What Is a Sub-Account on a Crypto Exchange?
A sub-account is an additional account that lives under your main exchange account. It has its own balance, its own positions, its own trade history, and its own API keys — but it belongs to you, is managed from your main account, and requires no separate registration or identity verification.
Most major exchanges, including Toobit and BingX, support sub-accounts. They exist because one account is often the wrong container for more than one activity.
What sub-accounts are used for
- Separating strategies. Traders running multiple systems give each one its own sub-account so their orders and margin never interact. This is the standard structure in automated trading (covered in depth in Why Each Trading Strategy Should Run in Its Own Sub-Account).
- Risk budgeting. The balance you transfer into a sub-account is the most that activity can lose. Funding a sub-account is, in effect, setting a hard risk limit in advance.
- Clean accounting. A sub-account's history contains only its own trades, so its performance can be read directly from its balance curve — no untangling required.
- Access control. API keys created for a sub-account act on that sub-account only. Software connected to sub-account B has no visibility into, or power over, sub-account A or the main account.
How funds move
Transfers between the main account and sub-accounts are internal: typically instant and free, because nothing leaves the exchange. A common pattern:
- Deposit funds to the main account.
- Transfer a chosen amount into a sub-account — this is the strategy's working budget.
- Trading happens inside the sub-account.
- Profits (or what remains) transfer back to the main account whenever you decide.
Note that external deposit and withdrawal usually happen at the main-account level, keeping the sensitive operations (moving funds in and out of the exchange) separated from the accounts where trading software operates.
Sub-accounts and API keys
Each sub-account can issue its own API keys with its own permission set — read, trade, and (separately) withdrawal. For automated trading, the safe pattern combines two rules:
- the key belongs to the sub-account, not the main account, so its reach is limited to that sub-account's balance; and
- the key has withdrawal permission disabled, so funds cannot leave the exchange through it (see Why a Trading Bot Should Never Have Withdrawal Permission).
Together, the two rules mean a connected platform can trade exactly one budget and nothing else.
Exchange-specific notes
Creation steps vary slightly by exchange. On Toobit, sub-accounts are created on the PC website; BingX supports creation on both PC and mobile. Exchanges also set limits on how many sub-accounts an account can have, which is rarely a constraint for individual use.
Step-by-step creation instructions for Toobit and BingX — with the API-key steps that usually follow — are in the ONYX getting started guide.
Where this fits in automated trading
Platforms that follow the one-strategy-one-sub-account model use everything described above as a package: each strategy a user follows gets its own sub-account, funded with the user's chosen budget, connected through a withdrawal-disabled key issued for that sub-account alone. ONYX applies this structure on Toobit and BingX by default; the strategies available for following are listed on the strategy market.
This article is for general information only and is not financial advice. Futures trading carries risk of principal loss and liquidation. Past results do not guarantee future performance.