Fees · ORDER LIMITS
Order Rejected Again: Minimum Value, Minimum Size and Tick Size Are Three Rules
Price filled in, quantity filled in, submit — and the panel says the order does not meet requirements, or simply turns the field red. You raise the quantity a bit; still rejected. You put the entire balance in; still rejected.
Nothing is wrong with the account. You are arguing with three different rules at once, and they are independent of each other. A spot order has to satisfy all of: what it is worth (minimum notional), how many units it moves (minimum quantity), and whether those two numbers are expressed legally (step increments). Clearing one says nothing at all about the next. This piece separates the three and gives a table that works backwards from the error text — once you know which rule caught you, the fix takes about a minute.
What each rule governs
| Rule | What it governs | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum notional value | What the order is worth: quantity times price | Quote currency (a stablecoin, say) |
| Minimum order quantity | How many units of the base asset you trade | Base asset (BTC, say) |
| Step size / precision | How many decimals are allowed and what multiple each number must land on | Separate rules for quantity and price |
The point is that the first two are measured in different units. With an expensive coin, a tiny quantity is worth plenty but may still be below the quantity floor. With a cheap coin the reverse happens: you buy a large number of units and the notional value is still short. So the first move when you see an error is to work out whether it is talking about money or about units.
Why the thresholds exist
Knowing the reason tells you how much room there is to manoeuvre:
- Matching cost. An order book stuffed with orders worth a couple of cents still costs the engine a full round of work each, and the overhead is wildly out of proportion to the trade.
- Quote and settlement precision. Price and quantity have to land on a shared grid, otherwise executions produce fractions that cannot be settled cleanly.
- Pairs differ by orders of magnitude. One coin trades in tens of thousands per unit, another in fractions of a cent. No single minimum quantity could serve both, so the values are set per pair.
In other words, these floors are not aimed at you; they are requirements of the matching system. There is no clever way around them, only reshaping the order into a legal one.
Step size: the one you cannot spot yourself
The first two rules at least tell you the number is too small, so you know which direction to move. Step size is the mean one: the value is clearly large enough and the order still will not go.
Quantity step requires the amount to be a whole multiple of a minimum increment. Your balance almost never divides evenly, so pasting all of it leaves a fragment that breaks the rule and the whole order is refused. That is exactly why typing a full balance into the field often fails while the panel's percentage buttons succeed — those buttons round down for you.
Price step works the same way: a limit price has to sit on a multiple of the minimum price movement. Type a number you read somewhere else while the market is moving and it can easily land between two valid ticks. The fix is to click a level in the book, or adjust from the price the panel already offers.
And if the leftover fragment never divides no matter what you try, the problem has stopped being about order rules and become a dust problem — see why dust balances will not sell or withdraw.
Working backwards from the error
| What you see | Probably which rule | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Amount too small, figure in the quote currency | Minimum notional | Raise the quantity or the price so the value clears |
| Quantity too small, figure in the coin | Minimum quantity | Raise the quantity; if you cannot, the balance is short |
| Precision, decimals or invalid value | Step size | Use a percentage button, or cut decimals |
| Quantity is clearly large enough, still refused | Price step | Click a book level instead of typing a free-form price |
| Market order works, limit order does not | Price rules | Check whether the limit is off the grid or too far from the market |
| A fragment is left over no matter what | Not an order problem | Treat it as dust; see the link above |
Why small orders hit two rules at once
If you trade in small amounts you will meet these limits far more often, and the reason is arithmetic rather than bad luck:
- You start close to the floor. The smaller the order, the closer it sits to the minimum notional, and a modest price move drops it under.
- Rounding costs proportionally more. The same fragment lost to step rounding is noise in a large order and several per cent of a small one.
- Fees eat the same margin. After a purchase fee you hold slightly less than you entered, which is often exactly enough to fall short when you go to sell.
The practical habit is: leave headroom on small buys rather than sitting exactly on the threshold, and reach for the percentage buttons when selling instead of typing. To see how much a round trip costs and where break-even lands, the site's spot PnL and break-even calculator does the arithmetic.
Where to read these numbers on Gate
All three values are set per trading pair, not once for the whole exchange. On the spot trading page the pair's minimum quantity, minimum notional and decimal precision are normally printed near the order fields; some layouts keep them in a trading-rules or pair-information panel you open separately.
We are deliberately not quoting any figures here. They move with the pair, the product and the platform, and a copied version in a third-party article will eventually be wrong and mislead someone. Open the order page and the values in force are already on screen. To take the whole cost line in order, continue with how fees work and how to cut them; if it turns out the balance is held rather than the order being illegal, see available vs total balance.
Three things not to do
- Do not deposit more just to clear the floor. You have enlarged the position to place a small order and paid a funding cost for it. Unless you wanted more of that asset anyway, the maths does not work.
- Do not resubmit the same illegal order. The rule will not relent, and rapid retries can trip an order-rate limit. Read the error, change the shape once, and it goes through.
- Do not read the minimum as a recommendation. It is a technical floor for a single order and says nothing about whether the asset is worth buying or how much you should commit. Treating a floor as advice is where a lot of oversized first positions begin.
Editorial check
What our editors flag
The point worth repeating is that the three rules are independent. People in help threads tend to keep adjusting one number because they assume "not enough" has a single meaning; in reality value, quantity and step each block separately, and fixing one leaves the others exactly where they were. The second point is that every specific figure comes from the order page at the time — they are set per pair and change with product updates, which is why this article quotes none. If repeated adjustment reveals that the balance itself will not move, that is a different problem: dust is covered in dust balances, and held funds in available vs total balance.