise later. Security and irritation are, here, the same feature seen from two sides.
Who it’s for, and who it isn’t
Kraken suits people who hold meaningful balances and care about custody quality, anyone who wants to stake from an FCA-registered venue, and active traders who’ll clear the volume tiers where Pro pricing gets sharp again. With Kraken+ it’s also quietly become a fine choice for the £100-a-month recurring buyer: £4.99 flat beats 1% fees from about £500 a month of buying.
It’s the wrong pick if you want the absolute cheapest casual purchase (see the comparison guide; that fight is now between Revolut X and Robinhood), if you want stocks or derivatives as a UK retail customer (not offered), or if a mid-tier Trustpilot score full of “my account is frozen” reviews is disqualifying for you.
Common questions
Why did the famous low fees go up?
Kraken rebuilt its fee schedule in July 2026, roughly quadrupling entry-level Pro rates and letting held assets as well as volume qualify you for better tiers. It brings Kraken into line with Coinbase’s Advanced pricing rather than undercutting it, and shifts the value story to Kraken+ and the higher tiers. Reviews that still call Kraken “the cheap one” are describing 2025.
Is staking on Kraken safe?
Two separate risks: Kraken operating the (its record here is good) and the networks themselves (slashing, rate changes; genuine, modest). The bigger print for UK users: staked coins are still exchange-custodied crypto with no FSCS behind them, and advertised rates are estimates, not promises. Staking rewards are also taxable income on arrival; our tax guide covers it.
Kraken or Coinbase?
On verified facts: Kraken for security transparency (proof of reserves), staking breadth, and subscription value; Coinbase for beginner polish, free instant GBP rails, and its unique stocks-and-crypto combination. Their pro-tier fees are now near-identical. Full numbers side by side in the where-to-buy guide; both let your coins leave, which we rate above either’s other virtues.
What’s the catch with the £4.99 subscription?
“Zero fees” means zero trading fees up to the monthly cap: the spread inside quoted prices remains, as do card-processing fees if you insist on funding that way. It’s genuinely good value for regular buyers; it is not literally free money.
Checked against Kraken’s fee schedule, support pages, proof-of-reserves and regulator documents in August 2026. This review is updated on a schedule and when something material changes. We have no affiliate relationship with Kraken; if that ever changes it will be disclosed here, in line with our affiliate disclosure and editorial policy.