All terms
The gap between the price you expected and the price you got.
Slippage happens because prices move between the moment you submit a trade and the moment it executes, and because your own order consumes liquidity as it fills.
Every DEX lets you set a slippage tolerance. Set it too low and your transaction fails. Set it too high and you invite sandwich attackers to take the difference.
For a major pair, 0.1 to 0.5 percent is usually right. If a token demands 15 percent slippage to trade, treat that as a warning, not an inconvenience.
That slippage is a fee you can set to zero. It is the price impact of your own trade plus whatever moves while it executes, and setting the tolerance too low simply makes the transaction fail. Set it low and expect failures on thin pairs.
Common questions
What slippage should I set?
Why did I get a worse price than the quote?
Where this comes up on the site
The guides that actually use this word, rather than a list of everything we have written.
Where to go next
More trading terms
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