What is slippage in crypto?
Slippage is the difference between the price you expected and the price you got. In crypto it shows up most clearly on market orders. An order book lists sellers from the cheapest upwards and buyers from the highest downwards. A small market buy takes the cheapest seller and is done. A bigger one runs out of coins at that price and keeps buying at the next price, and the next, so its average price ends up above the price you saw. That extra is slippage.
There is also a cost before slippage starts: the spread, the gap between the best buy price and the best sell price. If you buy and sell at once you lose the whole gap; on one market order you lose about half of it compared with the mid price. In this study we measure the two together, as the cost of one market order compared with the mid price, because that is what you pay. We report it in basis points: 1 bp is 0.01%, or $1 on $10,000.
Slippage is different from the slippage setting on a decentralised swap. That setting is a limit you choose (“cancel if the price moves more than 0.5%”). The cost measured here is what actually happens on a central order book, before any limit.
How cost grows with order size
Median across 19 exchanges of each exchange's median hour, USDT perpetuals, basis points (log scale for size). 6 Nov 2026, 00:00 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 03:00 UTC.
Show the numbers
| Size | BTC | ETH | SOL | XRP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1k | 0.01 bps | 0.02 bps | 0.56 bps | 0.46 bps |
| $5k | 0.01 bps | 0.02 bps | 0.56 bps | 0.52 bps |
| $10k | 0.01 bps | 0.03 bps | 0.56 bps | 0.60 bps |
| $50k | 0.04 bps | 0.08 bps | 0.83 bps | 1.0 bps |
| $100k | 0.07 bps | 0.16 bps | 1.1 bps | 1.5 bps |
| $500k | 0.30 bps | 0.63 bps | 2.4 bps | 4.2 bps |
| $1M | 0.60 bps | 1.1 bps | 3.7 bps | 6.3 bps |
Two things stand out. First, the small end is flat. A BTC or ETH order of $1,000 to $10,000 fits inside the best price level on nearly every exchange, so it only pays half the spread, and on BTC that spread is a single price tick (about 0.01 bps). For SOL and XRP the tick is larger compared with the price, which is why even a $1,000 order pays 0.56 and 0.46 bps.
Second, past $50,000 the lines bend upwards. Each extra dollar has to reach further into the book. A $1M BTC futures order cost the typical exchange 0.60 bps, or $59.60, while ten $100,000 orders placed at quiet moments would have cost about $7.30 in total. That is the case for splitting large orders, if the price does not run away while you wait.
The numbers, coin by coin
| Coin and size | Typical | In $ | Cheapest | Most expensive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC $1k | 0.01 | $0.00 | Binance 0.01 | Variational 0.56 |
| BTC $10k | 0.01 | $0.01 | Binance 0.01 | WhiteBIT 1.5 |
| BTC $100k | 0.07 | $0.73 | CoinW 0.01 | WhiteBIT 2.9 |
| BTC $1M | 0.60 | $59.60 | CoinW 0.01 | WhiteBIT 7.0 |
| ETH $1k | 0.02 | $0.00 | Binance 0.02 | Variational 0.70 |
| ETH $10k | 0.03 | $0.03 | Bitunix 0.02 | WhiteBIT 1.8 |
| ETH $100k | 0.16 | $1.59 | MEXC 0.02 | WhiteBIT 3.6 |
| ETH $1M | 1.1 | $105 | CoinW 0.02 | WhiteBIT 8.1 |
| SOL $1k | 0.56 | $0.06 | Hyperliquid 0.11 | WhiteBIT 2.5 |
| SOL $10k | 0.56 | $0.56 | Hyperliquid 0.17 | WhiteBIT 2.7 |
| SOL $100k | 1.1 | $10.81 | Bitunix 0.56 | WhiteBIT 6.9 |
| SOL $1M | 3.7 | $366 | OurBit 1.3 | WhiteBIT 18 |
| XRP $1k | 0.46 | $0.05 | KuCoin 0.20 | WhiteBIT 2.3 |
| XRP $10k | 0.60 | $0.60 | Bitunix 0.43 | Variational 4.0 |
| XRP $100k | 1.5 | $14.94 | MEXC 0.51 | WhiteBIT 7.3 |
| XRP $1M | 6.3 | $627 | BingX 2.5 | HTX 23 |
The spread between the best and worst exchange widens with size. For a $1M BTC futures order, the cheapest book in our sample cost 0.01 bps and the most expensive 7.0 bps. Some of the cheapest figures come from exchanges whose public books show very large orders at the best price all day; we report what the books show, but treat those as the most optimistic case. For SOL and XRP the most expensive book cost several times the typical one.
