How to Buy Ethereum without fees in the UK, US and Europe [2021 Updated]

buy ethereumThis is a step-by-step guide on how to buy Ethereum without paying any fees. Although I bought in the United Kingdom, the exact same process applies if you are buying in Euros or US dollars.

If you follow this life-hacking blog you probably know that I hate paying high premiums. The market frenzy around cryptocurrencies has led exchanges to charge very high fees and rip off customers. Time to change all that!

Technically, you can follow this guide to buy Ethereum, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin without paying any fees whatsoever. What you see is what you get.

Be careful though. I only treat it as a small gamble and I’m prepared to lose everything. This is not investment advice and you should do your own research before buying any cryptocurrencies. They are speculative investments and are very risky! I’ve written my thoughts on crypto here.

Let’s now see how we can buy Ethereum as an example.

The simplest option is to follow what everyone else is doing. Sign up for Coinbase, top up the account using your debit card and hit the Buy button. If you sign up using this link we both get $10 worth of free bitcoins. I won’t blame you since this is the most hassle-free choice but it will cost you 4% in fees. If you’re buying a small amount of crypto maybe that’s ok, but for large amounts, percentage fees hurt!

For those of us who want the more advanced but cheapest option to buy Ethereum and other crypto, read below.

Cheapest way to buy Ethereum in the UK

  1. Sign up for Coinbase
  2. (UK only) Transfer funds to Revolut
  3. Make a bank transfer to Coinbase
  4. Move the money from Coinbase to Coinbase Pro
  5. Buy Ethereum using a limit order for a 0.50% fee

Step 1: Sign up for Coinbase

The only reason we need to sign up for Coinbase is to use their Coinbase Pro exchange. This is the interface advanced users use to buy and sell Ethereum, Bitcoin and Litecoin every day. In other words, they trade on Coinbase Pro.

Why Coinbase? They’re one of the biggest well-known exchanges and they’ve been around for many years. It’s also a public company listed in the US stock exchange.

Coinbase Pro and Coinbase are the same company and you can transfer money between those two instantly and for free. After you sign up for Coinbase, they’ll ask you for a proof of ID. The verification took a day for me to complete.

[UK only] Step 2: Transfer funds to Revolut

In the UK, banks may block transfers to crypto exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance.

I use Revolut to transfer funds to Coinbase.

Your bank -> Revolut -> Coinbase.

Revolut is a free mobile app / bank but built for the 20th century. You can open one instantly online which also gives you the option to exchange from GBP -> EUR at market rates. Plus, they will give you a EUR IBAN so you can deposit money to Coinbase as if you’re a EUR account holder if you want.

I initially thought that perhaps you can also use Transferwise to deposit EUR at Coinbase. However, many Reddit users warned me that Transferwise doesn’t allow deposits to crypto exchanges. It’s a shame because Transferwise is awesome. I really like the work they’re doing. That’s what I used for my NY trip earlier in 2017.

Step 3: Make a bank transfer to Coinbase

Time to finally load up Coinbase.

Send SEPA transfer Coinbase
Make sure the Reference Code is present in the transfer

Make a bank transfer from your Revolut (or EUR or USD bank) to the Coinbase account bank. When making the transfer, make sure you type in the reference number you were given.

Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with the Coinbase customer service to find out why your money is not there yet…

If you have a Revolut app, you can make a transfer like this: From the main screen click on the Payments icon -> To Bank account and fill in the recipient bank details. Do not forget to add the reference number.

You can always send a small amount like 10€ first to test the waters and once you’re confident enough send the real amount. The money showed up in my Coinbase account a few hours after the bank transfer.

