Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe): software wallets rating breakdown
The most audited contracts in this entire rating — Runtime Verification, OpenZeppelin, Ackee, Certora — and the most honestly published swap fee anywhere here: a full tiered schedule from 0.70% down to 0.05% by size, printed openly.
The most audited contracts in this entire rating — Runtime Verification, OpenZeppelin, Ackee, Certora — and the most honestly published swap fee anywhere here: a full tiered schedule from 0.70% down to 0.05% by size, printed openly.
How the score is built
Each criterion is scored 0–10 and weighted. The median column is the middle score across every entry in this ranking, so a row reads as a position rather than a number.
| Criterion | What we measured | Weight | Score | Category median | Rank | Weighted gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security model and open code | — | 30% | 9 | 8 | 2 of 17 | +0.30 |
| Privacy | — | 20% | 6 | 5 | 6 of 17 | +0.20 |
| Transaction transparency | — | 15% | 5 | 5 | 8 of 17 | 0.00 |
| Swap cost | — | 15% | 7 | 5 | 8 of 17 | +0.30 |
| Recovery and portability | — | 10% | 4 | 9 | 14 of 17 | -0.50 |
| Networks | — | 10% | 8 | 7 | 4 of 17 | +0.10 |
Measured 14 July 2026 · weights and method · decided by recovery and portability, worth -0.50 points against the median
Security model and open code: 9/10
Non-custodial, MPC or custodial — and where the key actually sits on your device. Then the licence, as it stands today rather than as folklore remembers it: several well-known wallets have quietly moved to source-available terms that are not open source. Audits count only when the firm is named and the report is public.
Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 8, which places it 2nd of 17 among software wallets on this criterion. At a 30% weight that is 0.30 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 2.
Privacy: 6/10
The most underrated question in this category: which RPC endpoint does the wallet talk to out of the box, and who owns it? If the default RPC is operated by the wallet’s own vendor, that vendor sees the IP address behind every balance check and every transaction, and can link it to your addresses. We read the default configuration and the privacy policy, and we quote the clause. Can you point it at your own node, and how hard is it?
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 6th of 17 among software wallets on this criterion. At a 20% weight that is 0.20 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 2.
Transaction transparency: 5/10
Does the wallet simulate the transaction and show you the actual outcome before you sign it, and does it warn you about known drainer contracts? The same question as clear signing on a hardware device, asked of software.
Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 8th of 17 among software wallets on this criterion. At a 15% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 3.
Swap cost: 7/10
The built-in swap is how most free wallets are paid. We record the published service fee — and when a wallet does not publish one at all while still taking a cut of the spread, that silence is the finding and it is scored as one.
Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 8th of 17 among software wallets on this criterion. At a 15% weight that is 0.30 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.
Recovery and portability: 4/10
Standard BIP39, and whether the seed restores in another wallet. A wallet you cannot leave is a custodian with extra steps.
Scored 4 of 10 against a category median of 9, which places it 14th of 17 among software wallets on this criterion. At a 10% weight that is 0.50 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 3.
Networks: 8/10
Which chains genuinely work, from the wallet’s own documentation.
Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 4th of 17 among software wallets on this criterion. At a 10% weight that is 0.10 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 2.
Other measurements
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
| # | Entry | Recovery and portability | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Zeus | 4 | Level on recovery and portability; the gap is elsewhere. |
| 5 | Electrum | 5 | Ahead by 1 on recovery and portability. |
| 7 | BlueWallet | 9 | Ahead by 5 on recovery and portability. |
| 8 | Zerion | 9 | Ahead by 5 on recovery and portability. |
Incidents priced into this score
- 2025-02-21 — Bybit lost ~$1.4bn after attackers compromised a Safe{Wallet} developer machine and injected malicious JavaScript into the front-end. The contracts were not broken; the interface was. Bybit covered its own customers. [users made whole: confirmed] [source]
Questions about this score
Is a multisig overkill for an individual?
+
Not necessarily, and it depends on what you are protecting against. A 2-of-3 across a hardware wallet, a phone and a backup removes the single point of failure that most self-custody losses come from — one seed, badly stored. It also introduces complexity, and complexity has its own failure modes.