Perps cost rent; spot doesn't
A perp long pays funding for as long as you hold it — fine for a trade, expensive for a hold. Match the instrument to the horizon. See the raw funding on the funding calculator.
Perp or spot: the actual cost comparison
The same $10,000 long can be held as spot coins or a 1x perpetual. Spot costs the spread plus fees once. The perp adds funding — typically 0.01%/8h, about 11% annualized — as ongoing rent. For any holding period beyond a few weeks, spot wins on cost, usually decisively.
Perps earn their keep in three cases: leverage (spot can't give you 5x without borrow costs that usually exceed funding), shorting (mechanically simple on perps, clunky via spot borrow), and speed (no wallet transfers, instant size changes). For an unleveraged multi-month hold, paying perp funding is renting a car for a year instead of buying it.
The break-even math: at 0.01%/8h funding, a perp costs ~0.9% monthly. If your intended hold is under a month, the convenience is cheap. Past three months you've paid ~2.7% for nothing spot wouldn't have given you — and negative funding periods, where perps pay you, are too rare and brief to bank on for a long-term position.