Uniswap charges 0.25% (25bps) on many popular tokens traded on its app, up from 0.15% last year. This means you're losing money on a considerable share of trading volume if you use Uniswap directly. Did you know you could get access to the same liquidity with added benefits, or simply swap for free on Matcha?

If you're looking for a new place to trade, Matcha has zero added fees on swaps and still connects you to over 130 liquidity sources to keep trades as efficient as possible. Want to pay for a premium experience? Then Matcha Auto gives you MEV protection, gasless swaps and more, at around half the price of Uniswap!

Why look for a Uniswap alternative

Price-sensitive traders looking for alternatives to Uniswap have many options to turn to, each with their pros and cons. With almost 65% of the DEX market share according to CoinGecko, it’s clear that many traders default to Uniswap simply out of habit, without questioning what they get for their money. 

There are many reasons the community was unhappy about Uniswap introducing fees, and now they have raised them by almost 70%. Many agree that DeFi projects need monetization to survive, but critics claim that fees should be reserved for cases where there is additional value delivered, and that Uniswap has failed to bring anything new in terms of the trading experience.

In our comparisons of DEXs below, we mainly focus on DEX aggregators like Matcha which bring together liquidity from hundreds of DEXs into one fluid market, rather than individual DEXs which only support a limited number of tokens. Liquidity aggregation is what lets Matcha offer the best prices across millions of tokens and route orders to capture the best value across DeFi.

Best DEX aggregator: Matcha

Matcha is a DEX aggregator built by 0x, the leading crypto infrastructure provider used by the likes of Coinbase and Robinhood. With 0x powering the full trading stack, no other DEX is as efficient or provides as broad liquidity as Matcha. Try Matcha today!

As a DEX aggregator, Matcha can tap into over 130 liquidity sources to complete your trade. Matcha will calculate a route through this liquidity to find the best value automatically, even if that means executing your order through multiple exchanges. With no front-end fees, you could save money and time on every trade, across over 5 million tokens!

Free to swap 

Swaps on Matcha are free, so you just pay the network costs to broadcast your trade onchain. If you want a little more, such as MEV protection to eliminate the chances of our trade getting hit by a sandwich attack, you can pay just 0.15% (15bps) to use Matcha Auto - less than Uniswap charges. 

Matcha Auto is a privileged trading mode that uses meta-transactions, RFQ and private mempools to give you the best trading experience in DeFi: gasless swaps for tokens, protection from MEV, and the lowest trade revert rate of any decentralized exchange. Why pay 25bps for nothing, when you can trade like a VIP for less?

Lowest trade revert rates in DeFi

Decentralized trading can be tricky due to the asynchronous nature of transactions. Trades can be reverted, causing you to miss opportunities or waste money on gas fees. With some exchanges seeing as much as 12% of all trades reverted, serious traders need to pick the right DEX or risk leaving money on the table! 

Matcha has the lowest trade revert rates in DeFi by a large margin, even in the free Standard mode, at just 6%. That’s not all though - revert rates are as low as 0.5% when using Matcha Auto, helping you offset the fee several times over through saving time and money!

Global availability

Matcha was launched by 0x in 2020, in San Francisco, USA, where it remains headquartered to this day. Customers from the USA and most other non-sanctioned countries are able to trade on Matcha without having to find creative ways around geofencing. As a platform, Matcha enables the best permissionless trading experience while retaining the legal right to operate in the USA. 

How Matcha compares to other DEX aggregators

1inch‍

1inch is a DEX aggregator with similar features to Matcha but it is not available to traders in the USA. Although swaps are free, trades made on 1inch experience a much higher revert rate of over 10% on average. That’s almost double what you’d get on Matcha!‍

ODOS‍

ODOS states on its website that it offers aggregated liquidity of over 50 DEXs, around half of Matcha. One attractive feature of ODOS is their user interface which leans heavily into visualization of the Smart Order Routing, giving you a clear idea of the execution path your transaction will take. Matcha also provides a routing breakdown in the trade module, so you know you’re getting a competitive price.

CoW Swap

CoWSwap is a niche DEX aggregator that only operates on the Ethereum network. It uses batch auctions to coordinate trades peer-to-peer or using AMMs (Automated Market Makers). This auction model reduces the impact of MEV by negotiating the trade off-chain, similar to how an RFQ (request for quote) order works on Matcha. While both models have merits, RFQs will execute faster and are transparent to all participants, allowing for more competitive rates.

ParaSwap

ParaSwap is another DEX aggregator that is active on 7 networks. It offers smart order routing and fee-free swaps if trading directly through the ParaSwap interface, while access through a third party may incur additional fees.

Alternative platforms for Liquidity Providers

PancakeSwap

Like Uniswap, PancakeSwap is a DEX that has its own liquidity providers which it incentivizes with liquidity pool token rewards. It does not have access to aggregated liquidity from other DEXs.

For Liquidity Providers who are looking to move from UniSwap, PancakeSwap offers liquidity pooling and LP tokens which can be used to farm CAKE tokens. Check out our post about PancakeSwap v3 liquidity to learn more. Created as a fork of the Uniswap protocol, PancakeSwap is an easy choice for LPs who want a familiar experience. Although best known as a BNB Smart Chain exchange, PancakeSwap now supports Ethereum as well as 7 other chains, so you can enjoy much of the functionality you’re used to without the frontend fee, but you will not benefit from aggregated liquidity available on Matcha. 

Curve

Curve Finance is a DEX that was first introduced in 2020, focusing mainly on providing liquidity for swaps of stablecoins or wrapped assets. This limited focus helps increase efficiency, allowing Curve to offer lower fees, slippage, and impermanent loss than many other DEXs. Curve currently operates on 12 networks.

DODO

Supporting Ethereum and 6 other chains, Dodo is a DEX that uses a Proactive Market Making (PMM) algorithm to give more control to market makers who pool their assets using DODO, in order to help synthesize more favorable market conditions and avoid impermanent loss. As a traditional DEX, DODO does not have access to the deep liquidity of a DEX aggregator like Matcha, instead relying on liquidity providers that contribute directly to DODO pools, which also have less liquidity than Uniswap by a large margin.

Don't pay a premium for the same old brew

Why did Uniswap introduce fees? Originally their founder reported that fees would help make Uniswap sustainable and help to prop up revenue during the bear market where trade volumes were low. That’s a fair argument, but we believe you should give something back if you’re going to charge for access to public liquidity.

The more recent move to raise fees from 0.15% to 0.25% comes after news of a potential legal battle, but it is not clear if the two are linked.

The good news is you don’t have to pay the fee to keep using Uniswap! Uniswap fees are only enforced on the trading frontend, while liquidity managed by the Uniswap protocol is still available for free when you use an aggregator like Matcha.

Why pay for nothing new, when you get more for your money on Matcha? Enjoy everything you had on Uniswap for free, or upgrade your trades with gasless swaps, MEV protection, lower revert rates, and access to private market makers for even less than Uniswap!