What is slippage in crypto?
Slippage is the difference between the price you expected when you placed a trade and the price at which it actually filled. It happens when the price moves between your click and the fill, or when your order is bigger than what is on offer at the best price and eats into the order book.
From the Staxo crypto glossary. The examples use Kraken daily candles (UTC), Oct 10, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026, for the eight coins on Staxo's free plan that are not stablecoins.
How slippage is calculated
Slippage = (fill price − expected price) ÷ expected price. If you expected to buy at $100 and your order filled at an average of $100.40, the slippage was 0.4%. For a buy, a higher fill works against you, for a sell a lower one does.
Slippage can also be positive: in a fast market the price can move in your favor between the click and the fill. On a decentralized exchange you usually set a slippage tolerance before a swap, the most you accept, and the swap fails if the price moves further than that.
What causes slippage
- Order size against liquidity. A market order larger than what is offered at the best price fills at several price levels in the order book, each one worse than the last.
- Fast markets. In seconds of heavy news the price can move between the moment you see it and the moment the exchange fills your order.
- Thin coins and quiet hours. Fewer orders in the book mean bigger gaps between price levels. Liquidity is the single biggest factor.
- Order type. Market orders and stop-losses accept slippage. A limit order never fills worse than its price, but may not fill at all.
Liquidity differs a lot between coins
| Coin | Median daily volume | Median daily range |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | $144 million | 3.06% |
| Ethereum | $58 million | 4.06% |
| Solana | $31 million | 4.55% |
| XRP | $25 million | 4.19% |
| Dogecoin | $5.9 million | 4.68% |
| Cardano | $5.0 million | 5.47% |
| TRON | $1.0 million | 1.56% |
| BNB | $0.7 million | 3.10% |
On Kraken, Bitcoin traded a median $144 million a day and BNB $0.7 million, about 197 times less. The same $10,000 market order is a tiny fraction of a day's trading in the first market and a noticeable share of it in the last. These are one exchange's numbers: most coins trade on many exchanges, and BNB mostly on Binance, so global liquidity is larger.
How to practice it in Staxo
Staxo has no slippage: every demo trade fills at the current market price, and if the price moved more than 3% while you were on the trade screen, the app asks you to refresh rather than filling at a surprise price. That makes it a clean place to learn the rest of trading, but remember the gap when you move to a real exchange.
A useful habit to practice now: before each demo trade, write down the price you expect, then compare it with the fill in your trade history. On a real exchange that gap is your slippage, and it grows with the size of the order and the thinness of the coin.
Free on iPhone and Android, $500 in demo money. Also on Google Play.Also on the App Store.
Slippage questions
Is slippage a fee?
No. A fee is charged by the exchange on top of the trade. Slippage is a difference in price: the market gave you a worse (or sometimes better) price than you expected. Both add to the real cost of a trade, so traders count them together.
How can I reduce slippage?
Use limit orders instead of market orders, split large orders into smaller ones, trade coins and hours with plenty of volume, and avoid placing orders in the seconds after major news. On decentralized exchanges, set a tight slippage tolerance.
Try it with $500 in demo money.
Free download, no card. Also on Google Play.Also on the App Store.
Educational content, not investment advice. The examples describe prices from Oct 10, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026 and say nothing about where they go next. Staxo is a simulator: you practice with demo money, never real money.