maker taker fees
Maker Taker Fees are the discount or charge an exchange applies depending on whether your order adds liquidity to the market or removes it.
In plain English
Why did your trading app charge you a slightly different fee on two trades that looked exactly the same? That question is exactly what maker taker fees answer, and once you see it, you will never look at your brokerage statement the same way again.
Every stock exchange runs on an order book, a list of people willing to buy at certain prices and people willing to sell at certain prices. When you place an order that sits on that list waiting for someone else to match it, you are called a maker, because you are making liquidity available for others to trade against. When you place an order that matches instantly with something already sitting there, you are called a taker, because you are taking that liquidity away.
Exchanges want a healthy order book with plenty of standing orders, so they often reward makers with a small rebate or a lower fee, and charge takers a slightly higher fee for the convenience of an instant match. It sounds small, but for active traders and market makers doing thousands of trades, these tiny differences add up to real money.
Say a Nigerian investor uses a brokerage app linked to the Nigerian Exchange or an international platform to trade shares in a company like Facebook Stock. If she places a limit order that waits patiently in the book, she might pay a lower fee than her cousin in London who places a market order that grabs the best available price immediately on his own trading app.
For everyday retail investors buying a few shares now and then, maker taker fees rarely change your life. But if you are trading often, or building a habit of frequent buying and selling, understanding this pricing structure helps you choose order types that keep more money in your pocket rather than in the exchange's fee bucket.
A trader places a limit order to buy shares worth ₦500,000 and waits in the order book, earning a rebate of ₦50. Her friend places a market order for the same amount and pays a taker fee of ₦150. Same trade size, different roles, different cost.
Questions people ask
Does every stock exchange use maker taker fees?
No. Some exchanges use this model heavily, especially electronic ones handling high volumes of trades, while others, including parts of the Nigerian Exchange, use simpler flat fee structures. It depends on how the exchange is built and how much it wants to encourage standing liquidity.
How do I know if I am a maker or a taker?
It comes down to your order type. A limit order that sits waiting to be matched usually makes you a maker, while a market order that matches immediately with an existing order usually makes you a taker. Your brokerage statement or trade confirmation will often show which fee applied.
Should a casual investor worry about maker taker fees?
Not much. If you buy shares occasionally and hold them for months or years, this fee difference is tiny compared to things like currency conversion costs or annual account charges. It matters far more to frequent traders and professional market makers.
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