ChangeHero vs Changelly: Review and Comparison

When it comes to instant crypto exchanges, Changelly is the most widely recognized and arguably, a market leader. But does it mean it is the best one? The fierce competition proves that many platforms strive to offer something different and better.

One of Changelly’s competitors is ChangeHero, so how does it compare and what does it have to offer? Find out in our comparison of these platforms.

Quick Summary

• In terms of track record and brand recognition, hardly any instant cryptocurrency exchange platform is ahead of Changelly. Its first mover advantage and marketing over years cemented its place as a market leader.
• Compared to it, ChangeHero is a newer and less recognizable brand. However, in terms of platform quality and service it is well on par with Changelly.
• In a practical test, an exchange made through ChangeHero was faster, the result was more economical, and the amount lost on fees and spreads was lower. At the same time, the difference in all three factors was very close.

Competitive Edge

Both ChangeHero and Changelly by definition are instant cryptocurrency exchange (swap) platforms. The crypto-to-crypto exchanges are non-custodial in both cases and follow roughly the same flow: user makes a transfer of the crypto assets they need exchanged to the service’s address, and the service sends them an exchanged equivalent.

Focusing on the differences between the platforms paints a more vivid picture than summarizing the commonalities. After all, to compete and win users over, each platform has to offer something that the competitors don’t.

In addition to the usual, such as support service, rates and altcoin selection, Changelly advertises their own smartphone app with exclusive benefits. The app has a 4.6 rating on Google Play store front with thousands of reviews and a decent distribution between positive and negative ones. Another major advantage Changelly particularly highlights is a 0.25% service fee, which would indeed be one of the lowest in the niche.

As for ChangeHero, the platform places an even greater emphasis on speed and competitive exchange rates. Although the service fee is higher at 0.5%, this commission covers the exchange spread and network fees.

Reputation

Changelly has been operational for at least three years more than ChangeHero (2015 vs. 2018). The company behind the former is incorporated in St.Vincent and Grenadines; the latter is based in Costa-Rica.

As a brand, Changelly is the more recognized one, given a Google search of “changelly” returns 648,000 results while looking up “changehero” returns 527,000 results. However, currently, at least one of the top results of the first search links to a Reddit thread made by a user accusing Changelly of scamming them, with two more similar threads in the “Top stories” block.

Both platforms have profiles on Trustpilot and similar review aggregators. At the time of writing, Changelly’s Trustpilot rating is 3.3 with 4K reviews, ChangeHero’s is 3.5 with only 629 posts.

Interface & UX

Both Changelly and ChangeHero work almost in an identical fashion so the process which they guide a user through makes all the difference. It definitely helps that the point at which a swap is initiated is right there when you open each respective website, no scrolling or page browsing.

Both calculator widgets cover exchanges and buying or selling, separated by tabs. Right below these tabs are fields for the currency pair and amounts for input. Tooltips inform the users when they select an unsupported currency/pair or input an amount under or over the service limits.

Once ready to proceed, ChangeHero seamlessly redirects the user to a separate processing page, unlike Changelly, which seemingly only changes the widget. It does not change anything about the process itself although it removes psychological barriers between an initiated order and playing around with the calculator.

When the user confirms the details, both services display their crypto addresses in a clear way, allowing users to scan the QR codes or copy and paste. When the transfer appears on-chain, both services change the screens once again to indicate the status of an exchange and provide transaction details for users to check them in a blockchain explorer for themselves.

All in all, both services provided a well-navigable path through the process, with clear instructions and acceptable transparency about the state of a transaction. The latter is especially important considering that users put trust into the platforms and need full knowledge of what happens to the funds they expect in exchange for those sent to an unfamiliar address.

Coin & Token Selection

On their home pages, ChangeHero advertises access to over 400 crypto assets and Changelly claims to have nearly a thousand listed. These figures might include the same assets in different networks or assets only available through an API.

From the point of view of a user availing of the service with the website, we counted only those that were active in the calculator widgets. There were a little over 200 coins and tokens enabled on ChangeHero for crypto exchange, and 22 crypto currencies to buy and sell at the time of writing. Changelly was miles ahead with 706 listed assets to choose from.

Hands-On Crypto Swap Comparison

An exchange review would be incomplete if we had not tested both platforms. For the purpose of side-by-side comparison, we made the same exchange on both platforms nearly simultaneously.

We decided to illustrate the results on two transactions that involved exchanging 40 USDT on Tron to Bitcoin, in an amount that is not significantly higher than the minimum, with the floating exchange rate options. On Changelly it is called Floating rate, on ChangeHero it is labeled Best Rate, both are enabled by default.

Initially, the estimated exchange rate appeared to be slightly better on ChangeHero but these figures should be taken with a grain of salt, especially with floating rates. However, despite the result being below the estimate, the swap on ChangeHero yielded more than one on Changelly.

Fee & Rate Transparency

Even though the stated commission on ChangeHero is twice the amount collected on Changelly, the difference between all costs paid to swap was marginal. Taking into account that both swaps were taking place roughly at the same time, the network fees should have been more or less the same.

Changelly explicitly displayed the exact amount of BTC that was paid as a service commission (0.00000102 BTC) and for the network fee (0.00002501 BTC). This breakdown earns Changelly some points for transparency but not for cost efficiency.

Despite a higher stated fee, swapping with ChangeHero resulted in a more economical transaction. At any stage of the exchange, the estimates were on point and slightly higher than for Changelly. It did not show explicitly what was the transaction fee but a quick look in a blockchain explorer proved that even with a transaction fee higher than in the Changelly’s swap, ChangeHero ultimately saved a bit more of the funds involved.

Security & KYC Policies

Last but not least, what are the KYC policies of both services? The testing transactions were just above the lower threshold, so they were very unlikely to give us a chance to view the KYC procedures firsthand, for better or worse.

ChangeHero’s KYC/AML policy and terms of use roughly outline the process: a user’s transaction will get paused if the risk scoring system detects an anomaly. Specific conditions that trigger this are not described but user reviews suggest it can factor in the amounts, transaction history, or even currency selection (i.e. transactions with privacy coins are more likely to set off the alarm). These factors are specified in Changelly’s AML policy, albeit without concrete details.

The user is to then contact the support team through their preferred channel: email, chat, or Telegram. The team does not reach out to clients first to prevent impersonation. In the response, they will specify required documents, such as a government-issued ID, and may ask to take a selfie with it. More often than not, the process will be carried out through a third-party provider that significantly simplifies the procedure. There is an option to decline a KYC procedure but some frankly harsh conditions apply.

As outlined in Changelly’s policies, the principles and process are more or less the same. They do employ a third-party service to carry out customer identification, automating some of it. However, the risk-based flagging system and applying KYC to individual transactions over users in general apply there as well.

Both services have a few user reviews that claim their suspended transactions are theft and fraud on the service’s part. These days users are more accustomed to this model of compliance and due diligence, so instead of complaining about the very fact of suspension, they raise legitimate concerns such as lack of response and transparency from compliance officers and teams.

The Verdict

Changelly is one of the most well-known names in the instant crypto exchange niche, having been around the longest and setting the standard for the competition. In comparison, ChangeHero is a smaller project but one that delivers the service at an even better speed and cost as the industry leader.

More reviews and comparisons are coming to the ChangeHero Blog, so watch this space! Follow us on X (ex-Twitter), Facebook, Telegram and be the first to receive updates.