The score, by dimension
- the same for all 11
- #3 of 11 · best 27.2
- the same for all 11
- the same for all 11
- the same for all 11
Tick: the best in this ranking · Methodology v2026.11.1
CoW Swap
Batch-auction swap protocol
#3 of all 11 worldwide76
- Rank
- #3 of all 11 worldwide
- Your cost
- $2.40 a year0.02% trading fee · read
- Evidence
- Low0 of 2 scored; no receipt file yet
- Licence
- No MiCA record on file
- Freshness
- Read date not on filechecked · re-read due
Check availability for your country
CoW Swap · cow.fi. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
The verdict
CoW Swap is #3 of 11 published DEX aggregators.
Is CoW Swap right for you?
Suits you if
- Published criteria24.5/30; the category best is 27.2
Not yet tested for your country. Markets it lists: United States, Europe, Global.
to test where you can use it.
The rank above is the published one, the same for every reader. Find my best DEX aggregator shows where it lands for you.
What will CoW Swap cost you?
$2.40 your cost/yr
- How do you buy?
- Trading
- Your monthly volume
- $1k
- Trading fee
- 0.02%
$9.60 a year less than the typical DEX aggregator (DODO, the middle of 7 priced).
How this is calculatedHow safe is CoW Swap?
- Evidence: unknown0 of 2 criteria scored; no receipt file yet. The score is provisional until a quoted source is on file.
- LicenceMiCA (EU): no register record on file here.
If it doesn’t fit, choose
Compare all 4- 21inch4 points above80no verified pricing
- 4UniswapX2 points below74$0.00 a year · read
- 5DODO2 points below74$12 a year · read
Provider at a glance
- Category
- DEX Aggregators
- Official website
- cow.fi
Independent rankingchecked How it works
Details
Scored 76 out of 100 under methodology 2026.11.1, from the evidence read on file.
For your setup
Find out if CoW Swap fits you
The rank above is the published one — the same for every visitor. Answer the category's questions and this section shows where CoW Swap lands for you, which criteria your answers weight up, and which stated needs the record does or does not meet. The published rank stays beside it.
- A few questions
- No account required
- Ranking-blind: no commercial input
- Personalised in under 60 seconds
Find my best DEX aggregatorNothing is inferred from clicks, popularity or commercial value.
Why this rank
Why CoW Swap ranks #3
2 published criteria · Σ weight 100
This category publishes 2 criteria — security & track record; trust-minimization — but no per-criterion strength has been established for CoW Swap yet. Its position comes from the engine's five dimensions below, measured against the 11 ranked rows. Per-criterion receipts appear once the evidence read lands.
DimensionAgainst the poolValueBestRank
Availability / 20 · constant here14.014.0#1/11
Published criteria / 3024.527.2#3/11
Friction / 10 · constant here2.72.7#1/11
Trust record / 8 · constant here3.23.2#1/11
Measured data / 18 · constant here5.55.5#1/11
Margin−4behind 1inch, #2 of all 11 worldwide, on the published score
RobustnessNot scored on criteriaits position comes from the engine’s dimensions, not from criterion scores a re-read could move
Evidence0 of 2 scoredno receipt file for this category
Strengths
1 from the score dataWhere it leads
Best for readers who weight
- Published criteria — 24.5/30, category best 27.2/30
Tradeoffs
0 from the score dataWhere it trails
It trails the pool best by two tenths of the scale or more on no dimension that separates the pool, so no tradeoff can be stated from the data.
Record watch-outs
- Solver onboarding requires KYC, a bond and allowlisting by the allowlist contract's manager, even though price competition among active solvers is open
- Younger than 1inch/0x and multi-audited rather than the very longest track record
- An April-2026 hijack of the cow.fi domain took an estimated 1.2M USDC worth of user funds (a registrar attack, not a contract exploit)
Competitive position
How CoW Swap places on each criterion
Rank on every objective dimension among the rows scored on it. A criterion in the top third of its pool is listed as a lead, the bottom third as a trail; the middle is neither. Popularity, size and commercial terms are not dimensions.
Against the leader
83 vs 76 · gap 7.0Why Matcha (0x) ranks above CoW Swap
The compare workspace's arithmetic applied to these two rows. Each dimension's share of the gap is its weight × the difference, on the displayed scale — it reproduces the displayed gap of 7.0 to within rounding.
