Bitcoin IRA Fees Compared Across Five Custodians

For most people who want Bitcoin in an IRA at the lowest cost, Fidelity Crypto IRA or iTrustCapital is the answer. Each takes about 1% when you buy and charges nothing to keep the account open. If you want to hold one of the keys yourself, Unchained IRA is the pick. If you want a Bitcoin-only provider, Swan IRA is the pick. Bitcoin IRA costs the most of the five, and it is for the buyer who wants a full-service rollover handled for them.

We compared the fees you pay at the start, every year, and on each trade. We did not test any of these accounts. We also could not check each provider's own fee page. Every figure below comes from a named third-party review, carries that review's date where it has one, and is labeled as what the fee was on that date.

Where two reviews disagree, we give both. Before you fund an account, confirm the current schedule with the provider directly.

Fidelity charges no account fee and no custody fee. Its cost is a spread, which means the price you pay for Bitcoin is set a little above the market price, so the fee never appears as a separate line. CryptoSlate's comparison, updated August 26, 2026, puts that spread at 1% per trade.

If you buy once and hold, you pay the spread once. After that, keeping the account costs nothing.

Custody is handled by Fidelity Digital Assets, which CryptoSlate describes as NYDFS-chartered and holding most assets in cold storage, meaning offline. You never hold the keys.

The drawback: the menu is short. CryptoSlate lists Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin only. None of our sources gives an account minimum, so ask Fidelity before you open the account.

Skip it if you want to hold your own key.

iTrustCapital charges a flat 1% on each crypto buy or sell. WallStreetZen, writing on September 24, 2026, lists no setup fee, no annual fee and a $1,000 minimum. Storage is included through Coinbase Custody, Fireblocks and Fidelity Digital Assets.

One source disagrees on the setup fee. PipeFlare's June 2026 comparison lists a one-time $50 setup fee and estimates a year-one cost of $150 on $10,000. That estimate is the $50 setup fee plus the 1% trade. The more recent reviews, WallStreetZen's from September and CryptoSlate's October 6, 2026 update, do not mention the $50 fee.

The drawback: CryptoSlate notes that iTrustCapital does not disclose its crypto insurance limits and does not offer ACATS transfers. ACATS is the standard system brokerages use to move accounts between each other.

Skip it if you want the keys in your own hands.

Unchained uses collaborative multisig. The Bitcoin can only move when two of three keys sign the transaction, and you hold at least one of those keys. That means Unchained cannot move your coins alone.

The sources disagree on how many keys you hold. Spark's comparison tool says you hold two of the three. PipeFlare says you hold one. Ask Unchained which setup applies to your account.

The fees are a flat annual charge plus a trade fee that falls as the account grows. According to Spark:

• The annual fee is $250, waived for the first year.
• The trade fee is 1% as standard, 0.75% for $100,000 to $1 million, and 0.50% above $1 million.
• A $250 concierge setup is optional.
• There is no stated minimum.

Other sources give different figures. IRA Research Hub lists a 0.5% trade fee and a $10,000 minimum. PipeFlare treats the $250 setup as a standard fee rather than an optional one.

The drawback: a flat $250 a year is a large share of a small account. On a $10,000 balance it equals 2.5% a year.

Skip it if you are starting small or do not want responsibility for a key.

Swan offers only Bitcoin. For some buyers that is the reason to choose it, because there is nothing else in the menu to tempt you.

CryptoSlate lists these fees:

• A monthly admin fee of 0.02% of assets under custody, with a $20 minimum.
• 1% on each buy or sell.
• No setup, closure or transfer fees.

Custody runs through qualified custodians, including BitGo Trust.

PipeFlare describes the fee differently: a flat $20 a month with no buy-side spread. The two sources agree on the $20 monthly floor and disagree on whether you pay 1% when you buy.

The drawback: the $20 monthly floor is $240 a year whatever your balance. By PipeFlare's estimate, that works out to roughly 2.4% a year on a $10,000 account by year five.

Skip it if your balance is small and will stay small.

