MetaMask scores 11 points above Exodus, led by clear signing and incident record. MetaMask ranks #2 and Exodus #6 of 11 published wallets. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.
MetaMask80
vs
Exodus69
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #2 and #6 of 11
MetaMask scores 11 points above Exodus, led by clear signing and incident record.
MetaMask #2 of 1180
Exodus #6 of 1169
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termMetaMask leads on 2 of 4 published criteria; Exodus on 0. The terms sum to the gap.
TermMetaMaskExodusWeightPoints
Clear signing6/102/107.2+7.5for MetaMask+3.8 of 32
Incident record8/106/105.8+3.0for MetaMask+1.5 of 32
Net of the terms+10.5
Criteria roundingThe criteria block is rounded to whole points before it is spread+0.2
Reproduced gap+10.7
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below8069+11.0
Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.
MetaMaskScore 80The default EVM wallet: seed and per-account private-key export both documented on a stated BIP-44 path, a 2017-2025 public audit trail with three dated vendor advisories, and a pre-signature balance preview for contract interactions only, enforced onchain on 15 named networks for smart accounts on Extension.Strength: Key export — 9/10Watch-out: Read the fine print behind the three security claims on metamask.io before treating them as the product. All three are true and all three are narrower than they read. "Transaction protection available up to $10k" is not a wallet feature: it is Transaction Shield, "$9.99 monthly or $99 yearly", "Early access is now available on MetaMask Extension" only, capped at "Coverage of up to 100 transactions per month", and it explicitly "does not cover transactions deemed malicious by MetaMask" — so it does not pay out on the flagged case you most fear, and it does not exist on mobile. "Regularly audited by security firms" is backed by 17 genuinely public report links across 15 dated entries, but no report published since 2022 audits the shipped application itself: the 2023-2024 entries cover libraries, Snaps and build hardening, and the 2025 entries audit the mUSD stablecoin contract. And the pre-signature preview most buyers assume they are getting is, per MetaMask's own page (re-read 2026-09-28), available only "for contract interactions", not for native transfers; the enforced onchain simulation that reverts a transaction when execution diverges from the preview covers 15 named networks but is on by default only for "MetaMask smart accounts on Extension", and no page says what the confirmation screen shows when a simulation cannot be produced. If you pair a hardware device, two MetaMask troubleshooting pages tell you to enable blind signing, one of them with no qualifier at all. Finally, the exit that makes this record strong — pulling your encrypted vault out of local storage and decrypting it offline — is Chromium-desktop-only: MetaMask's own recovery page says it is "not currently possible" on Android or iOS, that the iOS method "is no longer working", that an Android solution is still being worked on, and that Firefox's data-encoding changes have made the instructions "of limited use".ExodusScore 69Closed-source multi-device self-custody wallet from an NYSE American-listed issuer: exemplary documented key export and exit, and since 1 October 2026 no screen for signing third-party (dApp) requests at all.Strength: Key export — 9/10Watch-out: Read this before committing: Exodus no longer signs dApp requests on any platform. Mobile lost them first: "WalletConnect and the dApp browser are no longer available in Exodus Mobile" and "you can no longer connect to, manage, or approve requests for web3 connections in Exodus Mobile". Then the browser extension went: "Support for Exodus Web3 Wallet ended on October 1, 2026 .", and in Exodus's words "To keep using dApps or web3 apps, you'll need to use a different wallet that supports web3 connections." (read 28 October 2026). If you used the extension, view its 12-word key before you uninstall it: "If you uninstall the browser extension, you won't be able to view your secret key or reinstall the extension." Two further asymmetries a buyer should price. The wallet is free but the earn side is opaque: Exodus publishes no spread number, and its own 10-K shows five API Providers generating 69.1% of revenue. And the security record is unfalsifiable rather than clean — the HackerOne policy forbids discussing "any vulnerabilities (even resolved ones)" publicly, there is no advisory archive, no third-party audit is published, and the vendor pre-commits that it "will not be able to compensate you for the loss of your funds." Exodus is a strong place to hold, move and eventually LEAVE with your coins — the key-export and exit documentation both score 9/10, among the strongest in this pool — and no place to sign contract calls: its only documented dApp-signing surface, the Web3 Wallet extension, ended on October 1, 2026.
