Maker vs taker fees

An order book is a list of prices people are willing to buy and sell at. When you place a limit order that does not fill immediately, it joins that list and waits. You have added liquidity to the book. That is a maker order. When you place an order that fills against what is already there, you have removed liquidity. That is a taker order.

A market order is always a taker order. A limit order is usually a maker order, but not always: a limit buy priced above the current best ask will fill immediately against existing sell orders, which makes it a taker fill despite being a limit order.

Exchanges charge less for maker orders, sometimes nothing, occasionally paying you, because a deep order book is what makes an exchange usable. Every resting order is inventory that other traders can execute against, and an exchange with a thin book loses those traders to one with a thick book.

On spot markets, most large exchanges charge the same rate for both sides, 0.10% flat is the industry norm — so the distinction often does not matter. On futures it matters a great deal. A typical schedule is 0.02% maker against 0.05% or 0.06% taker: the taker rate is two to three times the maker rate.

At the extreme, several exchanges charge nothing at all for maker orders on futures. Against a competitor's 0.05% taker fee, that is a different order of magnitude. No referral code anywhere can close a gap between something and free.

Which means the honest answer to 'which exchange is cheapest' is: it depends on how you trade. A trader who works limit orders and a trader who hits market orders are shopping for different things, and a comparison table that reports one blended number for both is hiding the answer.

The obvious conclusion, just place limit orders, comes with a real cost. A resting limit order might not fill. If the price moves away from you, you either chase it, at which point you pay the taker fee anyway plus a worse entry, or you miss the trade entirely.

That missed opportunity is an expense, and on a fast move it is far larger than the fee difference. Saving three basis points on an entry you never got is not a saving.

The reasonable position is that order type should follow strategy, not fee schedule. If you are accumulating a position over hours or days, limit orders cost you almost nothing in missed fills and save real money. If you are reacting to a move, pay the taker fee and get filled. Set the maker share in the calculator on this site to whatever your actual mix is, rather than the mix you would like to have.

Some venues pay makers rather than charging them. The fee is negative. Korbit's maker incentive in the Korean market works this way, and several derivatives exchanges have offered negative maker tiers to high-volume market makers.

This is a rebate for providing a service: your resting order is what other traders execute against, and the exchange values that enough to pay for it. It is worth understanding, but it is rarely worth restructuring your trading around. The rebate is small relative to the risk of holding a resting order in a moving market.