Limit Orders vs Taking the Price in 2026: Maker and Taker Fees on Sports Prediction Markets

The quick answer

• Taker: you accept a price already on the board and the trade fills now.

• Maker: you post your own price and wait for someone to accept it. The order may never fill.

• Novig: no fee for maker or taker on pre-game straight trades, and makers pay $0 on every trade type. Live makers earn a credit worth half the taker fee.

• Polymarket US: takers pay $1.74 per 100 contracts at 50c; makers get a rebate of $0.31.

• Kalshi: takers pay $1.75 per 100 at 50c, and makers pay a fee on the series Kalshi lists for one.

• The trade-off: posting gets a better price and lower costs, and you carry the risk of no fill or a fill you'd rather not have.

On a sports prediction market every trade has two sides: someone who posted a price and someone who accepted it. Venues charge those two sides differently, so the same position can cost you more or less depending on which side you're on.

Taking is the right call when the price is already good enough and the market may move, and it costs least on Novig before the game, where the taker pays no fee. Posting is worth it when you can wait, and it's cheapest where makers pay nothing or get paid.

What maker and taker mean

Novig's help center says a take order means "You accept an existing position already available in the market. Your order executes immediately at the displayed price." A make order means "You create a new position at a price you choose. Your order goes into the market and waits for another user to accept the other side."

A make order is what most trading venues call a limit order. It sits on the book at your price until someone takes it, you cancel it, or it expires. The person who takes it is the taker on that trade.

How a limit order works in practice

Venues set their own order rules, and the example here uses Novig's. You choose the side, the price and the number of contracts. Novig shows prices as percentages, and a winning position returns the stake divided by the percentage, so a 48% order costs 48c for every $1 it pays.

Make order prices have to sit on Novig's approved increments. According to Novig, "values near even money move in smaller steps, while long shots and heavy favorites move in larger ones," which stops anyone from jumping the queue by posting 59.99% against your 60%.

Every make order has a timer. Pre-game orders expire when your timer ends or "when the game goes live," whichever comes first, so an unfilled pre-game order never carries into the game. If Novig marks a game live before its listed start, "all open pregame make orders are cancelled," which Novig says matters most in combat sports, tennis and golf. Live orders run to game end or a duration you set.

How we checked

Fee figures come from each venue's own published schedule. Novig's fee page and Maker Credit Program terms, Polymarket US's fee schedule and Kalshi's fee schedule (effective 7 July 2026) were checked on 7 October 2026. Prices in the worked example are illustrative and every fee figure is computed per 100 contracts.

What each venue charges makers and takers

All three venues build fees on the same shape: a coefficient x price x (1 - price) x contracts, which peaks at 50c and shrinks toward the extremes.

Novig's live NCAAF spreads and totals carry a 0.06 taker coefficient instead of 0.03, futures carry 0.06 (golf and tennis futures carry none as of 10 September 2026), and parlays carry 0.10 built into the price. Its Maker Credit Program, running from 10 September 2026, pays makers 50% of the live taker fee and 70% of the futures taker fee on eligible markets, posted within seven days, and only when the order fills.

Polymarket US applies the maker rebate at the point of trade, at 0.0125 x price x (1 - price) per contract. Polymarket US changed some fees again on 7 October 2026, so check its current schedule before relying on these figures.

Kalshi's general taker fee is 0.07 x price x (1 - price), rounded up. Makers don't pay unless the schedule lists the series with a maker fee, and there it's 0.0175 x price x (1 - price).

Worked example: take at 52c or post at 50c

Say you rate a team's chance at 54% and want 100 contracts. The best price on offer is 52c. You can take it, or post a bid at 50c and wait. A winning contract pays $1, so 100 contracts return $100 and your expected payout is $54.

Taking costs the 2c gap plus the taker fee. On Polymarket US and Kalshi that fee is about $1.75, which leaves a 2-point edge with roughly a quarter of a dollar of expected profit. On Novig before the game the take costs nothing extra, so the same 52c price keeps the full $2.00. A filled bid at 50c is worth $4.31 on Polymarket US after its rebate, more than the $4.00 it's worth on Novig before the game.

Fill risk against fee savings

In the Novig pre-game row, taking at 52c is worth $2.00 for certain, while posting at 50c is worth $4.00 when it fills and nothing when it doesn't, so the bid has to fill more than half the time to come out ahead. On Polymarket US the take is worth $0.27, so the bid only needs to fill about 6% of the time.

That arithmetic assumes the fills you get are as good as the ones you miss, and they may not be. A resting bid at 50c fills when someone wants to sell at 50c. If that's because news moved against your side, you've bought at the old price into a worse position. When the price moves up instead, your bid sits unfilled and the 52c offer may be gone.

Novig's pre-game make orders also cancel at game start, so a bid placed close to kickoff has less time to fill, and an early start cancels it outright.

Posting tends to pay when the game is hours away and missing the trade costs you little, or when the taker fee would eat most of your edge. Taking makes more sense when the price is already inside your edge and news is due. How fast a posted order fills varies by venue and by market, and a posted order on a quiet market can sit unfilled whatever the fee.

Which side should you be on?

On Novig the gap between sides is zero before the game, so the choice there is price against the certainty of a fill. Live, it's the 0.03 taker fee plus the maker credit, $1.125 per 100 contracts at 50c in total.

On Polymarket US the gap is wider: $1.74 paid as a taker against $0.31 received as a maker, $2.05 per 100 at 50c. It pays that rebate before the game as well as live. On Kalshi a taker pays $1.75 per 100 at 50c and a maker pays nothing or $0.44, depending on the series.

What to look for

• Fee by side: check what the venue charges the taker and the maker on the exact trade type you're placing. Where neither side pays, only price and fill are left to weigh.

• Timer: know when your order expires and what happens to it at game start.

• Increments: post on a price the venue accepts, or the order won't go through.

• Break-even fill rate: divide the take's EV by the posted order's EV, and post only if you expect to fill more often than that.

• News: avoid resting orders through lineup announcements and injury reports unless you want the fills that come with them.

Limit order FAQ

What is the difference between a maker and a taker?

A taker accepts a price already on the board and fills immediately. A maker posts a price and waits for someone else to accept it.

Do makers pay fees on sports prediction markets?

It depends on the venue. Novig charges makers $0 on every trade type, Polymarket US pays makers a rebate of $0.31 per 100 contracts at 50c, and Kalshi charges makers $0.44 per 100 at 50c on the series it lists with a maker fee.

What happens to an unfilled limit order when the game starts?

Rules differ by venue. On Novig, open pre-game make orders cancel when the game goes live, whatever the timer says. Live orders run to game end or the duration you set.

Is a limit order always cheaper than taking the price?

When it fills, yes on all three venues here, since the maker side never pays more than the taker side. If it doesn't fill, you get nothing, and the price you wanted may not come back.

Sources

All checked 7 October 2026.

Novig, "Make orders vs take orders and how order timers work": support.novig.com/en/articles/10715726

Novig, "Valid make order prices and how they're determined": support.novig.com/en/articles/15554753

Novig fee schedule: support.novig.com/en/articles/16195057-fees-on-novig

Novig odds calculator: tools.novig.com/odds-calculator

Novig Maker Credit Program: support.novig.com/en/articles/16116780-maker-credit-program

Polymarket US fee schedule: docs.polymarket.us/fees

Kalshi fee schedule, effective 7 July 2026: kalshi.com/docs/kalshi-fee-schedule.pdf