Price impact
Price impact is how much your own trade moves a token's price, because you are buying from or selling into a pool with limited reserves. The bigger your trade relative to the pool's liquidity, the worse your average price. You can see it in the quote before you confirm.
Where it comes from
Most memecoin pools are automated market makers. PumpSwap, for example, describes itself as a constant-product AMM. The pool holds two reserves, and their product stays fixed apart from fees. Every token you buy reduces the token reserve and raises the price of the next one, so a large buy walks up the price as it fills.
A worked illustration
In a pure constant-product pool, ignoring fees, spending an amount equal to 10% of the pool's SOL reserve gets you tokens at an average price about 10% above the starting price. The pool's price after your trade is about 21% higher. Spending 1% of the reserve costs about 1% on average. These figures follow from the formula and are only an illustration. Real pools add fees, and some use concentrated liquidity or curves.
Price impact versus slippage
Jupiter's risk documentation lists both separately for low-liquidity tokens. High price impact means your trade itself can move the price significantly. Slippage is the gap between the quoted and executed price, which also includes other people's trades landing first. A quote can show low slippage risk and still carry heavy price impact if the pool is thin.
What it means before you trade
Jupiter notes that tokens still on a bonding curve have limited liquidity and can have much higher price impact than established pools. It also warns that selling a large position may not be possible at the expected price, or at all. Before entering, check the impact on your planned exit size, not just your entry. Splitting a large order or trading in a deeper pool reduces impact. Raising your slippage setting does not.
Where this shows up
- Jupiter — Solana traders who want aggregated routing across DEXes with low or zero fees on major and stable pairs.
- Raydium — Solana traders and LPs who want direct access to Raydium pools, and token creators launching through LaunchLab.
- Meteora — Solana LPs who want dynamic-fee concentrated liquidity, and launchpads that need configurable bonding curves.
- PumpSwap — Traders of pump.fun coins after graduation, and LPs in those pools.
- DEX Screener — Traders who want a free, multi-chain view of new and trending DEX pairs before they trade on a separate DEX, wallet or bot.
- Birdeye — Solana-first traders who want a token tracker with a mobile app, and developers who need a metered on-chain data API.
Sources
Last checked . Fees and terms change often; the venue's own page wins if it disagrees with ours.
- PumpSwap (Pump AMM) program README (pump.fun public docs) — checked 2026-10-16
- Risks and Limitations, Jupiter Spot (Jupiter docs) — checked 2026-10-16