Short version: if that settlement's funding rate was positive, longs paid and shorts received; if it was negative, shorts paid and longs received. Binance's blog says your history of funding fees can be found in your transaction history; each settlement adds its own row. The minus sign on a row isn't explained on the official pages we read, so the safe check is the rate's sign plus your side, set out in the table below.
Three rows a day is the default: one for every eight-hour settlement a perpetual position sits through. Each row carries an amount, some with a minus sign in front, no two quite alike. If you are looking at one of them and cannot tell whether it was taken from you or handed to you, everything needed to settle the question is already in your account.
This page deals only with a row that has already been written: which way the money went, how to rebuild the figure from your own position, and what to rule out when your figure and the row disagree. How the rate itself is set, and what it costs to hold through months of it, is covered in what funding costs a position and is not repeated here.
The rate's sign is not your row's sign
Binance's help page Introduction to Binance Futures Funding Rates describes funding as "periodic payments transferred between holders of long and short positions in Perpetual Contracts." On direction, it says that with a positive rate "traders long on a perpetual contract will pay a funding fee to traders on the opposing side", and that the rate turns negative in a bearish market, "where traders short on a perpetual contract will pay a funding fee to long traders."
Laid out as a grid, that sentence has four cells:
| Rate at that settlement | You were long | You were short |
|---|---|---|
| Positive | You paid | You received |
| Negative | You received | You paid |
Our arrangement of the help-page wording quoted above, checked September 2026. The rate for any given contract and settlement is on Binance's current funding rate pages.
Most misreadings start in the bottom-left cell. A negative rate does not mean a negative row. Hold a long through a negative settlement and you are on the receiving side. Two facts decide it jointly, the sign of the rate at that settlement and the side you held, and either one alone tells you nothing.
As for the minus sign printed on the row itself: by ordinary bookkeeping it marks money leaving your balance. That is our inference. Neither English page we read explains what a sign or a colour on the row stands for, so if you would rather not lean on it, skip the sign entirely. Look up the rate for that settlement and note your side. The cell where the two meet is the answer.
The sum, and what throws it off
The formula is published on the same help page: "Funding Amount = Nominal Value of Positions * Funding Rate", with the bracket "(Nominal Value of Positions = Mark Price * Size of a Contract)". So you need three numbers, all taken at the moment of settlement: the mark price, the size of your position, and the rate that applied.
funding amount = mark price at settlement × position size × funding rate at that settlement
A worked example, with figures invented for illustration and not drawn from any market: a long of 0.5 BTC on a USDT-margined perpetual, mark price 60,000 USDT at settlement, rate 0.01%. Nominal value is 60,000 × 0.5 = 30,000 USDT, and the funding amount is 30,000 × 0.01% = 3 USDT. Positive rate, long side: top-left cell, 3 USDT paid.
Compare magnitudes and stop there. A row showing something near 3 is accounted for. A row showing 30, or 0.3, is worth a second look, and these are the usual explanations:
- Entry price went into the sum. The formula wants the mark price at settlement. The further the market has travelled since you opened, the further your entry price sits from it.
- Today's size, that day's rate. If you added to or trimmed the position along the way, each settlement was computed on a different size. Match the row to the size held at that moment.
- The interval was not eight hours. The help page gives eight hours as the default, and Binance's blog post on funding fees (published February 2023) adds: "Typically, it occurs every eight hours, but during periods of high market volatility, the interval can be shorter." Extra rows on such a day are extra settlements, each with its own rate, and not one charge repeated.
- You opened or closed right at the settlement time. The Chinese-language version of the help page states that processing can take up to 15 seconds, so a position opened a few seconds after the settlement time may still be included (checked September 2026). We did not find that sentence in the part of the English page we read, so treat it as reported from the Chinese page.
One more wrinkle, again from the Chinese-language material: Binance's fee overview page there writes the nominal value with the trade price where the funding-rate page writes mark price. We set the two side by side without claiming to know which is operative. Our own practice, and it is only that, is to compute with mark price first and, if the result is off in the last digits, to run it once more with the trade price before calling anything wrong.
A running total of funding received or paid
Some readers arrive with a different number in hand: a cumulative figure for funding received, or paid. Neither English page we read defines such a field. Our inference is that it adds the individual settlements together; over what scope — one position, one contract, a period — we could not establish from the official pages, and we have not looked at the field in a live account.
It can be tested. The blog post says: "Your history of Funding Fees can be found in your transaction history." Add the rows for the same stretch of time yourself and hold the result against the total. If they agree, the inference holds for your account. If they do not, the row-by-row history is the one to trust. We would use a total like this to see direction and rough size, and do the actual checking on the rows.
A total that is on the paying side and still growing deserves a look at your margin. The same post: "The Funding Fee is periodically deducted from the trader's margin balance, which can significantly reduce the amount of available margin to keep the position open." The Chinese-language help page goes a step further and states that when the available balance is insufficient the amount is taken from position margin, which may affect the liquidation price (checked September 2026). On the receiving side, in the post's words, "the Funding Fee can increase their profits."
Keep it out of your fee total
None of this money goes to the exchange. The blog post is explicit: "Note that the Funding Fees on Binance Futures are not a fee paid to Binance, but between traders." The help page says the same from the other direction: "Binance does not charge fees on Funding Payments."
Your own records should follow that split. When you total what a month cost you in trading fees, as set out in checking what you actually paid, leave funding on its own line. Fold the two together and the effective rate you back out will look alarming when neither part was overcharged.
And if the row in front of you has not yet been identified as funding at all, go back a step: the charge identification route sorts an entry by when it fires, and once it lands on funding, the multiplication above is the next thing to do.