Spot is thinner than futures
| Coin | $1k | $10k | $100k | $1M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | 0.01 | 0.07 | 0.33 | 2.1 |
| ETH | 0.07 | 0.31 | 1.1 | 6.4 |
| SOL | 0.59 | 1.3 | 3.3 | 18 |
| XRP | 0.74 | 1.7 | 4.2 | 19 |
On every coin, the typical spot book cost more than the typical futures book at the same size. At $100,000, BTC spot cost 0.33 bps against 0.07 bps on futures. Most crypto trading volume is in perpetual futures, and market makers put their size where the volume is. If you only need price exposure and not the coins themselves, futures books are usually cheaper to cross; but futures add funding, which spot does not have.
Coinbase and Kraken (USD books)
Coinbase and Kraken quote in US dollars and were added to CostDepth on 10 Nov 2026, so they are not in the hourly history above. We read their books 13 times that day, with Binance and OKX spot in the same rounds.
| Exchange and coin | $10k | $100k | $1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coinbase BTC | 0.09 | 0.69 | 3.0 |
| Coinbase ETH | 0.38 | 1.3 | 5.5 |
| Kraken BTC | 0.01 | 0.15 | 0.67 |
| Kraken ETH | 0.14 | 1.4 | 3.5 |
| Binance BTC | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.71 |
| Binance ETH | 0.02 | 0.53 | 2.7 |
| OKX BTC | 0.01 | 0.34 | 2.3 |
| OKX ETH | 0.02 | 0.69 | 4.0 |
In these reads, a $1M BTC spot order cost 0.67 bps on Kraken and 3.0 bps on Coinbase, against a typical 2.1 bps for USDT spot books in the hourly data and 0.71 bps on Binance in the same rounds. For ETH at $100,000, Coinbase cost 1.3 bps and Kraken 1.4 bps, against 0.53 bps on Binance. Remember that Coinbase and Kraken charge higher trading fees than most of the exchanges above (see the Kraken and Coinbase pages), and on a $10,000 order the fee is far larger than the slippage.
How to lose less to slippage
- Check the size first. Below about $10,000 on BTC and ETH, slippage is close to zero on any large exchange; the fee is the cost to watch.
- Split large orders. The cost per dollar of one $1M order was several times that of a $100k order in our data.
- Use limit orders when you can wait. A limit order that rests on the book pays no spread and no slippage (and usually a lower maker fee), but it may not fill.
- Pick the book, not just the exchange. The same exchange can be deep on BTC and thin on SOL. Our liquidity ranking shows depth per market.
- Avoid thin hours. Books thin out at some hours and around big news; see the best time of day to trade.
These figures describe early November 2026, a calm stretch. In a crash or a squeeze, books can lose most of their depth in seconds and slippage can be many times higher. The calculator reads the live book for the size you type.
Method
Every 5 minutes CostDepth reads each exchange's public order book and walks it as a market order would, for $1k, $5k, $10k, $50k, $100k, $500k and $1M, starting from the mid price (halfway between the best bid and best ask). The cost is the difference between what the order really pays and what it would pay at the mid price, so it includes both the spread and the slippage. Hourly averages are stored; this study uses the hours from 6 Nov 2026, 00:00 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 03:00 UTC, buy and sell averaged.
For each coin and size we took each exchange's median hour, then the median across exchanges (the "typical exchange"). We also list the cheapest and the most expensive exchange. Futures cover 19 exchanges, spot 14. SOL and XRP were added to the sampler later than BTC and ETH, and Lighter and Variational later than the others, so some series have fewer hours.
Coinbase and Kraken were added to CostDepth on the day of this study, so they have no stored hours yet. Their figures come from our own reads of their public USD books (13 reads, 10 Nov 2026, 03:39 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 04:34 UTC), with Binance and OKX spot read in the same rounds for comparison. A few snapshots are a much weaker sample than four days of hourly averages.
Fees are not included anywhere in this study. Public books show resting orders only; hidden orders and orders that arrive while you trade are not visible, and fast markets can thin books quickly.
The numbers behind every chart and table are in data.json (free to reuse with a credit to CostDepth). This is fee and cost data, not financial advice.
Sources
- CostDepth hourly spread and slippage (CSV) – hours 6 Nov 2026, 00:00 UTC to 10 Nov 2026, 03:00 UTC
- CostDepth methodology (book endpoints per exchange)
- Coinbase Exchange public order book API
- Kraken public Depth API