What is slippage in crypto trading?

Slippage is the difference between the price you see when you place a trade and the price you actually get. If a token shows $1.00 and your buy fills at $1.03, you paid 3% slippage.

Why slippage happens

• Price impact. A swap trades against a liquidity pool or bonding curve. Your own order moves the price, and a large order in a small pool moves it a lot.
• Delay. The price can change between the quote and the moment your transaction lands on-chain. Meme coins can move several percent in a second.
• MEV. Bots can see your pending swap, buy just before it and sell just after it. This “sandwich” pushes your fill price up to the worst price your settings allow.

Slippage tolerance

Trading terminals let you set a maximum slippage. If the price moves further than that, the swap fails instead of filling. Set it too low and many trades fail; set it too high and you invite sandwich attacks.

How to keep slippage low

• Trade smaller sizes, or split large orders.
• Prefer tokens with deeper liquidity.
• Turn on MEV protection where your terminal offers it.
• Use a priority fee so your transaction lands sooner.
• Use limit orders when you don't need to fill immediately.

How BenchTerminal measures it

The “Est. slippage” column on the leaderboard is the average gap between quoted and realised price on a standard test trade. It makes up the execution-quality category of the score; see the methodology for the bounds and weights.