Fee Rebates and Maker-Taker Pricing

Most venues charge two different fees depending on whether your order adds liquidity to the book or removes it.

The definitions

Maker. An order that rests on the book, waiting to be filled. A limit order placed away from the current price. It adds depth.

Taker. An order that executes immediately against existing orders. A market order, or a limit order priced to fill instantly. It removes depth.

Venues charge takers more, because depth is what they need and takers consume it.

The size of the difference

Typically the taker fee is two to three times the maker fee. On some venues, high-volume makers pay nothing or receive a rebate.

For a retail user the difference is usually a fraction of a percent, which sounds trivial and compounds across regular purchases.

How to be a maker

Place a limit order slightly away from the current price rather than a market order.

The trade is that it may not fill immediately, or at all if the price moves away. For a scheduled monthly purchase where timing is irrelevant by design, that is not a cost.

For anyone who needs to transact now, taker fees are the price of immediacy.

The interaction with spread

Using a limit order does two things at once: it avoids the taker fee and it avoids paying the spread, because you set the price rather than accepting the best available.

That compounds. On the platforms we have measured, moving from a market order on a simplified interface to a limit order on the order book has reduced total execution cost by a large multiple.

The practical routine for a monthly buyer

Place a limit order at or slightly below the current mid price on your purchase date. Leave it. Check the following day.

If it filled, you paid the maker fee and no spread. If it did not, move it to the current price and accept the taker fee that month.

Over a year, most orders fill.

Where to check the schedule

Every venue publishes a fee table with maker and taker rates, frequently tiered by volume. It is worth reading once, because the tiers and the rates vary substantially between platforms.

Venues that publish it without requiring an account, such as platforms that do not round the fee up, allow the comparison before committing.

The caveat

None of this matters if the venue’s withdrawal fees are high, because for a buy-and-withdraw user the withdrawal line usually dominates.

Compare the total cost of your actual pattern: deposit method, execution, and withdrawal frequency. The fee tier that looks best in isolation frequently is not once withdrawals are included.