Create an order. You can place two types of orders: limit and market. Orders can only be placed if your account has sufficient funds. Once an order is placed, your account funds will be put on hold for the duration of the order. How much and which funds are put on hold depends on the order type and parameters specified.
API Key Permissions
This endpoint requires the "trade" permission.
limit order parameters
| Param | Description |
|---|---|
| price | Price per bitcoin |
| size | Amount of BTC to buy or sell |
| time_in_force | [optional] GTC, GTT, IOC, or FOK (default is GTC) |
| cancel_after | [optional]* min, hour, day |
| post_only | [optional]** Post only flag |
* Requires time_in_force to be GTT
** Invalid when time_in_force is IOC or FOK
market order parameters
| Param | Description |
|---|---|
| size | [optional]* Desired amount in BTC |
| funds | [optional]* Desired amount of quote currency to use |
* One of size or funds is required.
Product ID
The product_id must match a valid product. The products list is available via the /products endpoint.
Client Order ID
The optional client_oid field must be a UUID generated by your trading application. This field value will be broadcast in the public feed for received messages. You can use this field to identify your orders in the public feed.
The client_oid is different than the server-assigned order id. If you are consuming the public feed and see a received message with your client_oid, you should record the server-assigned order_id as it will be used for future order status updates. The client_oid will NOT be used after the received message is sent.
The server-assigned order id is also returned as the id field to this HTTP POST request.
Type
When placing an order, you can specify the order type. The order type you specify will influence which other order parameters are required as well as how your order will be executed by the matching engine. If type is not specified, the order will default to a limit order.
limit orders are both the default and basic order type. A limit order requires specifying a price and size. The size is the number of bitcoin to buy or sell, and the price is the price per bitcoin. The limit order will be filled at the price specified or better. A sell order can be filled at the specified price per bitcoin or a higher price per bitcoin and a buy order can be filled at the specified price or a lower price depending on market conditions. If market conditions cannot fill the limit order immediately, then the limit order will become part of the open order book until filled by another incoming order or canceled by the user.
market orders differ from limit orders in that they provide no pricing guarantees. They however do provide a way to buy or sell specific amounts of bitcoin or fiat without having to specify the price. Market orders execute immediately and no part of the market order will go on the open order book. Market orders are always considered takers and incur taker fees. When placing a market order you can specify funds and/or size. Funds will limit how much of your quote currency account balance is used and size will limit the bitcoin amount transacted.
Stop orders
Stop orders become active and wait to trigger based on the movement of the last trade price.
There are two types of stop orders, stop loss and stop entry:
stop: 'loss': Triggers when the last trade price changes to a value at or below the stop_price.
stop: 'entry': Triggers when the last trade price changes to a value at or above the stop_price.
The last trade price is the last price at which an order was filled. This price can be found in the latest match message. Note that not all match messages may be received due to dropped messages.
Note that when stop orders are triggered, they execute as limit orders and are therefore subject to holds.
Price
The price must be specified in quote_increment product units. The quote increment is the smallest unit of price. For the BTC-USD product, the quote increment is 0.01 or 1 penny. Prices less than 1 penny will not be accepted, and no fractional penny prices will be accepted. Not required for market orders.
Size
The size must be greater than the base_min_size for the product and no larger than the base_max_size. The size can be in incremented in units of base_increment. size indicates the amount of BTC (or base currency) to buy or sell.
size indicates the amount of base currency to buy or sell. The size must be no less than the base_min_size and no larger than the base_max_size for the product. However, for post-only limit orders, there is no enforced base_max_size. The size can be in any increment of the base currency (e.g. BTC for the BTC-USD product).
Note: There is no max size restriction for post_only limit orders.
Funds
The funds field is optionally used for market orders. When specified it indicates how much of the product quote currency to buy or sell. For example, a market buy for BTC-USD with funds specified as 150.00 will spend 150 USD to buy BTC (including any fees). If the funds field is not specified for a market buy order, size must be specified and Coinbase Exchange will use available funds in your account to buy bitcoin.
A market sell order can also specify the funds. If funds is specified, it will limit the sell to the amount of funds specified. You can use funds with sell orders to limit the amount of quote currency funds received.
Time in force
Time in force policies provide guarantees about the lifetime of an order. There are four policies: good till canceled GTC, good till time GTT, immediate or cancel IOC, and fill or kill FOK.
GTC Good till canceled orders remain open on the book until canceled. This is the default behavior if no policy is specified.
GTT Good till time orders remain open on the book until canceled or the allotted cancel_after is depleted on the matching engine. GTT orders are guaranteed to cancel before any other order is processed after the cancel_after timestamp which is returned by the API. A day is considered 24 hours.
IOC Immediate or cancel orders instantly cancel the remaining size of the limit order instead of opening it on the book.
FOK Fill or kill orders are rejected if the entire size cannot be matched.
* Note, match also refers to self trades.
Post only
The post-only flag indicates that the order should only make liquidity. If any part of the order results in taking liquidity, the order will be rejected and no part of it will execute.
Holds
For limit buy orders, we will hold price x size x (1 + fee-percent) USD. For sell orders, we will hold the number of Bitcoin you wish to sell. Actual fees are assessed at time of trade. If you cancel a partially filled or unfilled order, any remaining funds will be released from hold.
For market buy orders where funds is specified, the funds amount will be put on hold. If only size is specified, all of your account balance (in the quote account) will be put on hold for the duration of the market order (usually a trivially short time). For a sell order, the size in BTC will be put on hold. If size is not specified (and only funds is specified), your entire BTC balance will be on hold for the duration of the market order.
Self-trade prevention
Self-trading is not allowed on Coinbase Exchange. Two orders from the same user will not be allowed to match with one another. To change the self-trade behavior, specify the stp flag.
| Flag | Name |
|---|---|
| dc | Decrease and Cancel (default) |
| co | Cancel oldest |
| cn | Cancel newest |
| cb | Cancel both |
See the self-trade prevention documentation for details about these fields.
Order Lifecycle
The HTTP Request will respond when an order is either rejected (insufficient funds, invalid parameters, etc) or received (accepted by the matching engine). A 200 response indicates that the order was received and is active. Active orders may execute immediately (depending on price and market conditions) either partially or fully. A partial execution will put the remaining size of the order in the open state. An order that is filled completely, will go into the done state.
Users listening to streaming market data are encouraged to use the client_oid field to identify their received messages in the feed. The REST response with a server order_id may come after the received message in the public data feed.
Response
A successful order will be assigned an order id. A successful order is defined as one that has been accepted by the matching engine.
Open orders do not expire and will remain open until they are either filled or canceled.