Maker and taker (fees and aggressor side)
A maker adds liquidity by placing an order that rests in the book; a taker removes liquidity with an order that executes immediately against resting orders. Exchanges charge makers and takers different fees, and the taker side of each trade is the aggressor that order flow tools count as buying or selling pressure.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
Definitions
Every trade has two sides. The maker's order was already in the book, a limit order waiting at a price. The taker's order arrived and matched it: a market order, or a limit order priced to cross the spread. The same trader can be maker on one trade and taker on the next; the role belongs to the order, not the person.
Order flow analysis uses the taker as the aggressor. A trade where the taker bought is counted as buying aggression at the ask; one where the taker sold, as selling aggression at the bid. Delta, cumulative delta and the bid × ask split of a footprint are built on that classification.
Why the fees differ
Exchanges want resting liquidity, so taker fees are usually higher than maker fees, and some venues offer rebates to makers in certain programs or tiers. Fee schedules are tiered by volume and change over time, so the exchange's current schedule is the only reliable reference. The difference matters most to strategies with small targets: a scalp that takes liquidity on entry and exit pays the taker fee twice, which can equal a large share of a few ticks of profit.
- Market orders are always takers.
- A limit order that crosses the spread at submission executes as a taker for the part that fills immediately.
- A post-only order is canceled rather than executed as a taker, guaranteeing maker status when it fills.
How feeds report the side
Crypto exchanges publish the taker side with each trade, so no inference from the bid and ask is needed. On Binance, the aggregated trade record carries a flag saying whether the buyer was the maker; when it is true, the taker sold. Bybit's public trade stream gives the taker side directly.
In Senzoukria
The desktop's crypto connectors use those fields: a Binance aggregated trade whose buyer is the maker is recorded as a sell, and Bybit's side field is taken as the aggressor side. That classification feeds the crypto footprint's bid × ask cells, delta and cumulative delta. Fees are not part of crypto charts, which are analysis only with no order routing; for futures backtests, the automatic backtest deducts a round-trip fee per contract and slippage in ticks.
Related
In the same section
- Index-to-futures mapping
- Maintenance margin
- Margin
- Low volume node
- Margin call
- Losing streak
- Mark price
- Lookahead bias
Sources
This page in other languages
Frequently asked questions
- Is a limit order always a maker order?
- No. A limit order priced through the opposite side of the book executes immediately, in whole or part, as a taker. Only the part that rests in the book and is later filled by someone else is a maker fill.
- Why does order flow count only the taker side?
- Because the taker decided to trade at the available price, while the maker's order was waiting. Counting who crossed the spread measures urgency; counting both sides would always net to zero.