How Taker Fees Work

Crypto exchanges using an order book match buyers and sellers by price and available size. A taker arrives and accepts liquidity that is already posted by someone else.

That action reduces depth on one side of the book, which is why exchanges describe taker trades as removing liquidity. The fee is the cost of that immediacy.

Order book mechanics explain the pricing model.

Suppose bids and asks are already listed. If you send a market buy, the exchange matches it with the best ask and any remaining asks needed to complete the order. The faster the execution, the more likely it is treated as a taker trade.

In calm markets, the spread may be narrow and the extra cost small. In volatile markets, taker fees can combine with slippage, creating a much higher all in execution cost than traders first expect.