Best Hyperliquid vaults, ranked by what they actually do
The vaults page on Hyperliquid sorts by APY. That number tells you what a vault did over a window it chose, and nothing about what it will do to your deposit next month.
The vault list is long, and most entries look alike: a name, a return, a total-deposits figure, a leader address. What separates them is the mechanism underneath. A vault that market-makes, a vault that holds a hedged funding position, and a vault where one trader takes leveraged directional bets can all show the same trailing APY and carry completely different risk.
This page ranks Hyperliquid vaults by that mechanism, using the official vault documentation for the rules and a reading method you can apply to any vault on the list. It does not rank individual user vaults by return, because trailing return is the least durable thing about them.
Key takeaways
- Rank by mechanism, then by track record. Five vault types exist on Hyperliquid, and the type predicts drawdown behaviour better than any APY figure.
- HLP is a liquidity business, not a yield product. It carries inventory against every trader on the venue.
- User vaults pay the leader 10% of profits, lock deposits for one day, and cannot trade spot or HIP-3 markets.
- A vault's open-positions tab is the disclosure that matters. It shows whether the vault is hedged or directional right now.
- No vault gives you an individually held position. If that matters, the alternative is an agent that trades from your own wallet.
How the five vault types compare
| Rank | Vault type | What it does | Return source | Lock | Leader fee | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | HLP (protocol vault) | Market-making, backstop liquidations, supplies USDC to Earn, receives a share of trading fees | Spread, liquidation PnL, fee share | 4 days from last deposit | None | Inventory losses when traders are right |
| 2 | Market-neutral user vaults | Hold an asset and short its perpetual, or run hedged books | Funding, basis | 1 day | 10% of profits | Funding compression, hedge slippage, leader drift |
| 3 | Systematic directional vaults | Rules-based trend or momentum on perps | Directional price moves | 1 day | 10% of profits | Regime change, drawdowns, leverage |
| 4 | Discretionary trader vaults | One trader's judgement, in vault form | Whatever the trader gets right | 1 day | 10% of profits | Key-person risk, style drift, blow-up |
| 5 | HyperEVM builder vaults | Tokenized vaults built on HyperEVM that read and write to HyperCore | Depends on the builder's strategy | Set by the contract | Set by the builder | Smart-contract risk, newness |
The ranking reflects how much of the return comes from a structural, repeatable source versus a person being right. It is not a return forecast.
1. HLP: the vault that is the exchange's counterparty
HLP is the Hyperliquidity Provider, the protocol-owned vault. According to the protocol vaults page, it provides liquidity through multiple market-making strategies, performs liquidations, supplies USDC to Earn, and accrues a portion of trading fees. Anyone can deposit, the vault is described as fully community-owned, and no leader takes a profit share.
Its return has three sources: the spread it captures as a market maker, the PnL of the positions it inherits when it backstops liquidations, and its fee share. Those first two are where the risk lives. A market maker holds inventory, and a backstop liquidator holds whatever positions the order book could not close. When traders are net wrong, HLP tends to gain. When they are right, HLP tends to lose.
The deposit lock is 4 days from your most recent deposit, so a top-up resets the clock on the whole balance.
HLP ranks first because its return sources are structural: spread and liquidations exist in every market regime. It also carries directional exposure that a passive depositor might not expect. The Deploy Finance vs Hyperliquid HLP page covers that distinction in detail.
2. Market-neutral user vaults: hedged books with a leader
A market-neutral user vault holds offsetting positions so that price moves cancel and what remains is funding or basis. The leader may hold spot on the venue and short the perpetual, or run a book of longs and shorts that nets close to zero.
These rank second because the return source is the same structural funding that professional desks harvest, and because the position can be verified. Open the vault, look at the positions tab, and check whether long and short notional net to near zero. If they do, the vault is doing what its name says. If they do not, the name is marketing.
User vaults come with fixed rules from the vault leader documentation: the leader receives 10% of profits, must keep at least 5% of the vault as their own capital, and paid a 10,000 USDC fee to create it. Deposits lock for 1 day. User vaults can trade only validator-operated perpetuals, so a leader who wants to hold spot on Hyperliquid cannot do it inside the vault; the hedge has to be constructed differently.
The risk is that the leader changes strategy. Nothing in the vault contract holds them to a mandate, and a hedged book can become a directional one without any notice to depositors.
3. Systematic directional vaults: rules, leverage, drawdowns
A systematic vault runs a defined trading model: trend-following, momentum, mean reversion, or a signal blend. The leader is often a bot, and the strategy does not change with mood.
These rank third because the return depends on the market cooperating with the model. Trend models pay in trending markets and bleed in chop. Leverage amplifies both. What you get from the vault page is the max drawdown, which for a directional strategy is the number to anchor on, and the PnL curve, which shows whether the drawdown was a single event or a pattern.
