Glossary / Buying & exchanges
Maker and taker fees
Also known as Maker fee, Taker fee.
- Definition
- Maker and taker fees are the two prices an exchange charges for a trade: less if your order waits in the book, more if it takes an existing order out.
An exchange needs a full order book to function, so it charges the person supplying liquidity less than the person consuming it. Kraken Pro's published rates start at 0.25 percent maker and 0.40 percent taker below 10,000 dollars of 30 day volume; Binance starts both sides at 0.1 percent. The model predates bitcoin by more than a decade, arriving on US equity venues in 1997.
How it works
Every trade has two sides, and the exchange prices them differently on purpose.
When you place an order that cannot fill immediately, it joins the book and sits there as a visible offer. You have made liquidity, and you are charged the maker rate. When you place an order that matches something already resting, you have taken liquidity off the book, and you are charged the taker rate. A market order is always a taker order. A limit order is a maker order only if it rests, which means a limit buy priced above the best ask fills instantly and pays the taker rate anyway.
The asymmetry exists because a book with nothing in it is worthless. Island ECN introduced maker-taker pricing on US stocks in 1997 to bribe order flow away from the incumbent exchanges, rebating most of the access fee it charged takers back to the firms posting quotes. The SEC's Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee later examined the model in detail, including the conflicts it creates for brokers routing customer orders. Crypto exchanges adopted the same structure wholesale, minus the routing regulation.
Rates fall as your 30 day volume rises, and the tiers are steep at the top and flat at the bottom. Practically every individual buying bitcoin lives permanently in the base tier, so the headline rate is the rate. Some venues also discount fees for holding or paying in their own token: Binance takes 25 percent off when fees are settled in BNB, which is a discount with a price risk attached.
Why this matters when you buy bitcoin
Maker and taker rates are the cheapest published prices an exchange offers, and most beginners never reach the screen that uses them.
The same company frequently runs two products under one login. Kraken's simple Buy widget and Kraken Pro share your account and your balance, but the widget prices in a spread while Pro charges the schedule above. Coinbase divides the same way between simple trades and Advanced Trade. Bitstamp, CEX.IO and Luno each run order books with maker-taker pricing alongside instant buy screens that cost more. Moving from the default door to the professional one is usually a single tab, and it is the largest cost saving available to a small buyer.
The second thing worth knowing is that the taker rate is not a penalty to be avoided at all costs. Sitting as a maker means your order may not fill, and in a rising market an unfilled order can cost far more than the 0.15 percentage point difference between Kraken's two rates. Patience is worth money only when you genuinely do not mind waiting.
Third, compare the whole cost rather than the headline. Binance's 0.1 percent looks half of Kraken's 0.25 percent maker rate, and it is, but funding rails, withdrawal charges and local availability differ enough that the cheapest trading fee is not automatically the cheapest purchase. Our exchange reviews list the funding costs alongside the trading rates for exactly this reason.
The same 2,000 dollar buy, three ways
The same 2,000 dollar purchase costs three different amounts depending on which side of the maker and taker split it lands on.
Route one is a market order on Kraken Pro. You take liquidity, pay the 0.40 percent taker rate, and the fee is 8 dollars. Route two is a limit order on Kraken Pro placed just below the best ask, which rests until a seller crosses to you. You pay the 0.25 percent maker rate, the fee is 5 dollars, and the risk is that the order sits unfilled while the price runs away. Route three is a spot market order on Binance at 0.1 percent, costing 2 dollars, or 1.50 dollars if you settle the fee in BNB and accept holding that token.
Now add the route nobody counts. The same 2,000 dollars through a simple buy widget pays a spread instead of a published percentage, and the platform does not print it as a number anywhere on the confirmation screen. That is the actual decision in front of most buyers: not 0.25 against 0.40, but a disclosed schedule against an undisclosed one.
Maker and taker fees vs an instant buy
Maker and taker rates are a published schedule you can check before you trade; an instant buy is a single quoted price with the cost folded inside it. The difference is transparency more than magnitude. A taker fee tells you exactly what you paid and lets you compare venues line by line, while an instant buy tells you only the total. If you can find the order book inside an app you already use, you have found the cheaper product, and it is usually one tab away from the button the app wants you to press.