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Best crypto exchanges in Japan compared for yen buyers on exchange fees, FSA registration, free withdrawals and English help.
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By Alpha Finance Editorial Team
Data maintained by Vince Dioquino
Each fee, registration and clause behind a score links to the Japanese page we read it on. We recheck the exchanges' fee pages, terms and the FSA register every quarter, and sooner when one of them changes.
How we score → Editorial policy Report an errorJapanese exchanges sell crypto on two kinds of screen. The dealer screen, the 販売所, quotes its own price and hides its cost in a spread. The exchange screen, the 取引所, matches you with other customers and charges a stated fee.
All ten here are registered with the Financial Services Agency, and two are counted under exchanges on our worldwide ranking. Derivatives and worldwide trading volume, which drive that list, play no part here. What counts is a cheap Bitcoin price in yen, registration under securities law, free yen transfers and the freedom to move your coins out.
We read every fee, limit and clause in Japanese on the exchange's own site or in its filings, and each one links back to that page.
The exchange ahead in each category, with the figure that puts it there.
CoincheckFull marks for cost to buy and Japanese regulation.9.0 out of 10
GMO Coin¥100,000 of Bitcoin cost ¥6 over the market price, the least of the eight we could price.8.5 out of 10
bitFlyer¥176M of Bitcoin near the market price, the most of the ten.8.4 out of 10
Binance Japan66 coins for Japanese accounts, and a zero-knowledge proof you can check your own balance in.8.4 out of 1010 of 10 on the FSA register5 of 10 also Type I securities firmsYen prices read 12 Oct 2026
| # | Exchange | Score | Feestaker / maker | JPY deposits | Proof of reserveslatest published | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CoincheckNot on worldwide list | 9.0 | 0.00% / 0.00%Exchange BTC/JPY | Bank transfer freeInstant ¥770 to ¥1,018 | Audited accountsNo per-user proof | Visit |
| 2 | GMO CoinNot on worldwide list | 8.5 | 0.05% / -0.01%Exchange; maker rebate | Bank transfer freeInstant free | None | Visit |
| 3 | bitFlyerNot on worldwide list | 8.4 | 0.15% / 0.15%Lightning, entry tier | Bank transfer freeInstant ¥330 or free | None | Visit |
| 4 | Binance JapanBinance #2 worldwide | 8.4 | 0.10% / 0.10%Spot, regular user | Bank transfer freePayPay Money | Merkle + zk | Visit |
| 5 |  BitTradeNot on worldwide list | 8.2 | 0.10% / 0.00%Exchange BTC/JPY | Bank transfer freeInstant free | None | Visit |
| 6 |  SBI VC TradeNot on worldwide list | 7.6 | 0.05% / -0.01%Exchange; maker rebate | Instant deposit freePay-easy free | None | Visit |
| 7 |  bitbankNot on worldwide list | 7.5 | 0.10% / 0.00%Exchange BTC/JPY | Bank transfer freeNo instant deposit | None | Visit |
| 8 |  ZaifNot on worldwide list | 7.0 | 0.10% / 0.00%Orderbook trading | Bank transfer freePay-easy from ¥495 | None | Visit |
| 9 |  OKJOKX #1 worldwide | 6.9 | 0.14% / 0.07%Exchange, Lv1 | Bank transfer freeNo instant deposit | None | Visit |
| 10 |  MercoinNot on worldwide list | 5.4 | No fee + spreadMercari app; no order book | Merpay balanceNo bank transfer | None | Visit |
Score: our verdict out of 10 for buying, holding and cashing out in yen while living in Japan. We give the top exchange 9.0 and score the others in proportion; hover any score for the six checks behind it. Binance Japan and OKJ are counted under Binance and OKX on our worldwide list, so they show those ranks. Fees: what the 取引所 screen charges a new customer, before any volume tier. A minus sign means the exchange pays you for an order that waits on the book. Dealer screens charge no fee but price in a spread, which the cost check below measures where a price is public. Nothing here is paid placement, and none of it knows your circumstances. See how we're funded.
