Relay scores 36 points above Wormhole, led by route coverage, route clarity, and transfer speed. Relay ranks #1 and Wormhole #14 of 18 published bridges. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.
Relay86
vs
Wormhole50
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #1 and #14 of 18
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below8650+36.0
Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.
RelayScore 86Cleaner bridge path for users who want low-friction multichain movementStrength: Speed — 9/10Watch-out: Relay's chain list on 2026-09-30 had no Sui, Stellar or Cosmos chains; Squid's chain data covers all threeWormholeScore 50Leading cross-chain messaging protocol connecting 30+ networksStrength: Route coverage — 7/10Watch-out: Higher fees on some routes than specialized bridges
Quick facts
At a glance
FactRelayWormhole
PricingSnapshotRelay docs, "Cost & Fee Structure" (docs.relay.link/references/api/api_core_concepts/fees, fetched 30 September 2026): four components - Execution Cost ("$0.02 flat fee - always included" plus a destination fill-gas estimate), Swap Cost (payments to liquidity providers, DEX fees and solver rebalancing; no rate published), Platform Fees, and integrator App Fees. The Platform Fee table reads "Token Bridge & Same-Chain Wrap/Unwrap Stablecoin Swap Major Swap Minor Swap Platform Fees charged to end users 0.00% 0.01% 0.06% 0.15%", so a same-token bridge carries a 0.00% platform fee. "For regular (non-gasless) transactions, the user pays origin gas directly from their own wallet to the network".Wormhole Connect docs, "Routes" (wormhole.com/docs/ai/pages/products-connect-concepts-routes.md, fetched 30 September 2026): automatic routes deliver in one user transaction "for a small fee" - "Trustless relayers can execute the second transaction on the user's behalf, so the user only needs to perform one transaction on the origin chain to have the tokens delivered to the destination automatically - for a small fee." - while manual routes need a second, destination-chain transaction whose gas the user pays. No relayer fee amount is published on that page, so the dollar range the previous note carried is not repeated. Portal Bridge (portalbridge.com), Wormhole's consumer front end, renders client-side, so no live Portal quote was read.
Asset coverageEditorialLower-friction cross-chain token movement across supported routesMajor assets across all connected chains
Region fitSnapshotus, europe, globalglobal
From the published criteria
Which should you pick?
Relay
86#1 of 18
Leads
Pick it when
Pick Relay if route coverage matters most — it scores 8/10 to Wormhole's 7/10 there (weight 28).
Strength
Speed — 9/10
Tradeoff
Relay's chain list on 2026-09-30 had no Sui, Stellar or Cosmos chains; Squid's chain data covers all three
Wormhole
50#14 of 18
Pick it when
Pick Wormhole if trust matters most — it scores 7/10 to Relay's 5/10 there (weight 26).
Strength
Route coverage — 7/10
Tradeoff
Higher fees on some routes than specialized bridges
Self-identify in 10 seconds
Which one is actually for you?
RelayLeads
Choose Relay if route coverage matters most
Route coverage: 8/10 against 7/10 for Wormhole (weight 28)
Route clarity: 7/10 against 5/10 for Wormhole (weight 24)
Transfer speed: 9/10 against 4/10 for Wormhole (weight 22)
RelayScore 86Cleaner bridge path for users who want low-friction multichain movementStrength: Speed — 9/10Watch-out: Relay's chain list on 2026-09-30 had no Sui, Stellar or Cosmos chains; Squid's chain data covers all three
Wormhole
Choose Wormhole if trust matters most
Trust: 7/10 against 5/10 for Relay (weight 26)
WormholeScore 50Leading cross-chain messaging protocol connecting 30+ networksStrength: Route coverage — 7/10Watch-out: Higher fees on some routes than specialized bridges
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
Route coverage
by 1 of 10weight 6.7 of 86Relay leads
Relay8/10 out of 10
Wormhole7/10 out of 10
Route clarity
by 2 of 10weight 5.8 of 86Relay leads
Relay7/10 out of 10
Wormhole5/10 out of 10
Transfer speed
by 5 of 10weight 5.3 of 86Relay leads
Relay9/10 out of 10
Wormhole4/10 out of 10
Trust
by 2 of 10weight 6.2 of 86Wormhole leads
Relay5/10 out of 10
Wormhole7/10 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
Relay20/20Wormhole14/20
Relay leads
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
Relay17.3/30Wormhole14.1/30
Relay leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
Relay2.7/10Wormhole2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86
Relay5.6/8Wormhole6.4/8
Wormhole leads
Measured dataweight 18 of 86
Relay12.5/18Wormhole6.9/18
Relay leads
Decision rulePublished order
Choose Relay unless the term Wormhole leads on is the one you are buying.
Pick Wormhole if trust matters most — it scores 7/10 to Relay's 5/10 there (weight 26).
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
Verification failure: an invalid state or transfer is accepted.
Scored by Trust posture · 26% (Relay 5/10, Wormhole 7/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Control failure, Liveness failure, Custody failure, Regulatory failure, Execution failure, Exit failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: Route coverage (28%), Route clarity (24%), Execution speed (22%).
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Relay scores 36 points above Wormhole, led by route coverage, route clarity, and transfer speed. Published scores, out of 100: Relay 86 (rank 1 of 18 bridges), Wormhole 50 (rank 14 of 18).
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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