What Are Maker and Taker Fees?

Maker and taker are two of the most common fees in crypto. They are the cost of buying in spot or opening and closing futures positions. The kind of fee you are charged for these trades depends on the kind of order you use for your transaction.

As we discussed in our recent article on order types, order books are a kind of database with all buy and sell orders listed. Exchanges want to keep these books as full as possible so that large orders can easily be filled. To encourage traders to help build the order book, they charge higher fees to orders that take away liquidity from the market in comparison to the orders that add liquidity to it.

Specifically, taker fees are charged to orders that decrease the liquidity in the order book, whereas the lower maker fees are charged to those that help add to it. For example, a market order is filled at the best available price in the order book. As these orders take away liquidity, they are charged the higher (taker) fee.

Limit orders are filled at a lower maker fee, which – depending on the order size – might even be a negative fee, resulting in money paid to the trader.