The minimum for Bybit copy trading is 100 USDT: Bybit's Copy Trading Classic guide (updated 2026-10-15) sets a 100 USDT minimum investment, a Master Trader can set a higher one, and you cannot reduce your investment below 100 USDT or the Master's minimum. TradFi Copy Trading runs from 100 USDx to 1,000,000 USDx, and in Copy Trading Pro the Pro Master sets the minimum somewhere between $200 and $10,000. You need KYC Level 1 first; there is no separate entry fee, only USDT in your account.
How the three differ: Copy Trading Classic follows a Master Trader on USDT perpetuals with a 0% to 15% profit share, and you can set your own TP/SL and close positions yourself. Copy Trading Pro hands your money to a professional trader under a 180-day lock-up with up to 30% profit share, and TradFi Copy Trading covers forex and gold on MT5. If you want to control your own risk, use Classic; you can follow up to 10 Master Traders at once (checked 2026-10-18).
This guide sets out the minimums and differences of the three using the Bybit Help Center, then explains Classic's settings, how profit share is pre-deducted and refunded, and the rules for failed copies and auto-unfollow, and ends with a worked example of fees against profit share; the official pages take precedence. Bind Bybit with our code FEEOTTER and your trading fee rebate is 40%, 2 times the 20% common referral codes give; whether copy trading fees count is covered below.
Pick the right product: Classic, Pro or TradFi
| Item | Copy Trading Classic | Copy Trading Pro | TradFi Copy Trading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Markets | USDT perpetuals | Spot, USDT perpetuals, USDC perpetuals | Forex, indices, US stock CFDs, commodities (MT5) |
| How it works | Copies the Master Trader's order signals | You buy strategy shares; the Pro Master fully manages the funds | Copies the Master Trader's order signals |
| Profit share | 0%–15% (by rank) | 0%–30% | 0%–15% |
| How it is charged | Pre-deducted daily, settled weekly, refunded on net loss | High-water mark, calculated every 7 days | High-water mark, settled weekly |
| Your control | Set leverage, margin mode, TP/SL; close manually | None; the Pro Master decides | No manual close; exit only by unfollowing, TP/SL or trailing stop |
| Trading fees | Your own VIP rate | VIP 1 rate for everyone, whatever your level | Per the MT5 fee page |
| Trading hours | 24/7 | Run by the Pro Master; subscriptions and redemptions have fixed windows | 24/5, Monday to Friday (server time) |
Sources: Introduction to TradFi Copy Trading (includes the three-way comparison), Introduction to Copy Trading Pro.
In short: if you want to control risk and stop any time, use Classic; only consider Pro if you accept a lock-up and hand over all decisions; use TradFi only for forex or gold. The rest of this guide focuses on Classic.
What is the minimum for Bybit copy trading?
| Item | Copy Trading Classic | Copy Trading Pro (investor) | TradFi Copy Trading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum investment | 100 USDT | Set by the Pro Master, between $200 and $10,000 | 100 USDx |
| Maximum investment | No overall cap in the guide; Advanced Copy has a per-order margin cap | Set by the Pro Master, between $11,000 and $100,000 | 1,000,000 USDx |
| Can the Master raise it? | Yes, shown at the top of their profile | The Pro Master sets it in the first place | Yes, shown in the settings field |
| Reducing your investment | Not below 100 USDT or the Master's minimum | Only by redeeming in the redemption window, for shares held more than 4 calendar days | Cannot be revoked once submitted |
| Where the money comes from | USDT in your Spot, Funding or Derivatives account | USDT only | USDx |
Sources: How to Get Started With Copy Trading Classic (Followers) (updated 2026-10-15), Key Rules for Copy Trading Pro (updated 2025-11-25), How to Get Started With Copy Trading TradFi (Followers) (updated 2026-07-10), checked 2026-10-18.
100 USDT is the least that lets you press Copy; it does not mean 100 USDT is enough. When a Master opens several positions at high leverage, a small balance easily runs into "insufficient order cost" and misses trades, and as the failed-copy section below explains, too many failures in a row make the system unfollow the Master for you.
Getting started with Copy Trading Classic
- Verify your identity: Classic requires Individual KYC Lv. 1 or Business KYC.
