Maker vs taker fees on crypto futures, and what they cost you in a year

Every futures trade pays a fee to open and another to close. Whether you pay the higher taker fee or the lower maker fee depends on how you place your orders, and over a year of active trading the difference adds up to real money.

Maker and taker

• A taker order fills straight away against orders already on the book. Market orders are taker orders, and so are limit orders priced to fill immediately.
• A maker order sits on the order book and waits for someone else to trade against it. A limit order below the price for a buy, or above it for a sell, is usually a maker order.

Exchanges charge makers less because they add liquidity. On many large exchanges, regular accounts pay somewhere around 0.02% maker and 0.05–0.06% taker, with discounts for higher volume. Check your exchange's fee page for your actual rates.

How the fee is calculated

Fee = position value × fee rate

Like funding, the fee is charged on the full position value, not your margin. A $10,000 position costs the same in fees at 2× or 50× leverage.

What a round trip costs

For a $10,000 position, opened and closed:

Entry / exit	Fee per trade	100 trades a month
Taker / taker	$11.00	$1,100
Maker / taker	$7.50	$750
Maker / maker	$4.00	$400

Getting your entries filled as maker instead of taker saves $3.50 a trade here, or $350 a month at 100 trades.

Why fees matter more with tight stops

Fees are a fixed share of the position, while your risk depends on the stop distance. The tighter the stop, the bigger the fee compared with what you're risking.

On a $10,000 position with taker fees both ways ($11):

• With a 1% stop, your risk is $100 and fees are 0.11R.
• With a 0.3% stop, your risk is $30 and fees are 0.37R.

At 0.37R per trade, fees alone can wipe out the edge of a decent strategy. That's why scalping with tight stops and market orders is so hard to make pay. See what is an R-multiple for more on measuring in R.

Ways to pay less

• Use limit orders for entries where you can wait. Many exchanges have a "post-only" option that cancels the order rather than letting it fill as taker.
• Accept taker fees on exits that must happen. Your stop loss should fill when it's hit; paying taker there is fine. Missing the exit costs more than the fee.
• Widen your stop and size down rather than using a very tight stop. The same risk on a smaller position means smaller fees.
• Trade less. Fewer, better trades often beat many marginal ones once costs are counted.
• Check your fee tier and any discounts, such as paying fees in the exchange's own token.

Include fees when you plan

Fees belong in your position size, not just in your P&L afterwards. If you size a trade to lose exactly 1% before fees, you'll lose more than 1% on every stop-out. The position size calculator and the TradeTurtle planner include your fee rate in the size, so a stop-out costs what you planned. The risk-reward calculator shows how fees shrink your real ratio.