Step 4: Move the money from Coinbase to Coinbase Pro

We will be using Coinbase PRO to buy Ethereum without fees. Therefore, we need to move the money from Coinbase to Coinbase PRO once the bank transfer completes. As mentioned earlier, Coinbase PRO is the same company as Coinbase and they share accounts. No need to register again.

transfer-from-Coinbase-wallet-to-GDAX-acc
Coinbase PRO also offers deposits there, but for some reason, the Euros will not appear on Coinbase PRO but in the Coinbase wallet

Step 5: Buy Ethereum using a LIMIT order

Now that you have your money on Coinbase PRO a limit order costs 0.50% in fees. What’s a limit order? You basically place an order that says: “I want to buy X Ethereum when the price drops to Y”. Let’s say I want to buy 0.5 Ethereum.

GDAX buy limit orderI selected the LIMIT from the buy options and typed in the amount of ETH I want to buy.

As you can see, 637.80 is the price people want to buy at and 638.03 is the price people want to sell. To have your order filled as soon as possible, type in the green top price.

That’s it! After a few seconds, your order will be filled and you will be 0.5 Eth richer 🙂

What if I want to buy other cryptocurrencies (Monero, Dash etc)?

Coinbase PRO only supports a few cryptocurrencies. However, there is an awesome service called Shapeshift.io where you can exchange your coins for other coins.

You only pay the miner fee which is typically less than a cent.

You send your coin from Coinbase PRO to Shapeshift and they transform it to your desired coin, sending it to your wallet address.

However, this assumes you have your own wallet!

If you don’t know what this means or can’t be bothered, just sign up to Binance which is an exchange that has hundreds of cryptocurrencies and very low fees.

If you prefer to buy via an actual exchange like Coinbase PRO, sign up to Binance that lists hundreds of coins. It doesn’t require verification and it’s pretty cheap (0.075% fee per trade).

This is actually one of the cheapest ways to buy Ethereum in the UK.

If you make a few trades per day then Coinbase PRO 0.50% fee might be too expensive for you. Better deposit GBP directly to Binance (sign up using my link and we will get back some free BNB coins when trading).

Thoughts

You can repeat the above limit orders for buying Bitcoin cash, Bitcoin and Litecoin. This is a great way to buy or sell your cryptos.

Of course, it’s not the most convenient thing to go through, but once you’re verified at Coinbase and have some funds in it, then it’s the best way to buy Ethereum.

Only buy using the money you can afford to lose. Cryptocurrencies are very risky and very volatile. This article is not investment advice. Do your own research!

If you’re looking to make some money on the side, check out my Matched Betting series for a risk-free profit. No betting experience required.

Share this article:

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on pinterest
Share on whatsapp

Join the Newsletter

Every 2 weeks, I send a handwritten email with honest, valuable content.
No spam, ever.

    We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at any time.

    You may also like...

    44 thoughts on “How to Buy Ethereum without fees in the UK, US and Europe [2021 Updated]”

    1. what does your crypto portfolio look like and where do you look for keeping up to date? I have avoided the whole thing as it seems full of people tauting coins with nothing behind them i.e. no actual development! Very hard to get an independent and unbiased view on each of the coins.

      Reply
      • I’m trying to focus on coins that have a good roadmap, act as currency or utility and actually have some Github activity behind them… It’s very hard to actually find those behind all the marketing jargon and the hype. It’s so speculative like a gamble 🙂

        Some good resources:
        * Podcasts: Neocash Radio, Ether review, Epicenter.
        * Reddit: It’s a good source for checking out each coin as well as some all-round subreddits like Cryptocurrency. It’s a bit chaotic though.
        * Youtube: The Cryptoverse, Cryptobud
        * Coindesk, ETHnews

        I have only focused on the big names (Eth, Bitcoin cash, etc) so far in my portfolio. Not so great returns I only started recently with very little money. I treat it as a gamble. What about?

        Reply
          • BTC/EUR at 22:21
            GDAX – 12850.01
            Coinbase – 12361.72

            Which is a 4% difference!

            I realise now, however, that your article is specifically about Ether, not Bitcoin!

