A market order is an instruction to buy or sell immediately at whatever prices the order book offers. It guarantees execution but not price — you pay the spread and any slippage that comes from sweeping multiple levels of the book.
Market orders are the right tool when getting filled matters more than getting the best price: emergency exits, stop-loss triggers in fast markets, and small retail trades on liquid pairs. They are the wrong tool for large size or thinly traded instruments, where they can move the market against the trader on entry.
On most exchanges, market orders count as 'taker' fills and pay a higher fee than passive 'maker' limit orders. The all-in cost of a market order is the spread + slippage + taker fee.
Example
Best ask is 50,000.5, next ask is 50,001 for the rest. A market buy of 1 BTC fills part at 50,000.5 and the rest at 50,001 — average fill ≈ 50,000.7. Spread + slippage cost.
How Noon Barbari uses Market order
Every concept here is implemented in the platform. Open the relevant docs or tool to see it in action.
Order types in the designer →Related terms
- Order types
Limit order
An order to buy at or below / sell at or above a chosen price. May not fill.
- Order types
Stop order
An order that converts to a market order once a trigger price is reached.
- Order types
Stop-limit order
Stop order that converts to a limit order, not a market — avoids bad slippage.
- Backtesting
Slippage
Difference between the price a strategy assumed and the price it actually got.