Makers vs takers on Polymarket

By the Cent Signals editorial desk. Reviewed June 17, 2026.

Every trade on Polymarket has two sides, but it also has two roles. One participant posts an order and waits; the other accepts an order that is already there. Those roles are called maker and taker, and they are not cosmetic: research on a large sample of Polymarket wallets found that the share of a wallet's volume done as a maker was the strongest single behavioral predictor of whether that wallet finished ahead. This guide describes the mechanics of the two roles, what the study reported, and why the public trade feed cannot yet show this distinction. As with everything on this site, it is description, not direction.

Two ways to trade

Polymarket matches orders through a central limit order book, with the resulting trades settled on-chain. A maker posts a limit order at a specific price, and that order rests in the book until someone matches it. While it waits, it adds liquidity: it is a standing offer that other participants can trade against.

A taker does the opposite. A taker sends a market order that executes right away against the orders already resting in the book, matching at the best available price. Because it consumes a standing offer rather than posting a new one, a market order removes liquidity. The same person can act as a maker on one order and a taker on the next; the labels describe the order, not the trader.

Who earns the spread and who pays it

The bid-ask spread is the gap between the best resting price to buy and the best resting price to sell. A maker's order sits at one edge of that gap. When a market order arrives and matches it, the maker effectively collects the spread as compensation for having supplied the standing liquidity. A taker who crosses the book to get an immediate fill pays that same spread as a cost on entry.

During most of the period the study covered, Polymarket charged no explicit trading fee. That makes the spread the main transaction cost in the records, and it has a direction: it flowed from takers, who paid for immediacy, to makers, who provided the liquidity. The cost did not vanish because there was no fee line; it was embedded in the price each side accepted.

What the research found

Akey, Gregoire, Harvie, and Martineau studied this directly in "Who Wins and Who Loses in Prediction Markets? Evidence from Polymarket" (2026). Across about 67 billion dollars of volume, a wallet's maker volume share was the strongest single predictor of positive performance among the behaviors they measured. A one-standard-deviation increase in maker share was associated with a 9.0 percentage point higher probability of finishing profitable, the largest behavioral effect they estimated.

The split across the distribution was stark. The top 0.1% of earners supplied 47.3% of their volume as makers, against 17.1% for the bottom 95%. Put plainly in the study's terms, winning traders were net earners of the spread while losing traders paid it. These are associations across a large set of wallets over a specific window, describing what the data contained rather than what any single account will do next.

Why the asymmetry exists

The two roles trade different things. A maker chooses a price and waits, giving up certainty about whether and when the order fills in return for a better price if it does. A taker accepts whatever price is currently resting in the book in return for an instant fill. That convenience, the ability to be in or out of a position right now, is what the spread charges for.

The effect is small on any one order and large in aggregate. Paying the spread once is a minor cost; paying it on every entry, repeatedly, across many trades, compounds into a meaningful drag. Collecting it works the same way in reverse. Over a long sequence of orders, the side of the book a wallet tends to occupy adds up.

Seeing it in public data

The catch is that this distinction is hard to observe from the outside. Polymarket's public trade feed shows each trade's price and side, buyer or seller, but it does not directly label whether a given fill was the maker or the taker of that trade. Recovering that requires on-chain order-fill data showing which order rested and which order crossed. For that reason, Cent Signals cannot yet measure a wallet's maker share, and this guide stays descriptive about the finding rather than scoring any account against it.

The mechanics here connect to two related pieces. For how the spread and fee structure shape returns more broadly, see how spreads and fees affect profit. For where this maker-share result sits among the other patterns the research identified, see who actually wins on Polymarket.

Frequently asked questions

What is a maker on Polymarket?

A maker is a participant whose order rests in the central limit order book as a limit order at a chosen price. Because the order waits in the book rather than executing immediately, it adds liquidity: it is available for someone else to match against. A maker is matched only when another participant's order reaches the maker's price.

What is a taker on Polymarket?

A taker is a participant who sends a market order that executes against orders already resting in the book. Because the order matches existing liquidity rather than waiting, it removes liquidity and fills immediately at the best available resting price. The taker accepts the price that is there now in exchange for an instant fill.

Do makers make more money than takers?

Research on Polymarket data found that a wallet's maker volume share was the single strongest predictor of positive performance among the behaviors studied, and that winning traders were net earners of the spread while losing traders paid it. That is a statistical association across many wallets, not a verdict on any individual account, and the data reflect a specific study period. It describes what the records showed, not a forecast.

Does Polymarket charge a fee for makers?

During most of the period covered by the study described here, Polymarket charged no explicit trading fee on either side, so the bid-ask spread was the main transaction cost. Under those conditions the spread flowed from takers, who crossed the book, to makers, who supplied the resting orders. Fee schedules can change over time, so any current cost structure should be checked against the platform directly.