DimensionThisMatcha (0x)Gap share
Availability · 23% weight · constant here14.014.0same
Published criteria · 35% weight24.527.2−7.0, worse
Friction · 12% weight · constant here2.72.7same
Trust record · 9% weight · constant here3.23.2same
Measured data · 21% weight · constant here5.55.5same
Net7683−7.0
Your scenario
What CoW Swap costs on your scenario
Trading fee on what you buy: on one purchase, or for a year of purchases or of trading. Fixed purchase fees and deposit fees are not published as fields yet, so they are excluded, as are network gas and any withdrawal fee. Change an input and every figure recomputes from the published rate; the published rank does not move.
your cost/yr · default scenario — set your own
How do you buy?
$1k a month × 12 months × 0.02% trading fee = $2.40 / year
How do you buy? · your inputTrading
Your monthly volume · your input$1k
Trading fee · published rate0.02%
Rate read from the provider’s published pricing ↗ on 3 November 2026.
your cost/yrCost is stated as your cost/yr in USD; it is never a yield, never annualised, and it does not enter the score.
$2.40
Under the default inputs · USDTypical cost$12DODO, the middle of the 7 priced DEX aggregators · 7 of 11 rows priced · CoW Swap −$9.60 vs typical
Lowest fee, priced rows$2.40 · CoW SwapCoW Swap has the lowest fee of the priced rows for this scenario · availability not applied — set your country to filter
2 of 11 rows in this ranking have no verified rate for this scenario and are absent from the typical, not counted as free.
2 of 11 quote a zero fee that leaves costs out, so they are absent from the typical and the lowest fee, not counted as free.
Evidence
No evidence reading date recorded
One row per published criterion: the page each strength was read from, its source type by domain, the reading date and whether the file and the published table agree. Open a row for the quote and the receipt.
0 of 2 cells scored
Score evidenceUnknownno observation on file
No structured observation on file for this category; the strengths are the catalog’s published values.Public receiptsNo receipt filecategory publishes no receipt file
This category publishes no receipt file, because no structured research payload exists for it yet.Evidence confidenceNot yet ratedcoverage and corroboration, never freshness
No structured observation on file for this category; the receipt count is not counted.RobustnessNot scored on criteriano re-run describes this row
Whether the position holds when one criterion score is changed by one point and the ranking is run again. It is always a re-run of the ranking, never an estimate.No structured observation is on file for this provider in this category; the strengths are the catalog’s published values.
11 listed rows in this category still await an evidence read and sit outside the scored pool.
No receipt file. This category publishes no receipt file, because no structured research payload exists for it yet. The ledger below shows the published strengths without their receipts; the scores on this page are unchanged.
CriterionSourceTypeReadFreshnessStatusReceipt
Security & track recordstrength — · weight 60Report an error———
Not scored
No strength is established; the criterion contributes nothing and is not treated as zero.Trust-minimizationstrength — · weight 40Report an error———
Not scored
No strength is established; the criterion contributes nothing and is not treated as zero.How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
- Contract failure: the code holding the funds is exploited.Scored by Security & track record · 60%
- Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.Scored by Trust-minimization · 40%
Not assessed by this ranking: Custody failure, Regulatory failure, Execution failure, Exit failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Facts
facts, not scoresWhat the record publishes
- Pricing
- Fee: CoW Protocol's Fees page (docs.cow.fi, read 3 November 2026) lists a "Volume Fee" of "Standard Assets: 2 basis points (bps)" and "Correlated Assets (Stables/RWAs): 0.3 basis points (bps)", plus a "Quote improvement fee on market orders" of "50% of positive quote improvement on market orders (aka swaps), capped at 0.98% of the total volume of the order"; worked conversion: 2 basis points = 0.02 percent of volume, the typed fee. The CoW Swap Terms of Use add that the swap.cow.fi interface "is currently free to use". Routing: batch auctions with competition among allowlisted, bonded solvers; MEV-protected by design. Since 2021. Non-custodial, immutable settlement, open-source protocol services (solver engines partly proprietary). Extensively audited; Apr-2026 cow.fi domain hijack took an estimated 1.2M USDC worth of user funds. Live volume shown for context, not scored.CoW Swap — official page at docs.cow.fi ↗ · 3 November 2026
- Prices published in
- USDCoW Swap — official page at docs.cow.fi ↗ · 3 November 2026
- Licences held
- Not published
- Compliance level
- unregulated
- Regulatory note
- Not published
- Supported chains
- Not published
- Markets served
- us, europe, global
- Primary markets
- Not published
- Restricted markets
- Not published
- Operating limits
- Not published
- Availability note
- CoW Swap Terms of Use (read 3 November 2026): users represent that "You are not located in, under the control of, or a national or resident of any jurisdiction subject to sanctions or embargoes by applicable law (including but not limited to those imposed by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom), or any jurisdiction where your use of the Interface or the Protocol would be illegal or otherwise violate any applicable law."
