MetaMask scores 5 points above Solflare, led by incident record. MetaMask ranks #2 and Solflare #5 of 11 published wallets. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.
MetaMask80
vs
Solflare75
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #2 and #5 of 11
MetaMask scores 5 points above Solflare, led by incident record.
MetaMask #2 of 1180
Solflare #5 of 1175
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 1 of 4 published criteria; Solflare on 2. The terms sum to the gap.
TermMetaMaskSolflareWeightPoints
Clear signing6/107/107.2−1.9for Solflare−1.0 of 32
Key export9/1010/106.7−1.7for Solflare−0.9 of 32
Incident record8/102/105.8+9.0for MetaMask+4.6 of 32
Net of the terms+5.4
Criteria roundingThe criteria block is rounded to whole points before it is spread+0.1
Reproduced gap+5.5
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below8075+5.0
Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.
MetaMask's lead rests on lighter criteria: Solflare is ahead on clear signing, which carries more weight (30) than any criterion MetaMask leads on (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".SolflareScore 75Solana-only self-custody wallet that documents seed AND per-account private-key export on both extension and mobile in printed steps, and whose named in-house scanner is described only in prose — no audit, no bug bounty, no advisory archive exists on any Solflare surface.Strength: Key export — 10/10Watch-out: Solflare tells you what its protection does, never what your screen shows, and publishes nothing a security engineer can check. Its scanner is named and described in prose — "Every time you go to sign a transaction, Solflare Guards step in to" … "They simulate the transaction behind the scenes" (solflare.com/crypto-101/crypto-wallet-security-101-how-solflare-protects-your-assets/) — but no Solflare page renders a balance-change diff or a decoded human-readable action, so "What You See Is What You Sign" is a claim about a screen the vendor has never documented. Behind it: solflare.com/security/ names no audit, no auditor and no bug-bounty programme; /.well-known/security.txt is HTTP 404; none of the eight sitemaps (page 94, blog 31, crypto-101 54, glossary 120, guide 18, ecosystem 5, job 6, blog-author 12) contains an advisory or disclosure page; there is no SECURITY.md and no GitHub advisory; and the client is closed source. The sharpest tell is the vendor's own FAQ telling Ledger users to "make sure that Blind Signing is enabled in Ledger Live" — that turns the paired device's screen into a hash and leaves the undocumented Solflare screen as the only human-readable view of what you are signing. Where Solflare is genuinely strong is the exit: seed and per-account private key both export in printed steps on extension and mobile, no login exists, and "Any Solana recovery phrase works, regardless of which wallet it was created in." Buy the custody model, not the security assurance.
Quick facts
At a glance
3 of 4 rows read the same for both.
FactMetaMaskSolflare
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).No price is published for the wallet software in the body copy of any solflare.com page, but the vendor calls it free in the head of the page cited here: solflare.com/download/ carries <title>Download Solflare: Free Solana Wallet Extension & Mobile App</title> and <meta name="description" content="Download Solflare, the free Solana wallet browser extension and mobile app. Trade, stake and store crypto on Chrome, Firefox, iOS & Android."> (both re-read 28 October 2026). The page's visible commercial line is "Get the Solflare browser extension to trade, stake, and hold Solana with full self-custody in seconds." The only in-wallet fee mechanic the vendor publishes is a network-fee fallback, not a Solflare take: help.solflare.com/en/articles/9271735-understanding-transaction-fees-on-solana (re-read 28 October 2026) states "Gasless Send: If you try to send a token but don't have enough SOL to cover the network fee, Solflare automatically covers it for you. The fee is simply deducted from the token you're sending instead." — no Solflare swap or trading fee percentage appears in that article. Real prices exist only for adjacent products: the Shield hardware card, where solflare.com/hardware-wallet/ (fetched 28 October 2026) renders "Order Origin $49" while its carousel shows Signature variants at "$59", "$69" and "$79" and a customised "Unique" card at "$79". The Solflare Card's FX-fee article (help.solflare.com/en/articles/12890985) now returns HTTP 404, and the card is paused: "Solflare Cards, both virtual and physical, have temporarily stopped working." (help.solflare.com/en/articles/17335647-solflare-card-pauses-july-28th-and-returns-with-apple-pay-higher-limits-and-cashback, read 28 October 2026), so no card price is carried.
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 incident record matters most — it scores 8/10 to Solflare's 2/10 there (weight 24).
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".
Solflare
75#5 of 11
Pick it when
Pick Solflare if clear signing matters most — it scores 7/10 to MetaMask's 6/10 there (weight 30).
