Fees
Every trade has a maker and a taker. The taker is the side that trades against the book, which includes every buy on the Leverage page. The maker is the side whose quote was already resting there.
You always see the fee before you sign: EST FEES on the Leverage page, and the fee line in every confirm. It is in dollars, and it is the amount the trade charges.
What a taker pays
The taker fee is 3 bps (0.03%) of the option's notional, and never more than 10% of its premium. You pay whichever is smaller.
The notional is how much of the token the option covers, valued at its strike:
- A call covers the strike plus the premium. A call is always worth at least what exercising it would pay, so this is never less than the token's value at today's price, and close to it once the call is in the money.
- A put covers the strike: the most it can ever pay you.
Both come from the option's own terms. Runner reads no price feed to charge a fee, so nobody can move your fee by moving a price.
Examples
Each row is an option on $10,000 worth of the token at today's price, bought from the book. The premiums are illustrative.
| Option | Premium | Notional | Fee | Share of premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Call at today's price, 1 day | $313 | $10,313 | $3.09 | 0.99% |
| Call at today's price, 7 days | $827 | $10,827 | $3.25 | 0.39% |
| Call at today's price, 30 days | $1,702 | $11,702 | $3.51 | 0.21% |
| Call at half today's price, 30 days | $5,068 | $10,068 | $3.02 | 0.06% |
| Put at 0.7× today's price, 7 days | $30.00 | $7,000 | $2.10 | 7.0% |
| Call at 1.5× today's price, 7 days | $24.40 | $15,024 | $2.44 | 10% (cap) |
| Call at 3× today's price, 30 days | $12.30 | $30,012 | $1.23 | 10% (cap) |
On most options the fee is a few dollars per $10,000 covered, whatever the option costs. An expensive option, long-dated or deep in the money, pays about the same as a cheap one. That is the point of charging on notional.
The cap for cheap options
A far out-of-the-money option can cost very little for a lot of notional. 3 bps of notional on the 3× call above would be $9.00 on a $12.30 option. The cap stops that: no taker fee is ever more than 10% of the premium, so that call pays $1.23.
A call struck far above today's price has more notional than the token it covers is worth today, because its notional is valued at the strike. The cap is what keeps those calls from paying for notional they do not have.
What a maker pays
On markets opened under the current schedule, makers pay nothing and earn nothing: the resting side's fee is zero. A market can also set a maker fee, which is never higher than the taker's, or a maker rebate, which is paid out of the same trade's taker fee. Either is figured the same way, the smaller of a share of notional and a share of the premium. The confirm shows it as FEE or REBATE.
Every market keeps its fee
Each market sets its rates when it opens and never changes them. A change to the schedule applies only to markets opened after it.
Markets opened before the notional fee charge a share of the premium only, and they keep doing so for as long as they exist. The desk prices each market's own fee, so the figure you see before you sign is that market's.
What Runner does not charge
Runner charges at the trade and nowhere else. There is no fee to exercise, to be assigned, to claim what your written options earned, or when an option expires. Depositing and withdrawing cost nothing on Runner's side.
Solana charges a small network fee in SOL for every transaction, and opening an account on chain costs rent, also in SOL, which comes back when the account is closed. Some tokens charge their own fee on every transfer; the desk shows what lands (see Funding).