Slippage in one sentence: Slippage is the difference between the price you expected for a trade and the price you actually received.
Slippage is what happens when execution is messier than the quote on your screen. If an app shows a token at $1.00 but your swap or market order fills around $1.03, the extra 3 cents is slippage. Beginners run into slippage on DEX swaps, thin order books, fast markets, and large trades relative to available liquidity.
How it works
On an order book, a market order fills against the best available price first, then keeps moving to worse levels if the first level is not large enough. On an AMM, the pool’s pricing curve changes as your trade consumes one side of the pool. Many wallets and DEX interfaces include a slippage tolerance setting, which controls how far the final execution can move before the transaction fails.
Why it matters
Slippage turns a good-looking trade into a worse real trade, especially in low-liquidity markets or during volatility. Beginners should check trade size, liquidity, price impact, and slippage tolerance before clicking confirm. Setting tolerance too low may cause failed transactions, while setting it too high can leave room for bad execution or sandwich-style attacks on some venues.
Use it in a sentence
Example: “The token was moving fast, so I reduced my order size to avoid taking too much slippage on the swap.”