We checked ChangeHero, Changelly, ChangeNOW, SideShift and SimpleSwap’s own websites every hour from 16 to 18 September 2026. On $200 of BTC → USDT on Tron, the cost ran from 0.90% to 3.18% below the market price; on $1,000, from 0.78% to 2.47%.
The rate an exchange advertises is not what a swap costs. The cost is what arrives in your wallet — after the exchange’s margin and its withdrawal fee — measured against the market price at that moment. So we measured it, on a busy route: bitcoin to USDT on Tron.
How we measured
- Every hour, a separate server of ours asked each exchange’s own public website for a floating-rate quote on BTC → USDT on Tron at 3 sizes: $200, $1,000 and $5,000 of bitcoin.
- The market price is read at the same moment as each check. The cost is how far below that price the exchange’s delivered amount sits — withdrawal fee included, because it is already taken out of what you receive.
- 716 checks of five exchanges (ChangeHero, Changelly, ChangeNOW, SideShift and SimpleSwap) between 16 Sep 18:17 UTC and 18 Sep 17:18 UTC (16–18 September 2026), about 48 per exchange per size. Every figure below is the median.
- These are quotes, not completed swaps. A floating rate can move between the quote and the payout, in either direction.
- Each exchange was checked 48 times at each size, except Changelly at $1,000 (46) and SimpleSwap at $200 and $1,000 (47): a page that failed to load is a missing check, never a retry.
$200 of BTC → USDT on Tron: what each website delivered
Per $200 of bitcoin at the market price, ChangeHero’s site would have delivered 198.20 USDT (0.90% below the market price), SimpleSwap’s 195.59 USDT (2.21%), SideShift’s 195.25 USDT (2.37%), Changelly’s 193.74 USDT (3.13%) and ChangeNOW’s 193.64 USDT (3.18%).
$1,000 of BTC → USDT on Tron: what each website delivered
Per $1,000 of bitcoin at the market price, ChangeHero’s site would have delivered 992.20 USDT (0.78% below the market price), ChangeNOW’s 983.46 USDT (1.65%), SimpleSwap’s 983.03 USDT (1.70%), SideShift’s 976.26 USDT (2.37%) and Changelly’s 975.34 USDT (2.47%).
$5,000 of BTC → USDT on Tron: what each website delivered
Per $5,000 of bitcoin at the market price, ChangeHero’s site would have delivered 4962.23 USDT (0.76% below the market price), ChangeNOW’s 4936.26 USDT (1.27%), SimpleSwap’s 4922.76 USDT (1.54%), Changelly’s 4883.34 USDT (2.33%) and SideShift’s 4881.30 USDT (2.37%).
The change between sizes is the tell. ChangeNOW’s cost falls from 3.18% at $200 to 1.65% at $1,000 and 1.27% at $5,000 — the shape a fixed amount taken off every swap makes. SideShift’s barely moves (2.37%, 2.37%, 2.37%).
Fitted across the sizes checked in each hour, ChangeHero’s quotes are consistent with roughly 0.3 USDT fixed per swap on top of 0.75% margin, Changelly’s roughly 1.7 USDT on top of 2.3%, ChangeNOW’s roughly 4.3 USDT on top of 1.2%, SideShift’s roughly 0 USDT on top of 2.4% and SimpleSwap’s roughly 1.5 USDT on top of 1.5%. Those are our estimates from their quotes, not fees they publish.
Where Cambio sits
Cambio quotes this route too. Its pair page recorded a quote for 0.01 BTC (about $790) 4 times in the period, with the network fee stated on the quote — 0.50 USDT on Tron. In 4 of those hours we also have all 5 websites checked within 90 minutes, and the same amount priced from their checks:
- 17 Sep 10:04 UTC: Cambio 759.89 USDT · ChangeHero 757.42 · SimpleSwap 750.40 · ChangeNOW 749.82 · SideShift 745.40 · Changelly 744.23
- 17 Sep 18:13 UTC: Cambio 763.30 USDT · ChangeHero 761.28 · SimpleSwap 754.14 · ChangeNOW 753.83 · SideShift 749.14 · Changelly 748.03
- 18 Sep 14:13 UTC: Cambio 799.07 USDT · ChangeHero 798.27 · SimpleSwap 791.24 · ChangeNOW 791.19 · SideShift 785.31 · Changelly 783.88
- 18 Sep 17:59 UTC: Cambio 806.10 USDT · ChangeHero 802.42 · ChangeNOW 795.13 · SimpleSwap 794.76 · SideShift 789.50 · Changelly 788.50
Over those 4 hours, Cambio’s quote was a median 0.50% below the market price (between 0.33% and 0.75%), ChangeHero’s site 0.79%, SimpleSwap’s site 1.71%, ChangeNOW’s site 1.75%, SideShift’s site 2.38% and Changelly’s site 2.51%.
4 hours is a small sample, so read these as dated observations, not a verdict. We do not publish a “Cambio gave more on N of M” figure against ChangeHero, Changelly, ChangeNOW, SideShift and SimpleSwap until there are at least 40 matched checks per exchange over at least 7 days; the most any of them has is 4 over 1.33 days.
Exchange brands we could not check on their websites (Est.)
These rows are not measurements. Each is an Est. figure fitted from the prices that exchange brand quoted Cambio earlier, labelled with the dates of those quotes, and it is in no chart or median above.
- Est. Godex: 3.10% at $200, 3.10% at $1,000, 3.10% at $5,000 below the market price — fitted from its quotes to Cambio between 2026-09-08 and 2026-09-12.
- Est. LetsExchange: 2.74% at $200, 2.17% at $1,000, 2.06% at $5,000 below the market price — fitted from its quotes to Cambio between 2026-09-08 and 2026-09-12.
What this means for your next swap
- On a small swap, look at the fixed part of the cost, not the percentage. A few dollars taken off a small swap is a large share of it.
- Compare the amount you receive, after every fee, not the rate on the headline.
- Check the size you actually plan to swap. The order of exchanges at $200 and at $5,000 was not the same.
The data
Every row is public: each website check (website-checks.csv, 716 rows) and each Cambio quote (cambio-quotes.csv, 4 rows) at cambio.one/data/2026-09-16-to-18-btc-usdt-tron/ and on GitHub at github.com/cambio-one/exchange-fee-data, each with its time in UTC. ChangeHero, Changelly, ChangeNOW, SideShift and SimpleSwap were checked on their own public websites; none of them is offered on Cambio, and we do not query them live. Use the data, check our arithmetic, and write to [email protected] if you find a mistake.