A ¥100,000 Bitcoin order cost ¥6 over the market at GMO Coin exchange and ¥240 at OKJ exchange. The market price, ¥13,245,413 a Bitcoin, is the median midpoint of eight public yen books. Each bar stacks the fee on the gap to the offers you'd have bought.
Extra you pay to buy ¥100,000 of BitcoinAgainst the median of Japan's public Bitcoin-yen books, bought on each 取引所 screen
GMO Coin exchange0.01%¥6Order bookCoincheck exchange0.02%¥20Order bookBinance Japan spot0.11%¥105Order bookbitbank exchange0.13%¥131Order bookbitFlyer Lightning0.13%¥131Order bookBitTrade exchange0.23%¥234Order bookZaif Orderbook trading0.23%¥234Order bookOKJ exchange0.24%¥240Order bookSBI VC Trade and Mercoin show a price only to logged-in customers, so there is nothing to chart. With no way to check beforehand, each is scored at the dearest figure here, OKJ exchange's.
On the exchange screens the gaps are small, because Japan's Bitcoin books are busy and the fees run from nothing to 0.15%. GMO Coin even pays a 0.01% rebate on orders that wait. Binance Japan sends your order to Binance's exchange in Abu Dhabi, so it is priced on that exchange's public BTC/JPY book.
The dealer screens are where the cost climbs. Coincheck's fee page puts its dealer markup at 0.1% to 5.0% of the price, while the same Bitcoin costs 0% in fees on its exchange screen. Ordering on the 取引所 is the one habit that saves most.
Depth matters once orders grow. bitFlyer had ¥176M of Bitcoin on offer within 0.5% of the market price and Zaif only ¥3.4M, so a ¥5 million order moves the price far more on the thinner books.
Every card rests on our own reading of the exchange's Japanese fee table, terms of use and complaints policy, a check of its company on the FSA register and, where one exists, a price taken from its live yen order book. We note whether you can use it in English, too.
Top score · Not on worldwide list
Best for buying Bitcoin at no fee on a deep yen book: its exchange charges makers and takers 0%, and its parent files audited accounts in the US. Help comes by email only, and instant deposits start at ¥770.
Good for
Watch out for
Incidents in the last five years
NoneNo hacks, fines or market failures in the last five years.
Cheapest to buy · Not on worldwide list
Best for moving yen and coins for free: instant deposits, withdrawals and Bitcoin sends cost nothing, and makers earn 0.01% back. It works in Japanese only and opens accounts from age 20.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
NoneNo hacks, fines or market failures in the last five years.
Deepest market · Not on worldwide list
Best for larger Bitcoin orders: its Lightning book held the most yen near the market price of the ten. Its 0.15% entry fee is the highest on the page, and every yen withdrawal costs ¥220 to ¥770.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
NoneNo hacks, fines or market failures in the last five years.
Best for the widest choice of coins: 66 on the FSA register, PayPay Money top-ups and an English site. Your orders are filled on Binance's exchange in Abu Dhabi, under that exchange's dispute rules.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
USDe, wBETH and BNSOL lost their pegs on Binance's own order books in the 10 Oct crash; Binance paid about US$283M to users liquidated as a result.
AUSTRAC ordered an external audit of Binance Australia's anti-money-laundering controls.
Pleaded guilty in the US to anti-money-laundering and sanctions violations and agreed to pay about US$4.3B.
Not on worldwide list
Best for buying altcoins on an order book: 47 coins on the FSA register and no maker fee on BTC/JPY. It has no English, and yen withdrawals cost ¥330 each, two a day at most.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
NoneNo hacks, fines or market failures in the last five years.
Not on worldwide list
Best for moving money at no cost: Pay-easy deposits, yen withdrawals and coin withdrawals are all free. Its order book publishes no live price, and it now shares an owner with bitbank.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
NoneNo hacks, fines or market failures in the last five years.
