What Is a Maker Fee on a Cryptocurrency Exchange?
Two people can place trades of the same size on the same exchange and pay noticeably different fees, simply because of how their orders were structured.
The short answer
A maker fee is what an exchange charges when an order adds liquidity to its order book rather than matching an existing order right away. Because that kind of order helps other traders find a counterparty, exchanges typically charge makers less than takers, who remove liquidity by matching an order that’s already sitting there.
How an order book actually works
An exchange’s order book is a running list of buy and sell orders at different prices, waiting to be matched. When someone places a limit order at a price that doesn’t immediately match anything on the book, it sits there as an open offer — adding to the pool of available liquidity. That’s a “maker” order. When someone places an order that matches an existing offer on the book right away, they’re a “taker,” pulling liquidity out of that pool instantly.
Why makers get charged less
- Liquidity has value. An order book with more open orders at various prices tends to make it easier for other traders to execute trades close to the price they want, so exchanges have an incentive to reward the people who supply that liquidity.
- Immediacy has a cost. A taker order gets filled instantly because it matches something already there, which is convenient but doesn’t add anything new to the book.
- Fee tiers often scale with volume. Many exchanges lower both maker and taker fees as a trader’s monthly volume increases, though the maker rate usually stays lower than the taker rate at any given tier.
How this plays out in practice
Someone placing a limit order below the current market price to buy, or above it to sell, is typically acting as a maker, since the order waits until the market reaches that price. Someone placing a market order, which fills immediately at whatever price is available, is almost always a taker. The distinction isn’t about the size of the trade or the asset being traded — it’s purely about whether the order added to the book or matched something already on it.
Why the difference can add up
For a trader who executes frequently, the gap between maker and taker fees compounds across many transactions. This is one of the reasons order type matters beyond just price — it can affect the total cost of trading over time, separate from any slippage that might occur when an order doesn’t fill at the expected price.
What this doesn’t change
A lower maker fee doesn’t reduce the underlying risks of holding or trading crypto. Prices remain volatile, transactions on the blockchain are generally irreversible once confirmed, and crypto assets held on an exchange are not covered by FDIC or SIPC-style protections the way a bank deposit or brokerage account might be. Fee structure is a mechanical detail of how a trade is executed, not a signal about how safe or predictable an asset is.
The takeaway
Maker and taker fees exist because exchanges want to encourage the kind of orders that keep their markets liquid and easy to trade in. Understanding which type of order you’re placing, and why it costs what it costs, is a small but useful piece of knowing how a trading platform actually operates behind the interface.