Slippage is the difference between the price you saw when you confirmed a trade and the price it was actually carried out at. It can work for you or against you, but people usually mean the second case: getting a worse price than you expected. The Icelandic term is verðskrið.
Why does slippage happen?
- Low liquidity. When LiquidityLiquidityHow easily an asset can be bought or sold quickly at a fair price, without the trade moving the price much. is low, there are few orders close to the current price. They are used up quickly, and the rest of your trade goes through at a worse price.
- Large trades. The bigger your trade compared with the market, the deeper it reaches into the order bookOrder bookA list of all open buy and sell orders for an asset, sorted by price. A trade happens when a buy order and a sell order meet. and the more it moves the price.
- Volatility. When prices move fast, the price can change in the seconds between your confirming a trade and the trade going through.
Slippage is not the same as the SpreadSpreadThe difference between the buying and selling price of the same asset at the same time, often used to charge for crypto trades.. The spread is the difference between the buying and selling price at the same moment, and you know it before you trade. Slippage shows up when the trade is carried out.
On some exchanges you can set a maximum price for a purchase instead of buying at the market price. Then you never get a worse price than the one you set, but your trade may not go through.
Slippage on decentralised exchanges
On decentralised exchangesDecentralised exchange (DEX)An exchange run by smart contracts, where people swap crypto straight from their own wallets with no company in the middle. (DEXs), your transaction may wait a while before it makes it into a block. In the meantime, other trades can move the price.
That is why they offer a setting called slippage tolerance. It says how much worse a price you will accept, for example 1%. If the price moves beyond that, the transaction doesn't go through. On Ethereum, though, you still pay the network feeNetwork feeA fee paid to a crypto network, not to a bank or company, for including your transaction in a block. even if the transaction fails.
A high tolerance makes it more likely that your trade goes through, but the price can end up worse. It can also invite so-called sandwich attacks, where someone spots your transaction while it waits and trades just before and just after it, at your expense.
Everything in Myntkaup Learn is written and regularly reviewed by the Myntkaup editorial team. It is for education and is not investment advice. Editorial policy. Updated 18 October 2026.