Not on worldwide list
Best for a broad coin list traded against yen, with an English site: 44 coins on the FSA register. SBI has owned it since 1 Oct 2026, and yen arrives only by bank transfer.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
NoneNo hacks, fines or market failures in the last five years.
Not on worldwide list
Best for help at weekends: its desk answers every day from 10:00 to 17:30, and makers pay nothing on BTC/JPY. Its Bitcoin book is the thinnest we priced, and accounts that skip the ID check pay a monthly fee.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
NoneNo hacks, fines or market failures in the last five years.
Best for staking and a long coin list: 54 coins on the FSA register and 12 to stake. Its 0.14% entry taker fee is the second-highest here, and okj.com publishes no proof of reserves of its own.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
Not on worldwide list
Best for Mercari users buying small amounts inside the app they already use. Coins can't leave for another wallet, yen can't go straight to a bank, and prices include a spread it doesn't put a number on.
Good for
Incidents in the last five years
NoneNo hacks, fines or market failures in the last five years.
We downloaded the FSA's register of crypto-asset exchanges and read every public BTC/JPY book at the same minute on 12 Oct 2026. With every one of them registered, rank depends on the Bitcoin price, whether the firm is already under securities law, the charges for moving yen, and its reserves and track record.
| Check | Weight | How it is marked |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to buy | 20% | Every public BTC/JPY book was read in the same minute on 12 Oct 2026, and the median of their midpoints is the market price. ¥100,000 of Bitcoin is then bought on each exchange screen at its published entry fee, and the extra over the market is marked: 10 at 0.2% or less, 0.8 off for each 0.1% beyond. Where the price hides behind a login, as at SBI VC Trade and Mercoin, the score takes the worst cost found on the public books, or the firm's own published charge if that is worse. |
| Japanese regulation | 25% | The company holding your account earns 5 for its place on the FSA's register of crypto-asset exchanges. Being a Type I financial instruments firm as well, the regime every exchange joins under the July 2026 law, adds 2. Five years without an FSA order adds 3. A business improvement order cuts that to 1.5, and a business suspension to 0. |
| Security and reserves | 20% | This check is shared with the worldwide list. Proof of reserves gives up to 4: the full 4 if you can find your own balance in it, or if the firm or a parent has SEC-audited accounts, 3 for an audit covering only the reserves and 2 for an attestation. Japan's legal segregation audit isn't published, so it adds nothing. Money set aside to repay users after a loss earns 1, or 2 when its size is public. Then come the last five years, worth 4. Customers losing money to a hack or collapse costs 3, or 1 once they're paid back, and a point goes for each data breach, each regulator's action anywhere and each market failure, with failures capped at two. |
| Liquidity | 10% | Depth is the yen of Bitcoin offered on the exchange's own BTC/JPY book within half a percent of the market price, read with the prices on 12 Oct 2026. ¥1 million or less earns nothing and ¥1 billion earns 10, on a log scale that gives about 3.3 at ¥10 million and 6.7 at ¥100 million. Where the yen book is private, as at SBI VC Trade, this check scores zero. |
| Yen deposits and withdrawals | 15% | A free way to send yen from your bank earns 4: a transfer, an instant deposit or Pay-easy that the exchange charges nothing for, though your bank's own transfer fee may still apply. A paid one earns 1. Being able to do it instantly for free earns 1 more, and any other way in, such as a convenience store, PayPay Money or a card, earns 1. Then 2 goes to exchanges that pay out yen for free, and 2 to those whose banks and payment firms haven't dropped them in two years. |
| Product | 10% | Every coin is screened before a Japanese exchange may list it, so the bands are short: 1 from 20 coins on the FSA register, 2 from 40 and 3 from 60. Running a Bitcoin-yen order book adds 2 and opening accounts for companies another 2, while staking, an OTC desk and coin withdrawals to a wallet of your own add 1 apiece. |
Three ceilings sit over the total. 4.0 is the limit for anything missing from the FSA's list. A hack in the last twelve months that customers haven't been repaid for holds a score to 6.0. An FSA business suspension order in the last two years holds it to 7.5.