- Pick a Master Trader and set an investment: tap Copy Trading on the app home page (on the website, Tools, then Copy Trading), pick someone from the leaderboards and tap Copy. The minimum is 100 USDT, and a Master Trader can require more, shown at the top of their profile. You can follow up to 10 Master Traders, each with separate settings.
- Choose a copy mode: Smart Copy or Advanced Copy (next section). The mode cannot be changed later; to switch you must cancel and start a new copy, and if the slots are full you may not get back in.
- Accept the agreement and copy: funds move into the copy trading account automatically.
To add or withdraw money later, go to My Trades, then User Center (Follower), then Master Traders, then Adjust Investment, and choose Increase or Reduce Investment.
Two common misunderstandings: first, only trades opened after you start copying are copied, not the Master Trader's existing positions; second, bonuses and coupons cannot be used in Classic. When you stop copying and all positions are closed, funds return to your Funding Account. Classic supports sub-accounts.
Smart Copy vs Advanced Copy: who decides position size
| Item | Smart Copy | Advanced Copy |
|---|---|---|
| Position size | Fixed ratio based on the Master Trader's order cost and available balance | A fixed margin per trade that you set |
| Leverage | Follows the Master Trader | Follow the Master Trader, fixed, or custom per contract |
| CopyGuard | Optional: skips trades if your entry would be worse than the Master's | Not available |
| Best for | Recommended by Bybit for beginners | Users who want to size each trade |
Bybit's examples: if Smart Copy calculates a 10% ratio and you have 1,000 USDT available at execution, the copied trade costs about 100 USDT; with Advanced Copy at a 100 USDT fixed margin, every trade uses 100 USDT. The maximum fixed margin per trade depends on the Master Trader's rank: Cadet 1,000, Bronze 2,000, Silver 10,000 USDT, and customized for Gold. The maximum cumulative order value per trading pair is 300,000 USDT.
Both modes offer these protective settings (source: Copy Mode and Parameter Settings):
- Max slippage per order: a copy is skipped if the entry price deviates from the Master's fill beyond the limit; the default is 0.5%–1.5% depending on the pair. A lower setting protects your entry but raises the chance of failed copies.
- Perp Copy Stop Loss (PCSL): when your accumulated loss with a Master Trader reaches a set amount or percentage, you automatically unfollow, and remaining positions either close at market or exit when the Master closes. PCSL only counts realized plus unrealized P&L and excludes equity changes from profit sharing, so you may recover less than the estimate shown.
- Trailing stop: an exit line set as a retracement from your highest equity. Bybit's example: with 20% retracement, equity rising from 500 to 1,000 lifts the exit from 400 to 800; when equity falls back to 800, everything closes at market and the copy ends.
- Take-profit and stop-loss ratio per order: each order exits when its loss or profit reaches the ratio; if the Master closes first, your TP/SL is cancelled.
- Max position margin per contract, max daily position limit: new copies stop once the cap is reached. Bybit warns that in extreme cases several fills at once can exceed the cap, and the excess is not trimmed.
If the Master Trader enables SyncMaster's Forced Sync, you cannot change these parameters and must copy with their settings.
How profit share is taken: pre-deducted daily, settled weekly, refunded on loss
Classic profit share depends on the Master Trader's rank:
| Master Trader rank | Cadet | Bronze | Silver | Gold | Whitelist copy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profit share | 10% | 10% | Up to 12% | Up to 15% | Customizable, up to 99% |
Watch the last column. When a Master Trader enables the Follower Whitelist, only whitelisted UIDs can copy, and profit share for these copies can be set as high as 99%. If someone invites you privately into a "signal group", check the profit share on the profile before you copy.
The way profit share is charged surprises many users (source: Copy Trading: Profit Sharing Explained):
- Daily pre-deduction: the system calculates your net P&L each day and holds back the profit share on that day's gains in advance.
- Weekly settlement: the cycle runs from Saturday 00:00 to Friday 23:59:59 UTC, and settlement is every Monday at 03:00 UTC.
- Refund on net loss: if closed positions in the cycle show a net loss, the pre-deducted share is refunded to your Funding Account on settlement day; if the actual share is less than what was held, the excess is refunded.
- Same-day positions must be fully closed: a day's profit share is paid to the Master only after all perpetual positions opened that day are closed; otherwise it waits for a later cycle.
- Net profit is after fees: Net Profit = Position P&L − Fee to Open − Fee to Close.