Strength
Key export — 10/10
Tradeoff
Solflare tells you what its protection does, never what your screen shows, and publishes nothing a security engineer can check. Its scanner is named and described in prose — "Every time you go to sign a transaction, Solflare Guards step in to" … "They simulate the transaction behind the scenes" (solflare.com/crypto-101/crypto-wallet-security-101-how-solflare-protects-your-assets/) — but no Solflare page renders a balance-change diff or a decoded human-readable action, so "What You See Is What You Sign" is a claim about a screen the vendor has never documented. Behind it: solflare.com/security/ names no audit, no auditor and no bug-bounty programme; /.well-known/security.txt is HTTP 404; none of the eight sitemaps (page 94, blog 31, crypto-101 54, glossary 120, guide 18, ecosystem 5, job 6, blog-author 12) contains an advisory or disclosure page; there is no SECURITY.md and no GitHub advisory; and the client is closed source. The sharpest tell is the vendor's own FAQ telling Ledger users to "make sure that Blind Signing is enabled in Ledger Live" — that turns the paired device's screen into a hash and leaves the undocumented Solflare screen as the only human-readable view of what you are signing. Where Solflare is genuinely strong is the exit: seed and per-account private key both export in printed steps on extension and mobile, no login exists, and "Any Solana recovery phrase works, regardless of which wallet it was created in." Buy the custody model, not the security assurance.
Self-identify in 10 seconds
Which one is actually for you?
MetaMaskLeads
Choose MetaMask if incident record matters most
Incident record: 8/10 against 2/10 for Solflare (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".
Solflare
Choose Solflare if clear signing matters most
Clear signing: 7/10 against 6/10 for MetaMask (weight 30)
Key export: 10/10 against 9/10 for MetaMask (weight 28)
SolflareScore 75Solana-only self-custody wallet that documents seed AND per-account private-key export on both extension and mobile in printed steps, and whose named in-house scanner is described only in prose — no audit, no bug bounty, no advisory archive exists on any Solflare surface.Strength: Key export — 10/10Watch-out: Solflare tells you what its protection does, never what your screen shows, and publishes nothing a security engineer can check. Its scanner is named and described in prose — "Every time you go to sign a transaction, Solflare Guards step in to" … "They simulate the transaction behind the scenes" (solflare.com/crypto-101/crypto-wallet-security-101-how-solflare-protects-your-assets/) — but no Solflare page renders a balance-change diff or a decoded human-readable action, so "What You See Is What You Sign" is a claim about a screen the vendor has never documented. Behind it: solflare.com/security/ names no audit, no auditor and no bug-bounty programme; /.well-known/security.txt is HTTP 404; none of the eight sitemaps (page 94, blog 31, crypto-101 54, glossary 120, guide 18, ecosystem 5, job 6, blog-author 12) contains an advisory or disclosure page; there is no SECURITY.md and no GitHub advisory; and the client is closed source. The sharpest tell is the vendor's own FAQ telling Ledger users to "make sure that Blind Signing is enabled in Ledger Live" — that turns the paired device's screen into a hash and leaves the undocumented Solflare screen as the only human-readable view of what you are signing. Where Solflare is genuinely strong is the exit: seed and per-account private key both export in printed steps on extension and mobile, no login exists, and "Any Solana recovery phrase works, regardless of which wallet it was created in." Buy the custody model, not the security assurance.
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
by 1 of 10weight 6.7 of 86Solflare leads
MetaMask9/10 out of 10
Solflare10/10 out of 10
Clear signing
by 1 of 10weight 7.2 of 86Solflare leads
MetaMask6/10 out of 10
Solflare7/10 out of 10
Incident record
by 6 of 10weight 5.8 of 86MetaMask leads
MetaMask8/10 out of 10
Solflare2/10 out of 10
Account recovery
weight 4.3 of 86Tie
MetaMask9/10 out of 10
Solflare9/10 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
MetaMask14/20Solflare14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
MetaMask18.9/30Solflare16.8/30
MetaMask leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
MetaMask2.7/10Solflare2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
MetaMask3.2/8Solflare3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
MetaMask8.3/18Solflare8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order
Choose MetaMask unless the term Solflare leads on is the one you are buying.
Pick Solflare if clear signing matters most — it scores 7/10 to MetaMask's 6/10 there (weight 30).
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, Solflare 10/10)
Scored by Can I see exactly what I am signing? · 30% (MetaMask 6/10, Solflare 7/10)
Scored by What has gone wrong, and did they publish it? · 24% (MetaMask 8/10, Solflare 2/10)
Scored by If I lose my device, how do I get back in? · 18% (MetaMask 9/10, Solflare 9/10)
MetaMask scores 5 points above Solflare, led by incident record. Published scores, out of 100: MetaMask 80 (rank 2 of 11 wallets), Solflare 75 (rank 5 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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