Pump.fun App Review 2026: Fees, Referral, Perps and Custody, Read at the Source

By Betman · account opened, fee pages read · method and disclosure

Last verified: October 17, 2026, the day Pump.fun's platform fee took effect. Everything on this page comes from Pump.fun's own pages (fees page updated October 17, referral terms dated October 7, terms and conditions section 4.9) or from our own account, each dated where it appears. Contains a referral link, marked below.

Already sold? Get the Pump.fun app (ref link: type the code Betmanjoe when you sign up in the app, the link alone does not apply it; it pays us and cuts your app fee to 0.40%)
Or keep reading: the full fee, the $50 bonus rules and the custody answer are below.

The facts, dated

What changed on October 17, 2026

From August 7 the app advertised zero fees, with no published scope or end date. On October 16, Pump.fun announced "the MOST REWARDING referral program in crypto's history" source.

The same thread introduced a platform fee. The official fees page applies it from October 17: 0.45% of every trade in the web and mobile apps, 0.40% if you applied someone's referral code source.

More: how Pump.fun framed the fee, and why the referral program is older than the announcement

Pump.fun calls it "the lowest platform fee out of ANY social trading app". It is also a rise from zero, announced inside a referral campaign. Several traders said so the same day; one of them had posted his own referral link an hour earlier.

The referral itself is older than the announcement. Users were already sharing pump.fun/join/username links and the $50 bonus on September 30, 2026. What October 16 added: the fee discount for referred users, a limited-time "4x boost" for referrers, the promise to route app revenue to rewards, and the platform fee that funds it.

The fee, read in full

The 0.45% is not the price of a trade. It is the layer the app adds on top of a fee written into the token itself: 1.25% while the token sits on the bonding curve. Every app pays that layer, FOMO and the Telegram bots included.

Computed by us from the published fee schedules, October 17, 2026. Network fees not included. Pump.fun's page says it pays gas on EVM chains and says nothing about Solana; FOMO's co-founder says FOMO covers Solana network fees.

More: what happens to the fee after graduation, on EVM chains, and through Terminal

After graduation to PumpSwap, the token's own fee falls with market cap, from 1.25% down to 0.30% at the top tier. Pools that are not the canonical one charge 0.30% flat. The app's 0.45% stays the same throughout.

Three more lines from the same page. The platform fee does not apply through Terminal or any third-party interface, which charge their own. On EVM chains, Robinhood Chain included, Pump.fun takes 0.10% to 0.15% more and pays the gas. And Pump.fun "may reduce or waive the Platform Fee for particular wallets, programmes or periods".

The referral program, rule by rule

Two documents decide what "your referral deposits $50, both of you get $50" means: the Referral Rewards Program Terms, dated October 7, 2026 source, and section 4.9 of the terms and conditions source. We read both on October 16.

The three rules that decide whether you see any of that $50:

1. The deposit must be fiat, and the bonus is the smaller of the deposit and $50, for each side. The qualifying deposit is the new user's first purchase through a payment provider inside the mobile app (card, Apple Pay), minimum $1; a transfer from another wallet or an exchange does not count.
2. It is paid in five parts: one sixth on each of the first four trading days, two sixths on the fifth, within a ten-day window. Trade on one day only and each of you gets about $8.33; the rest expires.
3. Withdraw early and the rest is gone, for both of you. And the referrer's share of fees has no published rate: section 4.9(c) says it is "determined by us", shown only in the app, and can be "reduced (including to zero)" without notice.

More: the five other rules, from the username code to the Referral Vault and the UK exclusion

The code is a username, applied in the mobile app at sign-up. There is no referral screen on the web; the feature lives in the app, under Profile, Rewards, Referrals. One code per wallet.

A trading day is a UTC day with at least one real trade. Deposit $20 and the base is $20, not $50.

The referrer's share is shown "as a percentage, a multiplier or otherwise", and "may differ between Referrers, programmes and periods" (section 4.9(c)).

The share is not paid, it is routed. Section 4.9(d) sends it on-chain to a "Referral Vault" account derived from the referrer's wallet; the referrer withdraws it and pays the network fee. The first payment may be absorbed by that account's rent.

A code is also a follow. Section 4.9(b): applying a code "may also cause you to follow the Referrer". Since October 10, Callout Rewards pay posters on how their followers' trades turn out, so one code feeds two reward systems.

Also in the terms: the United Kingdom is excluded, the budget is capped and first come first served, the program can stop at any time, and referrers may not buy ads with their code or claim any reward is guaranteed. They must disclose that they may be rewarded. That is what the label under our button does.

Perpetuals, since October 17

Pump.fun opened perpetual futures routed to Hyperliquid and describes itself as "a software interface that sends signed trading instructions to Hyperliquid": orders, margin, funding, liquidations and settlement sit with Hyperliquid, and Pump.fun says it is not the counterparty source.

Its own cost on top of Hyperliquid's: a builder fee of up to 0.10% of each order, up to 0.25% per transfer across the bridge plus the bridge operator's fee, and an account activation fee taken from the first deposit. Those are stated maximums, not observed rates. The 0.45% platform fee does not apply to perps.

Not available to US persons, territories included, or to residents of Ontario. We have not placed a perp order ourselves; FOMO, which routes its perps to Hyperliquid too, is compared on FOMO vs Pump.fun.

Custody

The wallet created at sign-up is provided by Privy, and the mobile help pages document the export: Profile, Settings, Export Wallet. We saw that option on our own account on October 16, 2026 and have not run it yet.

Until we do, the rule from our safety page applies without nuance: deposit what you trade, withdraw profits on a schedule.

More: private key versus seed phrase, and the September 25 change to how you sign in

The terms say Pump.fun has no control over the Privy wallet or its keys. Accounts opened with an email, Apple ID or social login export a private key, not a seed phrase.

Since September 25, 2026 the web app no longer signs you in with a browser wallet; it uses email, Google, Apple or GitHub, and the account is the same on web and mobile source. Hardware-wallet users had to create a new account and move funds by hand.

What we have not verified

Our account has no trades yet, so the fee lines above are read, not measured. We have not traded on Ink or Robinhood Chain through the app, not run the wallet export, and not seen our own referral rate change. The 40x leverage figures circulating for perps come from app data, not from an order we placed, so they are not on this page.

The iOS App Store listing returned a 404 when we checked on September 13, 2026; we have not re-checked since. The class action and the 2024 exploit are reported by the press, with sources on FOMO vs Pump.fun.

Try it

Get the Pump.fun app

(ref link) Our code is Betmanjoe: type it in the mobile app at sign-up, because the link alone opens a page with the code and does not apply it. With it your platform fee is 0.40% instead of 0.45%, and Pump.fun pays us part of that fee at a rate it does not publish and may set to zero.

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