            Reply
          • Hmm.. Actually, even for Ether, there is 3.5% difference between Coinbase and GDAX currently:-

            ETH/EUR @22:24
            GDAX: 819.99
            Coinbase: 792.12

            Reply
          • Yea not sure how you are seeing that Gurvinder, the Coinbase price is always higher than Gdax whenever I’ve checked. Although I find that hard to believe, maybe it is not their algo to price it up isn’t that efficient so maybe just check both at any given time and if the Coinbase price is lower than Gdax by more than 4% then go with Coinbase.

            Reply
    2. I sent Euros from Revolut to Coinbase with the reference code over 7 hours ago and it hasn’t appeared in Coinbase yet. Does this only work on business days and not weekends?

      Reply
      • Hey Dimitri, glad you liked the article. You guessed it right. If you want to sell Ethereum or Bitcoin place a sell limit order on GDAX, withdraw to Revolut EUR account and convert to GBP.

        Reply
    3. Great tutorial Michael – exactly what I was looking for, thanks! Quick question: would Revolut route worked also if I activated USD account rather than EUR account? Not that I have a preference either way, but I’m just curious.

      Reply
    4. Thanks Michael for this great article. I followed some of your links so you’ve probably got tiny btc reward from Coinbase as a result 🙂

      Reply
    5. One thing to watch out for, Revolut has a monthly limit on GDP->EUR conversion then you do actually start paying fees, and that limit is pretty low in my experience. The fees are still a lot lower than any other way I’ve found (think it was like 14 Euro fee for transferring 2.5K so about half a percent) so it’s not that bad. And if you are doing lower amounts you should be fine.

      Also totally forgot to do a limit order, not a market one, on about half of my trades, so make sure you never take the market rate as you will pay a totally unnecessary fee!

      Really nice visual guide there mate… really liked it! (In fact I was going to do a post like this myself but I won’t bother now and just point people to this one!)

      Reply
      • TFS! This is why you should always check out Foxy Monkey at least once a day 🙂

        Thanks for the Revolut tip. I didn’t know as I only made transfers lower than £2500.

        Yeah, I also started with the Reddit guide and had to go through the 100 comments to find out what works and what not today.
        Glad to be of help to the crypto-community! This article would fit well into your crypto resources post.

        Reply
    6. Thank you for this post – super useful – I was thinking Revolut might be the answer…
      I am obvioulsy missing something, but I am not sure what to put into Coinbase for the SEPA transfer as:
      1. “Name of bank”; and
      2. “Name on Account”
      3. IBAN
      4. SWIFT
      if transferring from Revolut. Are these details available from Revolut?
      Thank you 🙂

      Reply
    7. …continuing from my earlier post, I tried putting in the Revolut detials (with Bank Account name as Revolut) but Coinbase prevents me continuing, asking me to only send money from an account in my own name…

      Pls help me understand.
      Thank you!

      Reply
    8. That is a very helpful article!
      I have a question though… Don’t you need an Ethereum wallet before you can buy any Ethereum?

      Thanks!
      Rea

      Reply
      • Hey Rea, you don’t need an Ethereum wallet unless you want to move the coins out of the exchange into your wallet. In fact, it’s better to move the Eth once you have purchased a large quantity because exchanges can get hacked etc. Coinbase and GDAX have a good reputation though.

        The wallet I have used in the past is called Exodus.

        Reply
    9. Hi,

      Thanks for very helpful guide. Just got stucked in the process.
      What bank name should be put in Coinbase deposit form Revoult, as revoult is not really a bank?

      Reply
        • is there much opportunity for monetary loss in fees/dodgy exchange rates there? I think you cannot get paypal funds into revolut anyway but need to research it this evening!

          Reply
          • That’s exactly why I use Revolut, because there’s no exchange rate loss. Then GDAX I believe still has zero fees for depositing and placing limit orders. Regarding Paypal, if it allows bank transfer to any US bank, then Revolut looks like a normal bank transfer to me.

            Reply
    10. I’m using bitbay , and they also have available payments in GBP. Deposits are instant, and fee for withdrawals from the UK is only 2 GBP.

      Reply

    Leave a comment