With the frequent hostile takeover events after the split share structure reform, many listed companies have set up anti takeover provisions in their articles of association. The existing literature is still lack of research on how auditors view the anti takeover provisions of the articles of association from the perspective of external supervisors. Based on the practice of anti takeover in Chinas capital market, this paper manually collects the data of anti takeover provisions in the articles of association of A share listed companies from 2009 to 2019, and empirically studies the impact of anti takeover provisions in the articles of association on audit fees. The empirical results show that the management’s self protective defense in the anti takeover clauses of the company’s articles of association increases governance risks and audit costs; The mechanism test shows that the setting of anti takeover provisions in the articles of association increases the audit risk and cost by aggravating agency conflict and information asymmetry, and then increases the audit expenses, rather than the purchase of audit opinions after the setting of anti takeover provisions. After examining the cross sectional differences, it is found that the relationship between the anti takeover provisions of the articles of association and the improvement of audit fees is more significant in the companies with poor marketization, poor legal environment and low internal control governance. Examining the economic consequences of the increase of audit fees, it is found that auditors can improve the quality of accounting information of the target enterprise by increasing their own efforts, and the increase of audit fees in the capital market as a whole is a signal of audit quality. From the perspective of audit pricing, this paper studies the auditors’ response to the setting of anti takeover provisions in the articles of association, enriches the research on the economic consequences of anti takeover provisions and the influencing factors of audit fees, and provides new empirical evidence for auditors to effectively reduce their practice risk and listed companies to reasonably set up articles of association.