Binance has listed some projects without even knowing their investors right after their private sale, and these companies weren't trying to rise too much during their sale. White papers were just next level and so were the devs so they were taken seriously.
I just saw a recent tweet from Mithril Project that they are asking CZ to return their 200K BNB deposit as requirements for their token listing after their token recent delist. Im positive this info is part of there NDA which Mithril already break since there partnership is already over so theres no way for them to lie about this info. Binance is really charging a huge fee in the form of buying huge amount of BNB (by that time was 8$ per BNB).
You can check the tweet post on this link
https://twitter.com/mithdotio/status/1603356872303865856?s=20&t=5hIis_1XvXWNjdQh0ubVVgThis is what Im talking about when I said that Binance is charging fee on projects to be listed. The only exemption to this was if the project is in demand like what @fivestar mentioned and explained on the above post. Theres a lot of project that aiming to meet Binance standards to list for free and most of them already took too many years and counting to meet those requirements since they cant afford to pay.
@O48O This is what Im saying since Betfury pointed out before that Binance listing is totally free while in reality theres a different type of listing that can be paid. The 200K BNB is not a direct listing fee but it serves same as that since the team needs to hold huge amount of BNB that they cant access while there coin is listed.