What is slippage in simple terms?

Slippage is when you pay more (or receive less) than expected on a trade because the market moved or there wasn't enough liquidity at your target price. It's like going to buy a concert ticket for $50 but finding the price is $55 by the time you click buy.

Is slippage always bad?

Not always. Positive slippage happens when the price moves in your favor — you get a better price than expected. However, negative slippage is far more common and is the type traders need to manage.

How is slippage different from spread?

The spread is the difference between the best bid and ask price in an order book. Slippage is the additional cost beyond the spread when your order is large enough to move the price.

Can I avoid slippage completely?

You can minimize but not completely avoid slippage. Using limit orders instead of market orders eliminates price slippage. Breaking large orders into smaller ones reduces liquidity slippage. Trading on platforms with deeper liquidity like Flashnet also helps.

What is a good slippage tolerance setting?

For major pairs like BTC/USDB, 0.1-0.5% is typical. For less liquid pairs, 1-3% may be necessary. Setting tolerance too low means your trade might not execute; setting it too high means you accept worse prices.

What Is Slippage in Crypto Trading?

Slippage is the price difference between what you expect to pay and what you actually pay when executing a trade. It occurs when there isn't enough liquidity at your target price, causing your order to fill at worse prices.

Flashnet Team|February 11, 2026

What Is Slippage?

When you place a market order to buy 1 BTC at $95,000, you might actually pay $95,150 or more if the order book doesn't have enough sell orders at $95,000. That $150 difference is slippage. It's an invisible cost that most traders don't notice until it erodes their returns over time.

Slippage affects every crypto trader, but it hits hardest on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) where liquidity is often thinner than on centralized platforms. AMM-based DEXs are especially prone to slippage because the constant product formula means larger trades always move the price.

On centralized exchanges, slippage comes from order book depth — if there aren't enough limit orders at the current price level, your market order eats into higher (or lower) price levels. On AMMs, slippage is mathematically guaranteed by the bonding curve.

How Slippage Works

There are two types of slippage. Price slippage occurs when the price moves between when you submit and when your order executes, which is common during volatile markets. Liquidity slippage occurs when your order is too large for the available depth, so it fills across multiple price levels.

For a $1,000 BTC trade on a liquid exchange, slippage might be fractions of a cent. For a $100,000 trade on a thin DEX pool, slippage can be 1-3% or more — costing you $1,000 to $3,000 in worse execution.

How to Minimize Slippage on Flashnet

Flashnet combines an AMM with an order book, giving traders access to deeper liquidity than either system alone. The order book handles large trades that would cause excessive slippage on a pure AMM, while the AMM provides consistent liquidity for smaller trades.

Use the Slippage Calculator to estimate expected slippage for your trade size before executing.

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