Ratings · Measured, not sponsored
Trading tools
The terminals and bots most on-chain traders now use charge more than the exchanges they route into — up to thirty-eight times more. We computed each one’s take rate from public data, then asked who is holding your private key while you use it.
Routes to the same Solana pools, signs from your own wallet, takes no percentage. The reference point that makes the rest of this page legible.
0.9896% across ten chains — still twenty times Aerodrome’s fee, and its bot mode holds your key.
1.9287%. It collected $35.5m in thirty days — more than Uniswap’s entire protocol fee take over the same period.
What we did · August 27, 2026We computed each tool’s take rate from public data — fees collected over volume routed — and compared it directly with what the exchanges underneath them charge. Then we recorded which tools hold your private key on their own servers.
The tool costs more than the exchange
Take rate, computed the same way for both: thirty days of fees over thirty days of volume.
Axiom charges thirty-eight times what Aerodrome charges — to send your trade to Aerodrome. It collected $35.5m in thirty days doing it, which is more than Uniswap’s entire protocol fee take over the same period. A fee like that on an exchange would be a scandal; on a terminal it passes without comment, because it comes out of a fill you never see itemised against the venue price.
And most of them hold your key
Almost every messaging-app bot in this category generates the wallet for you and keeps the private key on its own servers. That is a custodian: unlicensed, unaudited, with no proof of reserves, no attestation and no recovery process, reachable through a chat app. The category has spent three years presenting this as a convenience feature. It is the largest risk on this page, and it is why custody outweighs execution speed in the score by more than two to one.
The ranking
Click any row for the quick read, or open a company for its full profile and per-criterion scores. Measured August 27, 2026. How we rate.
HOW WE SCORED THIS — CRITERIA AND WEIGHTS+
The terminals and bots that most on-chain traders now use charge more than the exchanges they route into — often twenty to forty times more. We computed the take rate on each one the same way we did for the exchanges themselves: thirty days of fees collected, divided by thirty days of volume routed. Then we asked the second question, which matters more: who is holding the private key while you use it?
Thirty days of fees collected divided by thirty days of volume routed, from public data. This is what the tool charges on top of whatever the underlying venue charges, and the spread is enormous: 0.0060% to 1.9287% across the tools measured here, against 0.0506% to 0.6639% at the decentralised exchanges they route into.
Whether the tool generates and holds a private key on its own servers — the model almost every messaging-app bot uses — or signs from a wallet you control. A bot that holds the key is a custodian you cannot audit, with no attestation, no licence and no recovery process, and that fact belongs above execution speed in any honest ranking.
Whether the tool states its fee plainly in its own documentation and shows it at the point of trade, or buries it in a percentage of an amount the user never sees itemised. We compare what is disclosed against the take rate we computed.
Documented routing behaviour: which venues it can reach, whether it uses private transaction relays, and what protection it offers against sandwiching. Speed claims that cannot be verified from public data are not scored.
Chains supported with real routed volume, from public data at a stated timestamp.
Weights sum to 100. If we cannot verify a criterion, we delete it rather than score it on impressions — read the methodology.
Is there a free alternative?
A router that charges nothing routes to the same pools.
Jupiter on Solana and CoW Swap or Matcha on Ethereum route to the same liquidity these terminals reach, from a wallet you control, without generating a key on somebody’s server and without a percentage skimmed off every fill. For charts and token discovery, DexScreener and the block explorers cost nothing. The honest summary of this category is that the paid tools sell speed and convenience at between one and two per cent of everything you trade — on assets where you are already paying the DEX, the gas and the spread. If you trade $100,000 a month through a 1.9% terminal, the tool costs you $1,900 a month.
What changed since last time
- 2026-08-27Category published.Terminal and bot comparisons are written about features. The take rate is in public data, it is between four and forty times what the underlying exchange charges, and nobody publishes it.
Questions
How much do trading terminals and bots actually charge?+
Between roughly one and two per cent of everything you trade, on top of the exchange’s own fee. We computed it the same way for each tool — thirty days of fees collected over thirty days of volume routed: Axiom 1.9287%, Photon 1.5203%, Trojan 1.1108%, GMGN 0.9896%. For comparison, the decentralised exchanges they route into charge between 0.0506% and 0.6639% on the same measurement. The tool is the expensive part of the trade.
Is it safe to let a Telegram bot hold my wallet?+
It is a custody decision, and it deserves to be treated as one. Almost every messaging-app trading bot generates the wallet and holds the private key on its own servers — so your funds sit with an unlicensed, unaudited operator with no proof of reserves, no attestation and no recovery process, reachable through a chat app. The industry has normalised this as a convenience feature. It is the single largest risk in this category, which is why custody carries 25% of the score here and execution speed carries 12%.
What is the free alternative?+
For execution: Jupiter on Solana, or CoW Swap and Matcha on Ethereum — aggregators that route to the same pools, sign from a wallet you control, and take no percentage of the fill. For charts and discovery: DexScreener and block explorers, which cost nothing. If you trade $100,000 a month through a 1.9% terminal, the interface is costing you about $1,900 a month for routing you can get for free.
Do these tools give better prices to make up for the fee?+
Not by enough to matter at these rates. Private relays and MEV protection are real and worth something on large or sandwich-prone trades, but they are measured in basis points, and the tools are charging one to two per cent. The honest framing is that you are paying for speed, discovery and convenience — features that are genuinely valuable to some traders — rather than for a better price.
Why is one tool measured at almost zero?+
BullX computes to 0.0060% in our measurement — $502 of fees against $8.35m of routed volume over thirty days — and we could not explain that from public data. It may reflect fees routed through channels the dataset does not capture, a promotional period, or a change in how the product charges. We publish the number with the caveat attached rather than smoothing it away, and anyone choosing a tool on the basis of it should check what they are actually charged on their own first trades.
How this is funded
It is not. There are no affiliate links on this page or anywhere on this site, no paid placements, and no sponsored positions. Nobody in this table can buy a place in it, accelerate their inclusion, or influence a score — and none of them paid us anything, because there is nothing here to buy. The full policy.