Bitcoin IRA charges the most of the five. Every source agrees on two fees: 2% on each trade, and a monthly maintenance fee of 0.08% of your account value. The Motley Fool's review adds that the monthly fee has a $20 minimum. Custody is through BitGo Trust.

The sources disagree on everything else:

• Setup fee. The Motley Fool reports 0.99% to 2.99% of your first deposit. LendEDU's 2026 review and Spark both say there is no setup fee. PipeFlare reports up to 5.99% on the first buy.
• Minimum. Most sources say $1,000. Spark says $3,000.

The disagreement has a likely cause. According to the Motley Fool, Bitcoin IRA does not publish its full fee schedule. You have to call or email a representative to get it.

What you get for the price: according to the Motley Fool, Bitcoin IRA handles the rollover from your old retirement account for you.

Skip it if you are comfortable filling out a rollover form yourself. The other four cost much less.

Do not confuse this company with BitIRA, which is a separate company. CryptoSlate says BitIRA works with Equity Trust Company and shares its trade fees only during a sales consultation.

Here is the same deposit at each provider. The calculation assumes the following:

• You make one buy on day one and never sell.
• The price of Bitcoin stays flat, so the account balance does not change.
• Each provider uses the fees in the table above. Where sources disagree, the extra cost is added in brackets.

The arithmetic is ours. It is meant to show how each fee structure behaves over time, not to predict what you will pay.

On $10,000:

• Fidelity: $100 in year one, and $100 in total after ten years.
• iTrustCapital: $100 in year one, and $100 after ten years. Add $75 if the one-time IRA conversion fee listed by Spark applies.
• Unchained: $100 in year one, and $2,350 after ten years.
• Swan: $340 in year one, and $2,500 after ten years. Subtract $100 if there is no buy fee.
• Bitcoin IRA: $296 in year one, and $1,160 after ten years, based on the 2% trading fee, 0.08% monthly fee and no setup fee reported by LendEDU.

On $100,000:

• Fidelity: $1,000 in year one, and $1,000 after ten years.
• iTrustCapital: $1,000 in year one, and $1,000 after ten years.
• Unchained: $750 in year one at the 0.75% tier, and $3,000 after ten years.
• Swan: $1,240 in year one, and $3,400 after ten years.
• Bitcoin IRA: about $2,960 in year one, and about $11,600 after ten years. There is no setup fee to add, per LendEDU.

Over ten years, the pattern is clear. A one-time spread costs little if you hold for a long time. A flat annual fee hurts small accounts and barely matters in large ones. A percentage-of-assets fee grows as your balance grows.

PipeFlare estimates Bitcoin IRA's year-one cost on $10,000 at $800 to $900. That is higher than our $296 because PipeFlare includes the larger first-buy charge it found.

Two things are worth knowing before you choose:

• $10,000 is more than one year's Roth contribution limit for most people, so it usually means a rollover from an existing account.
• PipeFlare also notes that spot Bitcoin ETFs such as IBIT and FBTC carried a 0.25% expense ratio, with no platform fee, at brokerages such as Fidelity and Schwab. An expense ratio is a yearly fee taken as a share of your holding. That is a different route with a different kind of cost, covered in how spot ETFs changed access.

Fees are one half of the decision. The other half is who holds the Bitcoin, and whether that matters to you more than the cost. The wider Bitcoin Roth IRA strategy covers that trade-off.

• Fidelity Crypto IRA: buy once and hold, at a big brokerage.
• iTrustCapital: the lowest published fees, with more than three coins available.
• Unchained IRA: you hold a key, and the account is large enough that $250 a year is a small share of it.
• Swan IRA: Bitcoin only, for a balance large enough that the $20 monthly floor does not dominate.
• Bitcoin IRA: you want someone else to handle the rollover, and you accept the highest cost.

If none of these fits, wait until the provider you prefer publishes its full fee schedule. Two of these five have not. Any account you do open should name a custodian that is a bank or appears on the IRS list of approved nonbank custodians, last updated April 1, 2026.