Maker / Taker

Makers are a type of actor and market participants that provide liquidity to a market, while takers are participants that remove liquidity. In the context of an order book model, makers are responsible for creating liquidity in a market, thus preventing extreme price swings resulting from efforts by exchanges to match buy market orders and sell market orders. Takers, in turn, take advantage of the liquidity provided by makers by immediately buying or selling into liquidity provided by makers. In other words, takers ‘take’ orders which have already been ‘made’ by makers. Takers typically pay higher fees than makers.