Taker and Maker: Choosing Orders as the Key to Profitability

When opening a position on a cryptocurrency exchange, you face an important choice: use a taker or a maker? These two order placement approaches differ significantly in execution speed, fee structure, and overall profitability. Understanding the differences between a taker and a maker is key to optimizing the cost of each trade.

Taker: When urgency costs money

A taker order is placed by a trader who wants to execute their position immediately at the current market price. Instead of waiting for a suitable moment in the order book, the taker “takes” existing liquidity—matching with maker orders that are ready to buy or sell right now.

This approach is ideal for those who cannot wait:

• Traders closing losing positions in a hurry
• Arbitrageurs catching price discrepancies in real time
• Active speculators who don’t want to miss the moment

However, convenience comes at a price. Taker orders are charged higher fees because the trader is demanding immediate execution. On most exchanges, the taker fee is 0.055% of the trade volume—almost three times higher than the maker fee.

Maker: Adding liquidity as a reward for patience

A maker works differently. Instead of taking existing liquidity, the maker adds a new order to the order book, waiting for it to be matched with another participant’s order. This means the maker provides market liquidity—creating opportunities for others to execute trades.

In return for helping maintain liquidity, the exchange offers the maker a significantly reduced fee. The typical maker fee is only 0.02%, which is noticeably lower than the taker fee. Makers usually:

• Place limit orders at specific prices
• Are willing to wait hours or even days for their order to fill
• Use scalable strategies with low fees

The difference between maker and taker also reflects in the types of orders used. Makers can only place limit orders, while takers can use both limit and market orders.

In practice: the real impact of maker and taker fees

Let’s consider a concrete example on a BTCUSDT contract with a volume of 2 BTC:

Trader A (uses maker):

• Opening position: 2 × 60,000 × 0.02% = 24 USDT
• Closing position: 2 × 61,000 × 0.02% = 24.4 USDT
• P&L before fees: 2,000 USDT
• Final profit: 2,000 − 24 − 24.4 = 1,951.6 USDT

Trader B (uses taker):

• Opening position: 2 × 60,000 × 0.055% = 66 USDT
• Closing position: 2 × 61,000 × 0.055% = 67.1 USDT
• P&L before fees: 2,000 USDT
• Final profit: 2,000 − 66 − 67.1 = 1,866.9 USDT

The profit difference is 84.7 USDT—about 4.5% of the initial P&L. When scaled across hundreds of trades, this difference can amount to hundreds or thousands of dollars lost to excessive fees.

How to properly place maker orders

If you decide to use makers to reduce fees, follow this approach:

1. Choose a limit order—this is the only order type that works as a maker.

2. Enable Post-Only mode—this setting ensures your order remains in the order book and does not execute immediately, preventing it from being classified as a taker.

3. Set your price strategically:

   • For buying (long): set a price below the best bid
   • For selling (short): set a price above the best ask

Important: if your limit order executes immediately, the system will classify it as a taker order and cancel it due to the active Post-Only mode.

Practical advice: choosing between taker and maker

Neither maker nor taker is a universal solution. Taker trading makes sense when:

• Time is critical (e.g., quickly closing a losing position)
• You’re capturing price gaps
• Predictability of execution outweighs the savings in fees

Maker trading is preferable when:

• You have time to wait
• You trade frequently and can accept a fee skew in your favor
• You’re building a long-term, scalable strategy

Successful traders often combine both approaches, using makers for planned entries and exits, and takers only in critical situations. Understanding the difference turns fees from an unavoidable expense into a manageable variable in your trading system.