How to set prices for limit orders on Kraken Pro

This article is for clients using the Kraken Pro site (pro.kraken.com)

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What does limit price mean?

The limit price is the price at which you want a limit order to be fulfilled or better.

A limit order buy can only be executed at the limit price or lower.
A limit order sell can only be executed at the limit price or higher.

The price you set for limit orders depends on how quickly you want the order to fill and on your opinion about where price will be in the future.

If you are willing to wait and think that price will move in your favor in the future, then just set the limit buy or sell price to where you think price will move in the future.

If you want the limit order to fill as quickly as possible, look at the current order book to determine your limit price. You can find the order book under the "Order book" widget.

Example: Limit Buy

Suppose you want to buy 10 bitcoins.

Maker price: If you are patient and think the price might fall and you want to get the reduced maker fee, then enter a Buy price that is lower than the lowest priced order on the Sell side. In the screenshot below, you'd need to enter a price of 46,287.5 USD or lower.

Taker price: Any limit price equal to or higher than the existing orders on the Sell side will get matched right away and incur a taker fee.

The benefit of a limit price in this situation (versus a market order) is that it controls against price slippage (i.e. how far down the order book your order can go). However, depending on the size (volume) of the Sell orders, your Buy order may only get filled partially.

In the example below, there are 14.38632193 BTC available for 46,290.0 USD. If you wanted to buy more BTC than that, you would need to look at the price and volume of the next sell order (0.01107871 BTC at 46,292.5 USD).

Note: prices in the order book may change by the time you place your order. If you only want your order to execute as a maker, select the "Post only" option on the Order form. This feature will cancel your limit buy order if it matches against the sell side of the order book.

Example: Limit Sell

Suppose you want to sell 10 bitcoins.

Maker price: If you are patient and think the price might rise, and you want to get the reduced maker fee, then enter a Sell price that is higher than the highest priced order on the Buy side. In the screenshot below, you'd need to enter a price of 43,342.5 USD or higher.

Taker price: Any limit price equal to or lower than the existing orders on the Buy side will get matched right away and incur a taker fee.

The benefit of a limit price in this situation (versus a market order) is that it controls against price slippage (i.e. how far down the order book your order can go). However, depending on the size (volume) of the Buy orders, your Sell order may only get filled partially.

In the below example, a buyer is interested in purchasing 10.21532577 BTC at 43,340.0 USD. If you wanted to sell more BTC than that, you would need to look at the price and volume of the next buy order (0.3147 BTC at 43,337.50 USD).

Note: prices in the order book may change by the time you place your order. If you only want your order to execute as a maker, select the Post only option on the Order form. This feature will cancel your limit sell order if it immediately matches against the buy side of the order book.

The decimal and thousands separators shown in this article may differ from the formats displayed on our trading platforms. Review our article on how we use points and commas for more information