Everything above reflects the exchanges' pages as they stood on 12 Oct 2026. We look again every three months, or straight away if an FSA order, new terms or a new fee table appears.
Opening an account takes a smartphone, an ID with a chip and a bank account in your own name.
Since April 2017 only firms registered under the Payment Services Act may exchange crypto for yen in Japan.
The FSA register listed 27 such firms on 1 September 2026. Day to day they answer to the JVCEA, the industry's certified self-regulator, which has 26 member exchanges. Its green list names coins that three or more members have handled for at least six months.
A law the Diet passed on 15 July 2026 moves crypto under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and brings in an insider-trading ban for crypto. Most of it takes effect within a year of its promulgation on 23 July 2026, so by July 2027. Its tougher penalties for unregistered firms took effect on 12 August 2026, and five of the ten already hold a Type I financial instruments registration.
An earlier amendment, in force since 1 June 2026, lets the FSA order an exchange to keep assets in Japan. That power was used on FTX Japan in November 2022, alongside a business suspension.
Offshore exchanges that serve Japan without registering get warning letters. Bybit, MEXC, Bitget and KuCoin were each warned in November 2024.
Every route starts at the exchange's own complaints desk, so put yours in writing.
If the complaint is still open after three months, or you reject the exchange's answer, the JVCEA's route leads to mediation at one of three Tokyo bar association centres. The association pays the ¥10,000 filing fee. A settlement carries a success fee of 8% on the first ¥3 million, shared as the two sides or the mediator decide.
Japan has no designated dispute body for crypto exchanges, and FINMAC hears complaints about crypto derivatives only. The FSA's consultation desk answers on 0570-016811 on weekdays.
The law fences off what you hold on an exchange, though no fund repays you if it collapses.
Customer yen must sit in a trust, and customer coins must be kept apart under the Payment Services Act. At most 5% of them may be held online, and the exchange must hold matching coins of its own for that part. An accountant audits the separation at least once a year. If the exchange fails, customers are paid from these coins ahead of other creditors.
Those rules were tested in May 2024. Attackers the National Police Agency ties to North Korea's TraderTraitor took 4,502.9 BTC, about ¥48.2 billion, from DMM Bitcoin. Its group backed full compensation, the FSA issued a business improvement order, and accounts moved to SBI VC Trade on 8 March 2025.
Mt. Gox's trustee is still paying creditors more than twelve years after the collapse, with a repayment deadline of 31 October 2026.
Every set of terms we read chooses Japanese law and Tokyo courts, though orders Binance Japan passes to Binance's Abu Dhabi exchange follow that exchange's rules. The difference is the cap on what the exchange pays if it is at fault.
| Exchange | Liability cap in its terms |
|---|---|
| GMO Coin and SBI VC Trade | No money cap, only the ordinary loss the exchange directly caused. |
| bitbank and BitTrade | Your balance with the exchange when the loss arose. |
| Binance Japan | The fees you paid in the 12 months before. |
| Zaif | The fees it has actually received from you. |
| bitFlyer, Coincheck and OKJ | The fees you paid in the month before. |
| Mercoin | Not published: the terms link on its own site returns a 404. |
Each limit falls away where the exchange acted on purpose or with gross negligence, except at BitTrade, whose terms state no such exception. Coincheck Group, listed on Nasdaq, files audited annual reports with the SEC, which earns Coincheck the top reserves mark. The legal audit of segregation happens everywhere, but we found no exchange that publishes its result.
Not investment advice
This page is general information. Nothing on it is a recommendation to buy, sell or trade any asset or to use any exchange, and it does not take your situation into account. Digital assets are volatile and you can lose everything you put in. See the affiliate disclosure for how the site is funded.
