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What is the difference between a market order and a limit order?
What is the difference between a market order and a limit order?

An explanation of the different Matcha order types.

Updated over a year ago

Matcha currently supports market orders and limit orders. Regardless of the type of order you place, it's important to understand what price slippage is and how Matcha protects you from it.

To switch between order types, you can select Market or Limit at the top of the trade window.


A market order is an order to buy or sell a token at the best available price in the current market.

This is the default order type, and it provides the quickest way to swap your tokens as the transaction will execute immediately.

A limit order is an order to buy or sell a token at a specific price.

Since Matcha is a decentralized exchange, limit orders work a little differently than on a centralized exchange.

  • It's free to create a limit order. When your order gets filled, the taker/buyer will be responsible for paying the transaction's Ethereum gas fee.

  • Matcha limit orders will only fill at the exact Limit Price you specify (not above or below).

  • Limit orders are partially fillable. They will remain open until 100% filled or until they reach their expiration.

  • Limit orders are not currently available for native tokens. They are only available for ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon network.

  • If you want to use ETH for a limit order, you will need to convert it to Wrapped ETH. Learn more about WETH here and convert your ETH to WETH here.

  • You can set limit orders to expire in 1 hour (default), 24 hours, 7 days, or 1 month. You can cancel a limit order at any time. This will require you to pay a small amount of native token to cover the cancellation transaction's gas fee. Orders with set expiration times will automatically cancel at no cost.

  • If your limit order didn't get filled, it might have been due to one of these reasons.

Limit order example: If you want to swap your ZRX for WETH when the exchange rate reaches 500 ZRX (assuming the current rate is 750 ZRX to 1 WETH), you would go to the WETH/ZRX market and create a limit order for this trade.

If you want more help on how to create a limit order, check out our article here!

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