Legal entity on file: CoW Protocol, placed in 3 products. Only confirmed entities are shown; nothing is inferred from the brand name.
If something goes wrong with CoW Swap: where to complain, and where to report a scam
Loading the routes for your country.
How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means this product in this category was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.
How we review · Review calendar · Corrections log · How we make money
History
What the record carries
Changes to published ranks are recorded in a ledger; every step and its cause is listed on the rank-history page. The entries below begin with the current verified snapshot, then the methodology versions whose changes applied to this category, newest first.
10 methodology entries
- currentCurrent verified snapshot · methodology 2026.11.1Score 76, #3 of 11. 0 of 2 criteria scored. History starts here; earlier values are not interpolated.
- 10 October 2026
2026.10.8When nothing serves your country, the list shown for reference is the published ranking · platform-wide- fixed The reference list shown when nothing serves your country is the published order with the published scores, and a build check now fails any such list out of that order or with a score the ranking does not publish.
- fixed The explorer prints an overall rank only for a row the published ranking holds; a country entrant such as Coinbase Commerce for US merchants shows no overall rank.
- changed Published orders do not move. Country results change only where nothing serves the country: in India bill pay keeps Bitcoin Well first and now shows Strike second, as published; 35 such runs across all categories and countries now match the published list exactly.
- 10 October 2026
2026.10.6A criterion you require re-scores the rows that meet it · platform-wide- changed The explorer sends each criterion you require, at any band, as fit_required with your other answers; region, licence, chain and fact filters stay filters. On /best, a required criterion joins For you as a marked preference does, which needs your country; Overall stays the published ranking, filtered.
- added Every published criterion has a golden case as the explorer sends it (require:<criterion>), so the order a requirement gives is replayed and gated as the published order is, and a change to it needs an entry here.
- 1 October 2026
2026.10.0Layer-2 chains are ranked on whether you can leave with your funds- added Four l2_chains criteria with published band ladders: proof system (18), withdrawals if the operator stops (18), rollup stage (14) and exit window before an upgrade (6). EVM equivalence moves 40 to 17, Ethereum data availability 25 to 15 and maturity 35 to 12. Every chain's emergency exit window reads None, so the exit-window ladder also reads L2BEAT's regular, non-emergency upgrade path (Arbitrum One 10 days, Starknet and Arbitrum Nova 7, zkSync Era 4 days 3 hours); data availability separates full transaction data (10) from state diffs only (9, L2BEAT: Onchain (SD)). A stage L2BEAT marks Under review keeps its last score for at most one 45-day cycle and is never interpolated.
- changed l2_chains ranks through scoreCriterionObjective on fitStrength, like the other criterion-ranked categories; the hand-written structural scorer is deleted. All 105 criterion scores across 15 rows carry a quote and source in research-pending/rereads/2026-10-01-l2_chains.json; 131 of 135 quotes re-fetched verbatim on the read date, and the four behind a bot wall or a JavaScript shell were read by the adversarial model run.
- fixed Four facts corrected on the read: Scroll, Mantle and Blast are EVM-compatible, not equivalent (their own documentation, and for Blast live RPC probes); Starknet's public mainnet opened to users in 2022, not 2021. Arbitrum Nova's data has gone to Ethereum as blobs since 31 August 2026, and the row now leads with the Arbitrum DAO's decision to minimise it.
- fixed The old scorer credited Ethereum data availability whenever the data-availability text contained the word "ethereum", so Arbitrum Nova's committee ("…Ethereum L1 rollup fallback") and Polygon zkEVM's off-chain data ("…Ethereum L1 before the sunset") both scored full marks. Data availability is now a quoted L2BEAT reading.
Methodology 2026.11.1, the same published run every visitor sees · receipt dex_aggregator:cowswap:2026.11.1:db9196758817
Are you CoW Swap? Reply to this verdict, or send evidence, ask for a correction or claim the listing. Every message gets a public ticket number; none of it changes a rank unless a public page or a signed statement supports it.