How to compare DEX routes before moving capital

A single quote tells you what one venue will hand back right now. It does not tell you what you would have given up by skipping the alternatives, because the give-up is buried inside the output amount where it is hard to see. This tutorial walks through comparing the supported DEX routes for a swap on modeled leak, MEV exposure, slippage, and gas — so the route you act on is one you chose on purpose, not the first number a widget returned.

Why compare instead of trusting one quote

A quote is point-in-time and venue-specific. It reflects one pool, one moment, and one set of assumptions, and it folds every cost into a single output figure. That figure can look fine in isolation while a different supported route would have leaked materially fewer basis points on the same trade. You cannot see the spread until you put the candidates side by side.

Routescore sits one layer earlier than the swap. It scores each candidate route the same way — running the same trade at the same notional across the supported venues — and surfaces a score-by-score comparison instead of a single headline. The point is not to crown a winner for you. It is to make the differences legible: where the leak is coming from, how far apart the routes are, and whether the gap is large enough to be worth changing venues. The comparison shows the spread; you decide what to do with it.

Throughout, Routescore stays read-only and non-custodial. It models routes and shows scores. It never holds your funds, never touches your keys, and does not move anything on your behalf.

The dimensions to compare

Routescore breaks a route down into a 0–100 Routescore plus the components behind it. Higher means a better execution-adjusted route: risk penalties are subtracted, quality and efficiency terms are added. When you compare routes, these are the dimensions that move the number:

• Leak in bps — the modeled total give-up on the trade relative to an idealized fill, expressed in basis points. This is the headline cost to compare across routes, because it rolls the execution-adjusted picture into one size-normalised figure.
• Modeled MEV exposure — the route's modeled sandwich + frontrun probability. It is the largest-weighted risk penalty for retail-size swaps, and it is a probability, not a forecast of what will happen on the next block.
• Slippage vs mid — the modeled price move between the mid quote and the executed price, in bps. Deeper pools and smaller relative size generally show less; thin liquidity or large notional shows more.
• Gas — the gas cost per unit of notional, normalised to the cheapest available route on the same trade. On small trades gas can dominate; on large ones it is rounding error.
• Venue / route assumptions — which pools the route uses, whether order flow is the public-mempool default or a private path, and the confidence label attached to the estimate. Two routes with similar leak can differ sharply here, and this is the context that keeps the number honest.

Every one of these is modeled and point-in-time. They describe the trade as it looks at the moment of the check, not a state that is locked in for the block you eventually land on.

How to read a comparison across supported routes at the same notional

Hold the notional constant. Leak, slippage, and MEV exposure all scale with size, so comparing a $5k route against a $50k route tells you nothing useful — you are comparing two different trades. Run the comparison at the size you actually intend to move.

With notional fixed, read the spread between the public-mempool default and the lower-leak alternative the comparison surfaces. Routescore expresses that gap as an avoidable delta in bps and in dollars: the modeled difference in total give-up between the default route and a cleaner one. A few bps on a small swap may not justify the friction of switching venues. A wider gap on a larger swap is exactly the signal the comparison exists to make visible.

Then sanity-check the components, not just the top-line score. A route can post a strong Routescore on low modeled MEV while carrying more slippage, or vice versa. Two routes can tie on leak while leaning on different order-flow assumptions. The 0–100 number is the summary; the component breakdown is where you confirm the comparison is telling you what you think it is. Read both before you move.

When a modeled comparison is enough vs not

A modeled comparison is enough for pre-trade triage: ranking the supported routes, seeing how far apart they sit, and deciding whether the spread is worth acting on. It is good for building intuition about how leak and MEV exposure scale with size, and for catching the case where the default route is quietly the expensive one.

It is not the whole picture. The Routescore deliberately excludes risks that should not be mixed into a price-execution score — oracle compromise, bridge exposure on cross-chain routes, and smart-contract risk are surfaced separately, not folded into the number. The model also cannot see the exact mempool state on the block you finally land on, your own wallet's gas settings, or a sudden liquidity shift after the check. Modeled MEV exposure is a probability, so a clean comparison is not a promise about any single execution and cannot guarantee an outcome. Treat the comparison as decision support, not as advice and not as a prediction of the fill.

Act in your own venue + keep a record

Because Routescore is read-only and non-custodial, the trade happens entirely on your side. You take the route you chose to your own wallet or aggregator and submit it there, with your own gas and slippage settings, under your own keys. Nothing about the comparison changes that — Routescore informed the decision; the execution is yours.

The last step is the one most people skip: write down what you did. Capture the route you chose, the notional, the modeled leak and component scores you compared against, and the reason you picked it. Routescore's hash-recorded journal makes that a tamper-evident entry you can revisit, so next time you are not re-deriving the same reasoning from scratch — you are comparing this decision against the record of the last one. A point-in-time comparison is most valuable when it compounds into a habit.

Where to go next

• route check — run the score-by-score comparison on a trade at your notional.
• DeFi route checker — the route-comparison workbench in one place.
• swap slippage checker — focus on modeled slippage vs the mid quote.
• pricing — what's free, what's Pro, and where the journal lives.