Bybit's example (10% share): a day closes a BTC long for +1,000 USDT and an ETH short for −200 USDT, with 100 USDT pre-deducted; on settlement day the actual share is 1,000 × 10% − 200 × 10% = 80 USDT, and 20 USDT comes back to you. In Classic, gains and losses offset within each settlement cycle; the help article does not mention a high-water mark across cycles. Copy Trading Pro and TradFi Copy Trading, by contrast, explicitly use a high-water mark and share profit only above the previous peak.
Copy Trading Pro: 180-day lock-up and a flat VIP 1 rate
Copy Trading Pro works like a closed-end strategy. You buy shares during the seed round or an open window, the Pro Master trades the pooled funds, and there is a 180-day lock-up with entry and exit only in set subscription and redemption windows. The Pro Master sets profit share up to 30%, calculated every 7 days on the latest NAV and only when NAV is above the high-water mark. Rate changes are blocked within 48 hours of a settlement date and take effect from the second upcoming settlement. Strategies are Stable (up to 5x) or Aggressive (up to 10x), and the system takes over and closes positions if NAV falls below 0.3. Every trade in Copy Trading Pro uses the VIP 1 fee rate, regardless of your own VIP level, and you cannot intervene in any trade.
Failed copies, liquidation and auto-unfollow
Bybit's FAQ answers "my Master wasn't liquidated but I was" directly: if you use higher leverage than the Master, your liquidation price is closer to entry; or slippage and missed copies left you with a different average entry price. Bybit lists these reasons a trade is not copied:
- Not enough funds in the copy trading account;
- The Master Trader's copy trade quota is full;
- The entry price exceeded your max slippage;
- You hit your max position margin per contract or daily limit;
- CopyGuard is on and the entry is worse than the Master's (this does not count as a failed copy).
If copies fail because of insufficient order cost 20 times in a row, or 100 times within 24 hours, and you hold no open positions, the system unfollows that Master Trader for you. A Master can also remove you through the whitelist. If you lack margin when the Master changes leverage, you may miss the leverage change and need to re-apply settings manually to align.
When you cancel a copy you get two options: close remaining positions at market, or keep copying until the Master closes them. With the second, only the Master's closing signals are copied; new orders and additions are not. Once everything is closed, funds return to your Funding Account automatically.
Bybit's reminder: a Master Trader's past performance does not guarantee future returns, and slippage and different entry points mean your ROI will not exactly match theirs.
Fields to check when choosing a Master Trader
Tap a Master Trader's card and Bybit shows a full page of performance data (source: How to Understand a Master Trader's Performance). Several fields are defined differently from what you might assume:
| Field | Official definition | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Trading days | Days on which the Master holds open positions | Not account age |
| Stability Index | Combines wallet balance, 7D ROI and 30D maximum drawdown to rate handling of volatility | Bybit's own composite score |
| AUM | Total invested by all followers over the past 30 days | Only the last 30 days |
| Max drawdown | Largest unrealized loss in the last month | Lower means smaller floating losses |
| Win rate | Profitable closed orders plus open orders in profit, divided by all closed plus open positions | Includes open positions, so traders who hold losers look better |
| Follower's P&L | Realized plus unrealized P&L of past and current followers | Closer to your result than the Master's own P&L |
| Sharpe / Sortino | Return adjusted for volatility or downside risk | Higher is steadier for the same return |
Win rate counts open positions that are in profit, so looking at win rate alone can flatter traders who refuse to cut losers. Read it together with maximum drawdown and follower P&L. Master Trader ranks are also re-evaluated weekly on account balance, 30-day cumulative profit and 7-day maximum drawdown, and 14 days without a trade triggers an automatic downgrade; a lower rank changes the profit share and the Advanced Copy margin cap too.
Worked example: 1,000 USDT for a month, fees against profit share
Say you copy a Bronze Master Trader (10% profit share) with 1,000 USDT. They average 10x leverage, go in with the full position each time, open and close 20 times in a month, and every fill is taker:
- Notional volume: 10,000 USDT to open and 10,000 USDT to close each time, 400,000 USDT over 20 trades.
- Trading fees: 400,000 x 0.055% (VIP 0 perpetual taker) = 220 USDT, 22% of your capital.