Quick facts
At a glance
3 of 4 rows read the same for both.
FactMetaMaskExodus
PricingSnapshot"Subscribing to Transaction Shield is $9.99 monthly or $99 yearly, and includes: Transaction Protection of up to $10,000 per month for eligible interactions", with "Coverage of up to 100 transactions per month", "Try it free for 14 days." and "Early access is now available on MetaMask Extension." (support.metamask.io/manage-crypto/transactions/transaction-shield/, fetched 28 October 2026). The wallet client itself carries no download or subscription price on any vendor page; MetaMask monetises through transaction fees, both vendor-stated on their own pages: the buy FAQ says "MetaMask receives a 1% fee on every transaction, calculated as a percentage of the fiat value you request" (support.metamask.io/manage-crypto/move-crypto/buy/faqs/, fetched 28 October 2026), and the swaps guide breaks a quote into "Quote rate", "Network fee" and "MetaMask fee: 0.875%" (support.metamask.io/trade/swap/user-guide-swaps/, fetched 28 October 2026)."Are there Exodus wallet fees? Or Exodus transaction fees? How about Exodus swap fees?" — "Exodus doesn't charge any fees, but almost all blockchain transactions will cost a network transaction fee (also known as gas) when you send crypto." The same article qualifies this for the in-app rails: "Buying and selling crypto in Exodus includes a processing fee and a network transaction fee." and "Swaps in Exodus may include a spread and a network transaction fee.", and adds "With Exodus Pay, you can send Cash to other Exodus Pay users without paying network transaction fees." (Exodus help article 8611278, "Does Exodus have transaction fees to send or receive?", read 28 October 2026 on the vendor's Intercom knowledge base, intercom.help/exodus; www.exodus.com answers a Cloudflare challenge). Exodus publishes no number for the spread: "There's no fixed spread, even when swapping the same two assets. Spreads change based on liquidity and market conditions at the time you're making a swap." (article 8598754, read 28 October 2026). The iOS app is free (iTunes Lookup id 1414384820: "Exodus: Crypto & Payments", Free, version 26.10.23, fetched 28 October 2026). The FY2025 Form 10-K discloses the revenue model — an agent's share of third-party API Provider volume: "five API Providers each accounted for more than 10% of our revenues and collectively generated 69.1% of revenue." (sec.gov, exod-20251231.htm, re-read 28 October 2026). So the wallet is free, and the buyer pays through an unpublished spread on rails run by a concentrated set of third parties.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshotglobalglobal
Custody modelEditorialSelf-custody: the vendor cannot move funds without your keySelf-custody: the vendor cannot move funds without your key
From the published criteria
Which should you pick?
MetaMask
80#2 of 11
Leads
Pick it when
Pick MetaMask if clear signing matters most — it scores 6/10 to Exodus's 2/10 there (weight 30).
Strength
Key export — 9/10
Tradeoff
Read the fine print behind the three security claims on metamask.io before treating them as the product. All three are true and all three are narrower than they read. "Transaction protection available up to $10k" is not a wallet feature: it is Transaction Shield, "$9.99 monthly or $99 yearly", "Early access is now available on MetaMask Extension" only, capped at "Coverage of up to 100 transactions per month", and it explicitly "does not cover transactions deemed malicious by MetaMask" — so it does not pay out on the flagged case you most fear, and it does not exist on mobile. "Regularly audited by security firms" is backed by 17 genuinely public report links across 15 dated entries, but no report published since 2022 audits the shipped application itself: the 2023-2024 entries cover libraries, Snaps and build hardening, and the 2025 entries audit the mUSD stablecoin contract. And the pre-signature preview most buyers assume they are getting is, per MetaMask's own page (re-read 2026-09-28), available only "for contract interactions", not for native transfers; the enforced onchain simulation that reverts a transaction when execution diverges from the preview covers 15 named networks but is on by default only for "MetaMask smart accounts on Extension", and no page says what the confirmation screen shows when a simulation cannot be produced. If you pair a hardware device, two MetaMask troubleshooting pages tell you to enable blind signing, one of them with no qualifier at all. Finally, the exit that makes this record strong — pulling your encrypted vault out of local storage and decrypting it offline — is Chromium-desktop-only: MetaMask's own recovery page says it is "not currently possible" on Android or iOS, that the iOS method "is no longer working", that an Android solution is still being worked on, and that Firefox's data-encoding changes have made the instructions "of limited use".