The 10% profit share, 1-day lock, and 5% leader stake apply here as well. So does the limit to validator-operated perpetuals.
A systematic vault is a reasonable way to buy exposure to a strategy you could not run yourself. It is not a yield product, and comparing its APY to HLP's or to a funding vault's is comparing different things.
4. Discretionary trader vaults: copy-trading with a lock
Most user vaults on Hyperliquid are one trader's account with depositors attached. The leader trades by hand, and depositors share the result after the 10% profit share.
These rank fourth because the return source is a person. That is not a criticism of any leader; it is a statement about what you can verify. A trader's history on the vault page is real, but it covers one market regime and one person's discipline. The 5% skin-in-the-game rule means the leader loses alongside you, which aligns incentives without reducing risk.
Two mechanics matter for depositors. First, when someone withdraws and the vault lacks free margin, the documentation says open orders are cancelled and then 20% of positions are closed repeatedly until the withdrawal can be processed. A large withdrawal by another depositor can therefore force the vault out of positions. Second, the leader can close the vault, which closes all positions and returns everyone's share.
If you would not give this trader an exchange sub-account with your money, you should not deposit into their vault. The vault wrapper adds a lock and a fee; it does not add oversight.
5. HyperEVM builder vaults: the new category
Hyperliquid's vaults overview now describes a different model: builders create and tokenize vaults on HyperEVM with custom accounting, reading and writing to HyperCore through CoreWriter and precompiles. These can follow ERC-4626 and, unlike legacy HyperCore vaults, can trade spot and HIP-3 markets.
They rank last for now because they are new and each one is its own smart contract with its own strategy. That is a different risk from a legacy vault, where the exchange's own code enforces the rules. A builder vault's lock, fee, and behaviour are whatever the builder wrote.
The category will produce the most interesting vaults on Hyperliquid, including hedged products that hold spot and short perps in one contract, which legacy user vaults cannot. Until a specific builder vault has an audit, a track record, and a readable contract, treat it as a protocol deposit, not a vault deposit.
How to read any vault page in five minutes
The depositor documentation lists what each vault page shows: APY, total deposits, PnL, max drawdown, volume, open positions, trade history, depositor count, and depositor tenure. Here is what to do with them.
- Open positions first. Net the long and short notional. This tells you the vault's current exposure, which the name and description do not.
- Max drawdown against APY. A 40% APY with a 35% drawdown is a leveraged directional bet. A 12% APY with a 3% drawdown might be a hedged book.
- Age of the PnL curve. Anything under six months has not seen a full regime. Anything that started after a large rally has not seen a crash.
- Leader share and depositor count. A leader holding exactly 5% is at the minimum. A vault with a few large depositors can be forced out of positions by one exit.
- Trade history. Look for consistency between the description and the trades. A "market-neutral" vault with a history of naked longs is not one.
- The lock. One day for user vaults, four for HLP. Confirm you can live without the capital for that window plus a market move.
None of this predicts returns. It tells you which vault type you are buying.
What no Hyperliquid vault gives you
Every vault on the list pools your deposit with other people's. Your outcome is the vault's aggregate book, other depositors' withdrawals can force position closures, and the leader or the code controls the strategy. That is the trade for access to a strategy you cannot run yourself.
If you want the market-neutral funding exposure of a rank-2 vault without the pooling, the alternative is an agent that runs the same trade from a wallet only you control. Deploy Finance's Income: Funding Rates agent holds a hedged position on Hyperliquid inside your own self-custodial wallet, with a scoped session key that can trade and cannot withdraw. There is no leader profit share, no shared book, and no deposit lock documented; you revoke the permission and withdraw when you choose. It is one defined strategy rather than a marketplace, and it carries funding, hedge, venue, and execution risk like any funding trade.
For a directional mandate held alone, Deploy's Superstar agent trades BTC, ETH, SOL, and HYPE perpetuals under a defined strategy.
Verdict
Rank vaults by mechanism before you look at return. HLP is a structural liquidity business with inventory risk. Market-neutral user vaults are the closest thing to yield on the list, provided the positions tab agrees with the name. Systematic and discretionary vaults are directional products with a lock and a fee. Builder vaults are protocol deposits until proven otherwise.
Whatever you choose, read the positions tab, not the APY.
Learn more
- Deploy Finance vs Hyperliquid vaults
- Deploy Finance vs Hyperliquid HLP
- Best perpetual DEXs for automated strategies
- Best funding-rate strategies, compared
- Risks
- Hyperliquid vaults documentation
Start with Deploy Finance
Create a self-custodial Deploy Finance wallet and review the live agents.