On Solana, every bot trade carries three costs beyond the bot's own fee: a priority fee that helps your transaction get scheduled sooner, often a Jito tip (the "bribe") to win Jito's block auction, and slippage, the price movement you agree to accept. Priority fees and tips are paid in SOL even when a trade fails, and slippage can cost more than both if you set it too high.
Risk notice: Crypto trading is high risk and memecoins can go to zero in minutes. Trading bots use hot wallets. This page is not financial advice; only trade what you can afford to lose.
This guide explains each one using Solana's and Jito's docs, then shows what the bots we rank recommend. All figures were checked September 26, 2026.
The base fee
Every Solana transaction pays a base fee of 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature. Half is burned and half goes to the validator that produces the block (Solana fee structure). It's tiny and you can't change it.
Priority fees
A priority fee is optional, and it's the main lever bots give you for speed. Solana's fee docs define it as:
priority fee = compute unit price × compute unit limit
- Compute units measure how much work a transaction does. The default limit is 200,000 per instruction, up to 1.4 million per transaction.
- Compute unit price is what you offer per unit, in micro-lamports (one millionth of a lamport).
100% of the priority fee goes to the validator. The scheduler orders transactions by a priority score that includes this fee, per the fee structure page. A higher fee raises your place in line; it doesn't guarantee a slot.
Bots hide the math and let you set a flat SOL amount per trade. Solana also says: "If the transaction fails, the fee is still charged." Trojan's docs put it plainly: "gas tips are paid to the network even if your transaction fails" (Trojan).
Jito tips (bribes)
Most Solana stake runs Jito's validator client (over 92% as of January 2025, per Helius). Jito's block engine runs an auction, and a tip is your bid. Per Jito's docs:
- A tip is a SOL transfer to one of Jito's tip accounts. The minimum is 1,000 lamports, but "during high-demand periods, this minimum tip might not be sufficient."
- For single transactions, Jito suggests splitting your budget roughly 70% priority fee and 30% tip.
- For bundles (up to 5 transactions executed all-or-nothing), only the tip matters for priority.
Bots use different names. Axiom and Photon call it a bribe; Trojan applies your gas settings to validator tips when MEV protection is on. Tips are also how MEV-protected routes get prioritized, which is why protected trades often need a higher tip. See Solana MEV protection explained.
Slippage
Slippage is the maximum price change you accept between sending a trade and it landing. If the price moves further, the trade fails instead of filling.
On a new memecoin, price can jump in seconds, so low slippage means many failed buys (and you still pay the priority fee each time). High slippage means your buys fill, but at worse prices, and it gives sandwich bots more room. Helius notes that sandwiches target "traders who place orders on AMMs or bonding curves with high slippage tolerances" (Helius), and Jupiter says "unreasonably high slippage (>20%) led to sandwich attacks" (Jupiter).
Slippage isn't a fee you always pay. It's a cap. But on thin tokens you'll often hit a good part of it, and a sandwich takes you right to it.
What the bots recommend
| Bot | Priority fee | Tip / bribe | Slippage guidance | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axiom | 0.001 SOL default | 0.001 SOL default; auto option | Raise for volatile tokens; keep low without MEV protection | Axiom |
| Trojan | Fast 0.0015 SOL, Turbo 0.0075 SOL, or custom | Applied from gas settings with MEV on | 15% default | Trojan |
| GMGN | 0.002-0.005 SOL combined for normal trades; 0.006+ for automated orders; 0.01+ above 1 SOL | Included in the combined figure; max 2 SOL | 30%-35% automated; 50%+ for new tokens | GMGN, GMGN |
| Photon | Per preset (S1/S2/S3) | Per preset; Auto Speed option | Per preset | Photon |
| BONKbot | Medium, High, Very High or custom | Raise bribe to speed up Secure MEV mode | Separate buy/sell slippage plus max price impact | BONKbot |
| FOMO | Not user-set; TechCrunch reported no gas charged to users | Not user-set | Not user-set | TechCrunch |
These numbers come from each bot's docs, not from our own testing. What's "enough" changes with network demand.
How to set them sensibly
General principles, not trading advice:
- Start with the bot's default or auto setting. Axiom and Photon both have auto modes that set priority and bribe from recent transaction data.
- Raise the priority fee only when trades fail with timeouts. GMGN's failure guide separates "priority fee is low" errors from "slippage is low" errors. Fix the one that actually failed.
- Think in percentages. A 0.0075 SOL fee on a 0.1 SOL buy is 7.5% of the trade, before the bot fee. Small trades get eaten by fixed fees. Trojan's Turbo preset suits bigger trades, not tiny ones.
- Set buy and sell separately where possible. Exiting a falling token may justify a higher fee than entering.
- Keep slippage as low as the token allows, and use MEV protection on buys. Raise slippage in small steps rather than jumping to 50%.
- Keep a SOL reserve. GMGN recommends at least 0.05 SOL left in the wallet so fees don't cause failures.
A worked example
Say you buy 0.5 SOL of a Pump.fun token through a 1% bot with a 0.002 SOL priority fee and a 0.001 SOL tip. Your costs before slippage (our arithmetic, from the linked docs):
- Bot fee: 0.005 SOL (1%)
- Pump.fun bonding curve fee: about 0.00625 SOL (1.25%, per Pump.fun)
- Priority fee plus tip: 0.003 SOL
- Base fee: 0.000005 SOL per signature
That's about 0.014 SOL, or roughly 2.9% of the trade, and you pay a similar amount again to sell. Then slippage comes on top. For platform fees across bots, see Solana trading bot fees compared and cheapest Solana trading bot.
Related reading
- How to use Trojan bot and how to use GMGN walk through where these settings live.
- Solana trading bot glossary defines every term here.
- Reviews: Axiom, Trojan, GMGN.
The full ranking is on our home page.