Exodus
69#6 of 11
Pick it when
Exodus leads MetaMask on no published criterion and no score dimension — pick it only if a fact outside the score (country, funding rail, custody) decides for you.
Strength
Key export — 9/10
Tradeoff
Read this before committing: Exodus no longer signs dApp requests on any platform. Mobile lost them first: "WalletConnect and the dApp browser are no longer available in Exodus Mobile" and "you can no longer connect to, manage, or approve requests for web3 connections in Exodus Mobile". Then the browser extension went: "Support for Exodus Web3 Wallet ended on October 1, 2026 .", and in Exodus's words "To keep using dApps or web3 apps, you'll need to use a different wallet that supports web3 connections." (read 28 October 2026). If you used the extension, view its 12-word key before you uninstall it: "If you uninstall the browser extension, you won't be able to view your secret key or reinstall the extension." Two further asymmetries a buyer should price. The wallet is free but the earn side is opaque: Exodus publishes no spread number, and its own 10-K shows five API Providers generating 69.1% of revenue. And the security record is unfalsifiable rather than clean — the HackerOne policy forbids discussing "any vulnerabilities (even resolved ones)" publicly, there is no advisory archive, no third-party audit is published, and the vendor pre-commits that it "will not be able to compensate you for the loss of your funds." Exodus is a strong place to hold, move and eventually LEAVE with your coins — the key-export and exit documentation both score 9/10, among the strongest in this pool — and no place to sign contract calls: its only documented dApp-signing surface, the Web3 Wallet extension, ended on October 1, 2026.
Self-identify in 10 seconds
Which one is actually for you?
MetaMaskLeads
Choose MetaMask if clear signing matters most
Clear signing: 6/10 against 2/10 for Exodus (weight 30)
Incident record: 8/10 against 6/10 for Exodus (weight 24)
MetaMaskScore 80The default EVM wallet: seed and per-account private-key export both documented on a stated BIP-44 path, a 2017-2025 public audit trail with three dated vendor advisories, and a pre-signature balance preview for contract interactions only, enforced onchain on 15 named networks for smart accounts on Extension.Strength: Key export — 9/10Watch-out: Read the fine print behind the three security claims on metamask.io before treating them as the product. All three are true and all three are narrower than they read. "Transaction protection available up to $10k" is not a wallet feature: it is Transaction Shield, "$9.99 monthly or $99 yearly", "Early access is now available on MetaMask Extension" only, capped at "Coverage of up to 100 transactions per month", and it explicitly "does not cover transactions deemed malicious by MetaMask" — so it does not pay out on the flagged case you most fear, and it does not exist on mobile. "Regularly audited by security firms" is backed by 17 genuinely public report links across 15 dated entries, but no report published since 2022 audits the shipped application itself: the 2023-2024 entries cover libraries, Snaps and build hardening, and the 2025 entries audit the mUSD stablecoin contract. And the pre-signature preview most buyers assume they are getting is, per MetaMask's own page (re-read 2026-09-28), available only "for contract interactions", not for native transfers; the enforced onchain simulation that reverts a transaction when execution diverges from the preview covers 15 named networks but is on by default only for "MetaMask smart accounts on Extension", and no page says what the confirmation screen shows when a simulation cannot be produced. If you pair a hardware device, two MetaMask troubleshooting pages tell you to enable blind signing, one of them with no qualifier at all. Finally, the exit that makes this record strong — pulling your encrypted vault out of local storage and decrypting it offline — is Chromium-desktop-only: MetaMask's own recovery page says it is "not currently possible" on Android or iOS, that the iOS method "is no longer working", that an Android solution is still being worked on, and that Firefox's data-encoding changes have made the instructions "of limited use".
