What Do Maker and Taker Mean?

2018-07-19 00:45
If you’ve checked our fee schedule, you will see that different fees are charged depending on whether you’re a maker or a taker. Above VIP 0, makers incur smaller fees than takers. Both makers and takers play essential roles in an exchange’s order book.
Put simply:
  • Makers provide liquidity to an exchange and create a market for a token.
  • Takers remove liquidity by fulfilling open orders on the exchange.
Exchanges typically incentivize makers to provide liquidity to the exchange with lower fees for their orders. Let’s dive deeper into both roles.


When you place an order that trades immediately before going on the order book, you are a taker. This is regardless of whether you partially or fully fulfill an order.
Trades from market orders are always takers, as market orders never go on the order book. These trades are "taking" volume off of the order book, and therefore are taker trades.
Limit immediate or cancel (IOC) and limit fill or kill (FOK) orders (accessible via the API) are also always takers.


When you place an order that goes on the order book partially or fully (such as a limit order placed via the trading screen on binance.com), any subsequent trades coming from that order will be maker trades.
These orders add volume to the order book, helping to make the market, and are therefore termed maker for any subsequent trades.
Note: It is possible for a limit good ’til canceled (GTC) order (accessible via the API) to have traded as both a taker and maker.
For more details, please refer to Market Makers and Market Takers Explained.