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CoW Swap

CoW Swap is the main web interface for CoW Protocol, an intent-based DEX aggregator. You sign an order instead of sending a swap, and bonded solvers compete in batch auctions to fill it, matching traders directly where they can and routing the rest through onchain liquidity. It runs on Ethereum and nine other EVM chains.

Cost: Every order pays a 0.02% protocol volume fee (0.003% on stablecoin and RWA pairs). On top, CoW keeps half of any price improvement over your quote, capped at 0.98% of volume. Gas is built into the price, so most swaps need no gas, and failed or cancelled orders cost nothing. The swap.cow.fi interface adds no fee of its own. A $1,000 buy-and-sell costs about $0.40 in CoW Swap fees.

Sign-up perk: The referred trader also gets 10 USDC per 250,000 USD milestone. There is no fee discount.

Checked 2026-10-20 · sources below
Round trip fee
0.04%
buy + sell, platform fee
$1,000 buy + sell
$0.40
before network + pool fees
Fees paid, 30d
—
not tracked by DefiLlama
US availability
Available
UK: available · EU: available
Open CoW Swap

Quick answers

Custody
Self-custody
KYC
none
Platforms
web
Launched
2021-04

Best for: EVM traders, especially those moving size or using smart-contract wallets, who want MEV-protected swaps with gas built into the price and no charge for failed orders.

CoW Swap fees

FeeTypeRateApplies toNote
Volume fee platform 0.02% Buy and sell 2 bps on all orders for standard assets. Set by CoW DAO governance and charged by the protocol; the swap.cow.fi interface itself is free to use per the Terms.
Volume fee, correlated assets platform 0.003% Buy and sell 0.3 bps for stablecoin and RWA pairs.
Quote improvement fee protocol — Buy and sell 50% of any amount by which a market order beats its quote, capped at 0.98% of order volume. Zero if the fill is not better than the quote. Taken in the token you receive on sells and the token you pay on buys.
Surplus fee on out-of-market limit orders protocol — Buy and sell 50% of the surplus over your limit price, capped at 0.98% of volume. Applies only to limit orders and TWAP parts that could not fill when placed.
Network costs network — Buy and sell Solvers pay gas and build it into your execution price, taken from the sell token. Failed and cancelled orders are free. Selling native ETH through Eth-flow, or wrapping it first, is an onchain transaction that needs gas up front.
Partner fee (third-party integrations) other — Buy and sell Apps and wallets that embed CoW Protocol can add up to 1% of order volume on market orders. CoW DAO keeps 25% of that by default. Does not apply on swap.cow.fi itself.
Trade sizeCoW Swap fee, buy + sell
$100 $0.04
$1,000 $0.40
$10,000 $4.00

How DEX fees work: instead of a platform fee, each swap pays the fee of the pool it routes through (listed above where published). The interface itself may add its own fee.

Platform fees only. On-chain network/priority fees, pool (LP) fees and price impact are extra and vary by trade.

Is CoW Swap legit?

The Terms say the interface and the protocol are non-custodial and never take custody of your assets; you trade from your own wallet. Solvers can move your tokens only through an approval plus an order you have signed, and the signed limit price and amounts must be met.

Backers: Blockchain Capital, Cherry Ventures, Ethereal Ventures and others ($15M USDC private round), plus about 5,000 community members in ETH, GNO and xDAI ($23,000,000), 2022-03.

Incidents on record

  • 2023-02-07: Solver contract bug drains settlement contract fees. A newly added solver, the Barter Solver, had given its SwapGuard contract unlimited DAI approval from CoW's settlement contract. A bug let anyone make arbitrary calls through it, and an attacker took about $180,000 of DAI (PeckShield's estimate) from the protocol's fee buffer. CoW Swap revoked the solver's approvals, said user funds were never at risk, and said the solver's bond would cover the damage. Source
  • 2026-03-12: $50.4M swap through Aave's CoW integration returns about $36,000. A trader swapped $50.4M of USDT for about $36,000 of AAVE through Aave's interface, which routes swaps through CoW Swap. CoW's post-mortem blamed compounding failures: a hardcoded 12M gas ceiling in quote checks rejected better routes worth roughly $5-6M, a solver won two auctions but never submitted, and a possible mempool leak. CoW said it removed the gas ceiling. Aave pointed to an illiquid market and a warning the user accepted. Source
  • 2026-04-14: cow.fi domain hijack. Attackers used social engineering at the registrar (Gandi SAS) to take over the cow.fi domain for about 4.5 hours and served a phishing copy of CoW Swap that drained wallets. The core team estimated about 1.2M USDC of user losses. CoW said its contracts and backend were not breached but paused the APIs as a precaution. CIP-86, passed in May 2026, offered voluntary grants of up to 100% of verified losses, with KYC; claims closed 2026-05-14. Source

Where CoW Swap is available

RegionStatus
United StatesAvailable
United KingdomAvailable
European UnionAvailable

Terms (CoW Hosting Limited, BVI; last updated July 2025), section 2.1(3): you must not be '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 anywhere your use would be illegal. The US, UK and EU appear only as sanctions authorities; no country is named as restricted. Local rules may still apply. (source)

We report what the venue's own terms say. Don't use a VPN to get around restrictions; venues can freeze accounts that do.