Banks now screen transfers to exchanges for fraud, so a payment that looks unusual can be stopped.
| Bank | What it does with transfers to exchanges |
|---|---|
| MUFG Bank | Blocks transfers sent under a changed sender name, online and at ATMs. |
| Japan Post Bank | May restrict your account after a suspicious transfer to an exchange. |
| Toho Bank | Refuses cash transfers to exchanges from its ATMs, as well as renamed ones. |
| Kyoto Bank | Restricts renamed transfers to exchanges from 2 February 2026. |
| Hachijuni Nagano Bank | Partly restricts transfers to exchanges under rules revised in May 2026. |
On 6 August 2026 the FSA and police asked exchanges to hold coins for a set period after a yen deposit or purchase, and to have withdrawal addresses registered in advance.
Transfer fees are the other cost. Docomo SMTB Net Bank, renamed from Sumishin SBI on 3 August 2026, gives free transfers by rank and then charges ¥77. Sony Bank waives one a month. Taking yen out is free only at two of the ten, GMO Coin and SBI VC Trade.
Crypto gains are taxed as income today, at your top rate, and a flat 20% is on the way.
| Rule | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Gains are miscellaneous income | Profit from selling or spending crypto is added to your salary and other income. |
| National rates of 5% to 45% | Plus 2.1% of that tax as a surcharge and a flat 10% inhabitant tax, so the top rate comes to roughly 55%. |
| The ¥200,000 rule | An employee paid by one employer can skip the national return when other income is ¥200,000 or less. |
| Losses stay put | A crypto loss can't be set against other income. |
The 2026 tax reform taxes gains on crypto registered under securities law at a flat 20%, apart from other income. Losses can then be carried forward three years. It applies from 1 January of the year after the new securities rules take effect, which the law sets within a year of July 2026.
Exchanges have been collecting a tax-residence declaration from new customers since 1 January 2026, and from existing ones by 31 December 2026. Japan swaps that data with other countries' tax offices.
Coins in a wallet you control stay yours if an exchange freezes, but nobody can restore a lost seed phrase.
Sending Bitcoin out is free at GMO Coin and at SBI VC Trade, which pays the network fee itself. bitFlyer charges 0.0004 BTC and bitbank 0.0006 BTC. Mercoin's coins can't leave the Mercari app at all.
The travel rule has applied since 1 June 2023, so exchanges pass sender and recipient details with each transfer and keep records of transfers to wallets they don't host. Try a small amount first.
Investment and romance scams that start on social media cost people in Japan more each year, and crypto is often how the money leaves.
Police counted 9,523 social-media investment scams costing ¥128.8 billion in 2025, and 5,645 romance scams costing ¥54.6 billion. Crypto was the main way money moved in 48.6% of the romance losses, the National Police Agency found. By the end of August 2026 investment scams had already cost ¥93.7 billion. Signs to stop at:
If you have already paid, call your bank at once, then the police consultation line on #9110 or the consumer hotline on 188, both listed by the police.
Coincheck ranks first in Japan on our six checks, at 9.0 out of 10. For other needs, GMO Coin is the cheapest to buy, bitFlyer has the deepest Bitcoin market and Binance Japan lists the most coins.
Send yen by bank transfer from an account in your name and place a limit order on an exchange screen. A dealer screen hides its cost in the price. When we priced the books on 12 Oct 2026, GMO Coin exchange filled a ¥100,000 order closest to the market, just ¥6 above it.
Yes. Exchanging crypto for yen needs FSA registration, and 27 firms held it on 1 September 2026. A law passed in July 2026 moves exchanges under the securities law, with an insider-trading ban, within a year.
Yes, if you live in Japan. GMO Coin, BitTrade and Mercoin state that in their account rules, and most of the ten list a residence card among accepted IDs. bitFlyer, Coincheck, bitbank, OKJ, Zaif and Binance Japan have English versions of their sites.
Yes. Gains count as miscellaneous income, taxed with your salary at rates that reach about 55%, and losses can't reduce other income. A flat 20% rate for crypto registered under securities law starts the January after the new rules take effect.
Bybit isn't registered in Japan and was warned by the FSA in November 2024. Kraken closed its Japanese business on 31 January 2023. Coinbase's Japanese company is still on the FSA register but lists no coins.
