Market, Limit, Post-Only: What Each Order Type Costs You
Every order you send on a perp venue makes one of two fee choices for you: pay the taker rate or the maker rate. Most traders think about entries and exits. Fewer track how the order type compounds into a cost line across a month of activity. This piece lays out the schedule, the mechanics of each order type, and where a rebate fits.
The fee schedule
Rates below are in basis points of notional, base tier.
| Exchange | Taker | Maker | Taker minus maker |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bybit | 5.5bp | 2.0bp | 3.5bp |
| Binance | 5.0bp | 2.0bp | 3.0bp |
| OKX | 5.0bp | 2.0bp | 3.0bp |
| Bitget | 6.0bp | 2.0bp | 4.0bp |
| Gate.io | 5.0bp | 2.0bp | 3.0bp |
Maker is the same everywhere, so the only thing that varies by venue is the penalty for taking liquidity. It is smallest on Binance, OKX and Gate.io, and largest on Bitget.
Market orders: you pay for immediacy
A market order takes resting liquidity, so it always pays the taker rate. The fee is the visible part of the cost. The invisible part is slippage: you cross the spread and, on size, walk the book. The fee is known in advance, but slippage is not.
Use market orders when being filled matters more than the price. That means stopping out of a position, exiting into a fast move, or entering on a breakout you will not chase twice. Treat the taker rate as the price of certainty.
Limit orders: you might pay maker, but not always
A limit order sets a price ceiling or floor. Whether you pay maker or taker depends on what happens when it reaches the book.
- It rests and gets filled: you pay the maker rate.
- It is marketable on arrival: a buy limit at or above the best ask matches immediately, and you pay the taker rate.
This is the common leak. A trader who "always uses limit orders" but places them aggressively to get filled is paying taker on much of that flow. The order type on the ticket does not determine the fee. The fill type does.
The tradeoff with resting orders is execution risk. If price moves away from you, you either chase it, which can mean cancelling and paying taker anyway, or you miss the trade.
Post-only: maker or nothing
Post-only guarantees you never pay the taker rate. If the order would match on arrival, the exchange rejects or cancels it instead of filling it. Behavior on a would-cross varies by venue and settings, so check the exact handling before you automate anything.
Post-only suits:
- Scaling into a position at levels you have already chosen
- Take-profit orders sitting in the book
- Market-making or passive strategies where the edge is thinner than the taker fee
- Anything where a stray taker fill would turn a good trade into a marginal one
It does not suit urgent exits. A rejected post-only order during a fast move is a missed exit.
How to choose
A rule of thumb that holds up in practice:
- Does the trade need to happen now? Use a market order and accept the taker rate and slippage.
- Do you have a price and can you wait? Use post-only, so a mistake in placement costs you a rejection, not a taker fee.
- Want a limit but not sure it will rest? Know that a marketable limit is a taker order with a price cap.
Across a month, the gap between mostly-taker and mostly-maker flow is the 3.0 to 4.0bp spread above, applied to every unit of notional you move. For active traders that is often the largest controllable cost after the spread itself.
Where a rebate fits
Order type reduces what you pay. A rebate returns part of what you still pay, on both maker and taker fills.
If you register through our link, you get a share of the fees you pay returned to you:
| Exchange | Share of your fees returned |
|---|---|
| Bybit | 22.5% |
| Binance | 20% |
| OKX | 20% |
| Bitget | 20% |
| Gate.io | 20% |
How this works and how we are paid. The exchange pays us a referral commission, and we send you 50% of it. Because the commission is only part of the fee you pay, in fee terms your return is the per-exchange figure in the table. It is not 50% of your fees. The FAQ on the site has the details. We are paid by the exchange, and we earn more when you trade more. That is a conflict of interest worth knowing about, and it is why we show the schedule above rather than ask you to take our word for it.
Volume tiers. Your share of the commission rises automatically with your 30-day volume:
- Standard: 50% of the commission
- From $1M: 60%
- From $10M: 70%
- From $50M: 80%
So the share can reach up to 80% of the commission. Traders above $200,000,000 per 30 days are handled individually by email.
Cost and settlement. You pay us nothing: no membership fee and no profit share. Rebates settle monthly and are held for 7 days after month end. The minimum withdrawal is 10 USDT.
What we need from you. Only your public exchange UID. We never ask for API keys, passwords or seed phrases. If anyone claiming to be us does, walk away.
The takeaway
Fee tiers are a number you read once. Order type is a decision you make every trade. Get the fill type right first, with post-only wherever you can wait. Then use a rebate to recover part of the fees you still pay.
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