- Profit share: if the month nets 150 USDT after fees, the Master gets 10%, or 15 USDT.
- Rebate: bound with our code FEEOTTER, the 40% rebate (all paid by Fee Otter) returns 88 USDT of those 220 USDT in fees.
In the same month, fees come to more than 14 times the profit share. When you pick a Master, check how often they trade and how much leverage they use as well as the profit share rate; with someone who trades in and out several times a day, fees are the big cost. The rebate figure above assumes copy trading fees count toward the rebate, which the next section covers.
Copy trading fees and rebates
Classic fees are simple. Bybit's FAQ says the "trading fee and funding fee are the same as the rates incurred when you trade on Bybit's Derivatives platform. No extra fees will be charged," and VIP rates apply. For a regular user (VIP 0), USDT perpetuals are 0.02% maker and 0.055% taker.
As for whether copy trading fees earn a rebate: Bybit's affiliate FAQ only says Bybit shares part of the "trading fee profit generated from any eligible referral activity" with affiliates, calculated as "Trading fees − Market maker rebates − Bonuses/Coupons", and notes that users who receive a rebate, discount or incentive under another program may not contribute commission. The terms do not name copy trading specifically, so copied orders generate futures fees like any other; whether they count toward your rebate follows the settlement record, and support can answer questions. The same applies to Copy Trading Pro and TradFi Copy Trading.
Bind through Fee Otter with our code FEEOTTER and you get 40% of your trading fees back, all paid by Fee Otter (Bybit has no exchange-paid automatic layer here), settled daily and paid on request as on-chain USDT on BEP20, minimum 1 USDT per request, with the 0.015 USDT network fee borne by you. Payout timing and five volume scenarios are in the Bybit fee rebate guide; the code and sign-up link are in Bybit referral code. If you already have a Bybit account, a main account registered within 14 days with no referrer can add the code in account info, as shown in how to add a Bybit referral code; after 14 days, see the Bybit rebind guide. A binding is nearly impossible to change later.
Who can use Bybit copy trading: regions and KYC
Bybit's Service Restricted Countries page (updated 2026-10-16) says it does not serve users in the United States, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Uzbekistan, Crimea (including Sevastopol) and the non-government-controlled areas of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, Sudan and Syria, and that the entity Bybit Virtual Asset Platform Operator LLC also does not serve Dubai (Bybit Service Restricted Countries, checked 2026-10-18). If it finds you misstated where you live, Bybit reserves the right to close the account and liquidate open positions.
Copy Trading Classic requires individual KYC Level 1 or business verification before you start. How exchanges are licensed in each country is in exchange licenses by country, and a side-by-side of copy trading platforms is in the copy trading platform comparison.
FAQ
What is the minimum for Bybit copy trading?
Copy Trading Classic has a 100 USDT minimum (official guide updated 2026-10-15); Master Traders can require more, and you cannot reduce your investment below that floor. TradFi Copy Trading starts at 100 USDx, and in Copy Trading Pro the Pro Master sets a minimum between $200 and $10,000.
How much do I need to deposit for Bybit copy trading?
There is no separate deposit threshold. You need at least 100 USDT (or the Master's minimum) in your Spot, Funding or Derivatives account, and the funds move to the copy trading account when you start. In practice, the smaller the balance, the more often trades are missed for insufficient order cost.
How much is Bybit's profit share?
Classic depends on rank: 10% for Cadet and Bronze, up to 12% for Silver, up to 15% for Gold, and up to 99% for whitelist copies. Copy Trading Pro goes up to 30%, TradFi 0%–15%.
Do I pay profit share if I lose money?
Classic pre-deducts profit share daily, but if the cycle ends in a net loss, the held amount is refunded on the Monday 03:00 UTC settlement. Amounts already settled to the Master are not refunded.
Are copy trading fees higher than trading myself?
Classic uses the same rates as the Derivatives platform, VIP rates included, with no extra charge. Copy Trading Pro uses the VIP 1 rate for everyone.
Do copy trading fees earn a rebate?
Bybit's affiliate terms do not name copy trading specifically. Copied orders still generate futures fees; whether they count toward your rebate follows the settlement record, and support can help with questions.
What happens to positions when I stop copying?
You choose between closing at market now or continuing until the Master closes; the second copies closing signals only. After everything closes, funds return to your Funding Account.
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