5 Top NFT Marketplaces to Know

Pros of Opensea

Cons of Opensea

As a pioneer in the NFT space, OpenSea has established itself as the go-to place for collectors and investors alike - "First mover" advantage!

The platform is known to have fake listings, so ensure to research a collection before buying.

OpenSea has a large selection of NFTs available (over 80 million, to be precise) for purchase compared to curated marketplaces like Coinbase NFT. So whatever you're looking for, they will likely have it.

Many NFT marketplaces offer limited or no live customer assistance, including OpenSea. If you require account help, you must send a service ticket by email.

OpenSea recently began supporting Solana NFTs, making it one of the first major Ethereum-native marketplaces to do so

​It doesn't allow creators to earn more commissions from royalties with its 10% rate compared to platforms like Rarible that provide up to 50% royalty commission. debate to be had whether this is a "con" or not

More than 200 different payment methods are accepted by OpenSea, with Ether being the most common. Among the others are stablecoins, major currencies, and coins such as BTC.

Users have reported poor customer service quality when reaching out to complain or make inquiries.

While most NFT platforms cater to a certain niche, OpenSea presently showcases an impressive 20 million user-owned items monthly. There are several options for users to list their NFTs, with the most visited section as of the current day, being art. These items can be sold at a fixed price or auctioned off.

A vulnerability in the OpenSea NFT market was used by hackers to steal rare NFTs for a small percentage of their market value and then resell them for nearly $1 million. Issues concerning security were raised, with some claiming OpenSea lacks enough security.

Pros of LooksRare

Cons of LooksRare

The platform offers cheaper fees compared to competing markets. They charge a flat 2% fee for each transaction, whereas their nearest rival charges 2.5%.

The site was accused of facilitating wash trading after NFT whales jumped on its highly incentivized rewards scheme to improve earnings.

​Community support is a topic raised by NFT traders on several platforms. LooksRare was the first platform to support communication amongst users with its chat button feature, allowing wallet-to-wallet chat between users and NFT owners.

Unlike OpenSea, which supports multiple payment methods, Ether is the only acceptable payment method on LooksRare. Assets cannot be purchased using a credit card, fiat money, or other cryptocurrencies.

​Unlike marketplaces like OpenSea, LooksRare prioritizes its community through the distribution of rewards among its users. There are currently very few marketplaces that offer user incentives.

The platform also faced issues of transparency when some team members were caught cashing out $LOOKS worth $30 million.

The platform uses its native token $LOOKS, to rewards members in different ways. For example, people who buy certain collections earn some $LOOKS rewards. Also, users who stake these tokens earn 100% trading fees. No other platform offers such benefits.

Currently, the platform does not provide any tools or resources for developers to mint their own NFTs. Platforms like OpenSea offer this feature under Collection Manager.

LooksRare also offers instant royalty payment immediately a sale is finalized. This differs from platforms like OpenSea, which holds royalties for 2 - 4 weeks before releasing it to the creator.

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Pros of Rarible

Cons of Rarible

Apart from OpenSea and Coinbase NFT, Rarible is one of the few NFT Marketplaces offering a dedicated mobile app, allowing users to access the marketplace from their mobile devices.

Some users on Twitter noted that collections on Rarible were mostly made of stolen anime art, leading to copyright infringement issues.

Rarible is also the second NFT marketplace after OpenSea to offer NFT lazy minting. This feature allows creators to mint their collections without paying gas fees until a buyer comes along.

The platform is also susceptible to vulnerabilities that can cost users their NFTs and crypto tokens, like the recent flaw found by CheckPoint Research.

Even though artists have to submit their work for approval before it can be sold on Rarible, the platform is open to everyone who wants to be included. It's quite different from exclusive marketplaces like SuperRare.

While it allows you to buy OpenSea NFTs, it doesn't list collections uploaded using the "lazy mint" feature, until it has been added on-chain to the Ethereum blockchain.

All NFTs made on Rarible may also be found on OpenSea, and the vendor determines the fees. This gives you flexibility as a collector and more visibility as a creator.

You must connect a wallet before accessing most features and collections, unlike platforms like OpenSea and LooksRare, which allows you to view any collection and only use a wallet if you want to buy.

The holders of RARI tokens, the platform's native cryptocurrency, have a voice in platform governance by voting on proposed changes.

Creators and buyers are charged transaction fees compared to platforms like OpenSea, which only takes their charges from the sale.

Pros of Binance NFT Marketplace

Cons of Binance NFT Marketplace

The Binance NFT marketplace currently charges the lowest platform fee of 1%, compared to the likes of OpenSea, which takes up to 2.5%.

One major downside is that it doesn't take fees directly from the sale price like OpenSea. Instead, both the buyer and seller pay the platform fees (that's 1% each).

Since it runs on the Binance Smart Chain, gas fees are extremely reduced. This is fair compared to platforms that run only on Ethereum, like OpenSea and others.

Binance NFT allows creators to only take up to 1% in royalties from secondary sales. This is one of the lowest in the industry, especially compared to Rarible's 50% and Coinbase NFT's 100%.

It supports multi-chain transactions between the Ethereum blockchain and Binance Smart Chain, allowing users to transfer their NFTs across platforms.

Currently, the platform doesn't provide any facilities allowing creators to mint and launch their collections on the marketplace, compared to OpenSea's Collection manager feature.

Binance supports a number of payment methods including BNB, ETH, debit and credit cards, and BUSD. Users have more options compared to Rarible and LooksRare that only support ETH.

Their customer care team isn't as responsive as other marketplaces like LooksRare or OpenSea.

​Binance, the parent company of Binance NFT, is known for its robust security capabilities. So, we can expect the marketplace to be secure and less susceptible to hacks compared to the likes of OpenSea.

There's also no way for users and creators to communicate on the platform like how Coinbase NFT supports comments and LooksRare supports wallet-to-wallet transactions.

Pros of Coinbase NFT Marketplace

Cons of Coinbase NFT Marketplace

With the beta launch, there are no marketplace fees associated with purchasing or selling NFTs. This is quite different from most marketplaces. While this is only temporary, they do plan to keep the costs minimal.

No payments in fiat currency, compared to platforms like Binance and OpenSea. In the future, Coinbase may enable currency payments. However, this beta release only supports ETH transactions.

​You can build a curated feed of crypto and NFT content by following influencers and projects on the site. No other known marketplace offers this feature.

​Fewer filter options. No category, artist, or format filters are available while exploring the marketplace. Instead, you can only sort results by collection.

The marketplace currently curates popular collections like World of Women, Okay Bears, and many others.

There have been reports on username squatting, where people register using the names of popular artists and influencers in the hope of scamming collectors or extorting money to return said usernames to original owners.

The platform features a comment section under each item, allowing collectors and buyers to discuss or ask questions before buying. It's almost similar to the chat button on LooksRare.

You currently can't buy or sell NFTs using the Coinbase app yet. This feature is only available on the website. But since it's still in beta, this might change in the future.

There's no limit to what royalty percentage from secondary sales that creators can set for their collections. As such, creators can set anywhere between 1% to 100%, which is quite remarkable.

Sales were low on launch day, which caused quite an uproar on social media, considering how much hype the platform built. The platform barely had $60,000 in transaction sales compared to OpenSea's opening day sales of $124 million.

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​Coinbase NFT only supports three wallets compared to platforms like OpenSea and others, which support several ethereum wallets.