Pros and cons

Pros

  • The protocol fee is 0.02% per order, or 0.003% on stablecoin and RWA pairs, and the interface adds nothing.
  • Batch auctions with uniform clearing prices, plus orders that never enter the public mempool, protect against sandwich attacks, per the docs.
  • Gas is built into the price, and failed or cancelled orders cost nothing.
  • Solvers must post a bond, and CoW said a solver's bond would cover the 2023 settlement-contract loss.
  • CoW DAO offered up to 100% grants to verified victims of the April 2026 domain hijack.

Cons

  • Half of any price improvement over the quote goes to the protocol, up to 0.98% of volume.
  • Attackers hijacked the cow.fi domain for about 4.5 hours in April 2026 and drained an estimated 1.2M USDC from users.
  • Solver and quote-check failures turned a $50.4M swap through Aave's CoW integration into about $36,000 of AAVE in March 2026.
  • Selling native ETH needs an onchain transaction with gas paid up front, and that gas is not refunded if the order fails.
  • Third-party apps built on CoW Protocol can add partner fees of up to 1%.

Features

MEV protectionbatch auctionscoincidence of wantsgasless swapslimit ordersTWAP orderscross-chain swapshooksflash loanswidgetaffiliate program

Alternatives to CoW Swap

1inch

EVM and Solana traders who want aggregated routing and gasless intent-based swaps without an interface fee.

0%Round trip

Jupiter

Solana traders who want aggregated routing across DEXes with low or zero fees on major and stable pairs.

0.2%Round trip

Matcha

EVM traders who want gasless aggregated swaps and limit orders, and stablecoin swappers who pay no swap fee.

0.5%Round trip

OKX DEX

OKX Wallet users who want aggregated swaps across many chains and can use a referral link for a fee discount.

Where CoW Swap ranks

CoW Swap FAQ

Is CoW Swap legit?

CoW Swap has run since April 2021 and is governed by CoW DAO, which raised $23M in 2022. It is non-custodial. A solver bug cost the protocol about $180,000 of fees in 2023, and an April 2026 domain hijack drained about 1.2M USDC from users; CoW DAO offered verified victims grants of up to 100%.

What fees does CoW Swap charge?

Every order pays a 0.02% protocol volume fee, or 0.003% on stablecoin and RWA pairs. If your fill beats the quote, half of the improvement goes to the protocol, capped at 0.98% of volume. Gas is built into the price. The swap.cow.fi interface adds no fee.

Can US users use CoW Swap?

The CoW Swap Terms do not name the US as a restricted country. They bar users in sanctioned or embargoed jurisdictions, sanctioned persons, and anyone for whom using it would be illegal locally.

How does CoW Swap protect against MEV?

You sign an order instead of sending a transaction to the public mempool. Bonded solvers compete to fill orders in batches, trades of the same pair in a batch clear at one price, and matching traders directly skips AMMs entirely. Your signed limit price must always be met.

Sources

Last checked . Fees and terms change often; the venue's own page wins if it disagrees with ours.

  1. CoW Protocol Docs: Fees (volume, quote improvement and surplus fees) — checked 2026-10-20
  2. CoW Protocol Docs: Partner Fee — checked 2026-10-20
  3. CoW Protocol Docs: Affiliate Program — checked 2026-10-20
  4. CoW Protocol Docs: Affiliate Program FAQ — checked 2026-10-20
  5. CoW Swap: Affiliate Program page — checked 2026-10-20
  6. CoW Swap app (front-end code: referral link built as ?ref=<code>; supported chain list) — checked 2026-10-20
  7. CoW Swap Terms and Conditions (CoW Hosting Limited, last updated July 2025) — checked 2026-10-20
  8. CoW Protocol Docs: Additional benefits (gasless trades, no fees for failed orders) — checked 2026-10-20
  9. CoW Protocol Docs: MEV protection — checked 2026-10-20
  10. CoW Protocol Docs: Selling native tokens (wrap or Eth-flow) — checked 2026-10-20
  11. CoW Protocol Docs: CoW Swap custom links (supported chains and wrapped tokens) — checked 2026-10-20
  12. CoW Protocol Docs: Solver bonding pools — checked 2026-10-20
  13. EthCC 2021: Gnosis Protocol v2 (launched April 2021, CowSwap the first dapp) — checked 2026-10-20
  14. The Block: CoW Protocol raises $23 million and spins out from Gnosis DAO (2022-03-29) — checked 2026-10-20
  15. The Block: DEX aggregator CoW Swap falls victim to $180,000 hack (2023-02-07) — checked 2026-10-20
  16. The Defiant: CoW Swap points to legacy code and solver failures in $50M loss — checked 2026-10-20
  17. The Block: CoW Swap urges users to pause amid domain hijacking (2026-04-14) — checked 2026-10-20
  18. Decrypt: CoW Swap pauses protocol following website compromise — checked 2026-10-20
  19. CoW DAO forum: CIP-86 discretionary grants program for victims of the cow.fi domain hijacking — checked 2026-10-20
  20. The Crypto Times: CIP-86 passed, CoW DAO begins compensation for April attack (2026-05-12) — checked 2026-10-20