What Is Maker and Taker Fees? Definition & Example

Exchanges charge different fees depending on whether your order adds liquidity to the book or takes it away. A maker order rests in the order book waiting to be filled, adding depth. A taker order executes immediately against existing orders, removing it. Makers are charged less, and on some venues are paid a rebate.

The logic is that a market with no resting orders is unusable, so exchanges subsidise the traders who populate the book and recover the cost from those who consume it. Hyperliquid charges 0.035% for takers and 0.01% for makers at base tier, with both improving as volume grows.

The reason this deserves attention is that fees are charged on notional, not on your margin. Trade a $10,000 position twice a day for a year at taker rates and you have turned over $7.3 million, paying roughly $5,110. On a $10,000 account that is a 51% annual drag your strategy must clear before producing a single dollar of profit. Filling as maker instead can cut that by two thirds.

This arithmetic quietly ends most high-frequency retail strategies. Not bad analysis, not bad trades — just cost, compounding invisibly, on every single round trip.

The trade-off is that maker orders do not always fill, and chasing an unfilled entry usually costs more than the fee saved. The practical approach for most traders is maker entries where patience is affordable and taker exits where it is not, since getting out of a losing position promptly is worth more than 0.025%. See the break-even calculator for how far fees push your true starting line.