Funding Rate
A funding rate is a periodic payment exchanged between long and short traders in a perpetual futures market. It is designed to keep the perpetual contract price close to the underlying spot (or index) price.
When the funding rate is positive, traders who are long pay traders who are short. When it is negative, shorts pay longs. The magnitude and sign typically reflect whether the perpetual trades at a premium or discount to spot.
On ApeX Omni, funding settles on an hourly schedule for listed perpetual markets. Many centralized exchanges still use eight-hour intervals, so comparing raw rates across venues requires normalizing for interval length.
Traders watch funding as a carry cost: holding a leveraged position through funding timestamps can improve or erode PnL independent of mark-to-market price moves. See live rates at /tools/funding-rates/.