Maker and taker fees: why your trade costs what it costs

A maker fee applies when your order rests in the order book and waits; a taker fee applies when your order matches immediately against orders already there. Exchanges charge takers more because makers provide the liquidity the venue needs to function. The practical consequence is that two people trading the same size at the same moment can pay very different amounts, decided entirely by how their order was placed.

Why do exchanges price the two sides differently?

An order book only works if someone posts prices. Those resting orders are what allow anyone else to trade instantly, and they carry real risk: a maker who leaves a bid in the book can be filled precisely when the market is moving against them. Charging makers less — sometimes paying them a rebate at high volume — is how venues buy that liquidity.

Takers get the opposite deal. They receive immediacy, which is valuable, and pay for it. None of this is arbitrary: it is the same structure used across mature electronic markets.

How do I know which one I am?

• Market order: always a taker. It exists to execute now.
• Limit order that crosses the spread: taker. If your buy limit is at or above the best ask, it matches immediately.
• Limit order that rests: maker. It sits in the book until someone trades against it.
• Post-only order: maker or cancelled. The exchange rejects it rather than let it take.
• Stop order once triggered: whatever the resulting order type is — usually a taker.

How do volume tiers work?

Nearly every venue publishes a ladder: as your rolling 30-day volume increases, both fee rates fall. Some tiers also require holding the exchange's own token, or subscribing to a premium plan. The headline rate advertised in comparisons is normally the entry tier, which is the rate almost nobody with real volume pays.

The implication for choosing a venue is that you should price your own behaviour, not the marketing. Estimate your monthly volume, find the tier you would sit in, and compare that number across venues — our best low-fee exchanges ranking is a starting point, but your own tier is what decides the answer.

Where does the spread fit in?

The bid-ask spread is the gap between the best buy and best sell price. Crossing it is a cost paid on every taker trade, and it does not appear on any fee schedule. On a deep, competitive pair it can be a fraction of a basis point; on a thin one it can dwarf the trading fee entirely.

This is why a fee comparison alone is misleading. The complete cost of a trade is fee plus spread plus slippage, and the last two are properties of the book rather than the price list. Our guide to crypto liquidity covers how to judge them before you trade.

How do you actually pay less?

• Default to limit orders and let them rest. Immediacy is the thing you are paying for.
• Use post-only when the maker rate matters more than certainty of execution.
• Consolidate volume at one venue if tiers are meaningful to you, rather than spreading it thin.
• Compare total cost on the pairs you actually trade, at the size you actually trade.
• Watch withdrawal fees separately — they are a flat cost per movement and can exceed trading fees for smaller accounts.
• Read the fee page for the specific product; spot, margin and derivatives usually have separate schedules.

Which order type you reach for is the lever behind all of this, so it is worth being deliberate about it — our guide to market, limit and stop orders covers the trade-offs in detail.

What about deposit and withdrawal fees?

Trading fees get the attention because they are quoted as a percentage and feel comparable. For a smaller account the flat costs often matter more: a withdrawal fee that is a fixed amount per transfer is trivial on a large balance and punitive on a small one, and it varies by network for the identical asset.

• Compare withdrawal fees on the specific network you will use, not the cheapest one the venue offers.
• Check whether fiat deposits are free by bank transfer and priced by card — they almost always are.
• Look for a minimum withdrawal amount, which can strand small balances entirely.
• Watch for inactivity or account-maintenance fees, which are rare but not extinct.
• Count conversion margins on any automatic currency conversion the platform performs.

A useful exercise before committing to a venue is to price one complete cycle at your real size: deposit, buy, withdraw to self-custody. That single number is more informative than any published fee table, because it includes the costs the table leaves out.