Exodus
Exodus leads MetaMask on no published criterion
Choose it only if something outside the published criteria decides for you — your country, a funding rail, or custody.
ExodusScore 69Closed-source multi-device self-custody wallet from an NYSE American-listed issuer: exemplary documented key export and exit, and since 1 October 2026 no screen for signing third-party (dApp) requests at all.Strength: Key export — 9/10Watch-out: Read this before committing: Exodus no longer signs dApp requests on any platform. Mobile lost them first: "WalletConnect and the dApp browser are no longer available in Exodus Mobile" and "you can no longer connect to, manage, or approve requests for web3 connections in Exodus Mobile". Then the browser extension went: "Support for Exodus Web3 Wallet ended on October 1, 2026 .", and in Exodus's words "To keep using dApps or web3 apps, you'll need to use a different wallet that supports web3 connections." (read 28 October 2026). If you used the extension, view its 12-word key before you uninstall it: "If you uninstall the browser extension, you won't be able to view your secret key or reinstall the extension." Two further asymmetries a buyer should price. The wallet is free but the earn side is opaque: Exodus publishes no spread number, and its own 10-K shows five API Providers generating 69.1% of revenue. And the security record is unfalsifiable rather than clean — the HackerOne policy forbids discussing "any vulnerabilities (even resolved ones)" publicly, there is no advisory archive, no third-party audit is published, and the vendor pre-commits that it "will not be able to compensate you for the loss of your funds." Exodus is a strong place to hold, move and eventually LEAVE with your coins — the key-export and exit documentation both score 9/10, among the strongest in this pool — and no place to sign contract calls: its only documented dApp-signing surface, the Web3 Wallet extension, ended on October 1, 2026.
Criterion by criterion
Scorecard
Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology
Key export
weight 6.7 of 86Tie
MetaMask9/10 out of 10
Exodus9/10 out of 10
Clear signing
by 4 of 10weight 7.2 of 86MetaMask leads
MetaMask6/10 out of 10
Exodus2/10 out of 10
Incident record
by 2 of 10weight 5.8 of 86MetaMask leads
MetaMask8/10 out of 10
Exodus6/10 out of 10
Account recovery
weight 4.3 of 86Tie
MetaMask9/10 out of 10
Exodus9/10 out of 10
Score dimensions
weights sum to 86
The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.
Availabilityweight 20 of 86 · constant here
MetaMask14/20Exodus14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
MetaMask18.9/30Exodus14.8/30
MetaMask leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
MetaMask2.7/10Exodus2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
MetaMask3.2/8Exodus3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
MetaMask8.3/18Exodus8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order
Choose MetaMask unless the term Exodus leads on is the one you are buying.
Exodus leads MetaMask on no published criterion and no score dimension — pick it only if a fact outside the score (country, funding rail, custody) decides for you.
The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .
From the published order
Next best action
If this isn't your case
Other matchups worth comparing
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
Key failure: your own keys are made, shown or recovered unsafely.
Scored by Can I export my own keys and use them elsewhere? · 28% (MetaMask 9/10, Exodus 9/10)
Scored by Can I see exactly what I am signing? · 30% (MetaMask 6/10, Exodus 2/10)
Scored by What has gone wrong, and did they publish it? · 24% (MetaMask 8/10, Exodus 6/10)
Scored by If I lose my device, how do I get back in? · 18% (MetaMask 9/10, Exodus 9/10)
MetaMask scores 11 points above Exodus, led by clear signing and incident record. Published scores, out of 100: MetaMask 80 (rank 2 of 11 wallets), Exodus 69 (rank 6 of 11).
ReviewedRe-read in progressOverdue; re-read by 10 November 2026.Methodology v2026.10.18
How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means both products compared here 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.
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