How to Set Slippage in a Telegram Trading Bot

Slippage and slippage tolerance: two different things

The slippage field in a Telegram trading bot is a limit you place on execution. It is not a fee, and nothing you type there is paid to the bot. It tells the swap how far the fill price may drift from the quote before the trade is cancelled instead of completed.

What slippage is

Slippage is the difference between the price quoted when you press buy and the price the swap actually fills at. A quote is a snapshot. Other trades land between the moment that snapshot is taken and the moment your transaction is included, and they change the pool's balances. Slippage is the result of that movement.

It is measured on the whole route, not on a single hop. A small buy in a deep pool barely moves the price. A large buy in a thin pool moves it a lot, even in a quiet market. Same token, same bot, different outcome, because what changed is the size of your order relative to the pool.

What slippage tolerance is

Slippage tolerance is the maximum difference the bot will accept before it cancels the swap instead of filling it. You choose it, and the bot writes it into the transaction as a condition. When the transaction executes, the swap either fills inside that band or reverts.

A reverted swap is not free

A revert cancels the trade, not the cost of trying it. Network fees can still be spent on a transaction that ends in a failed swap, so a retry loop on a fast or thin pair can burn fees while returning nothing. Failed trades are not free attempts.

Three separate lines on the confirmation message

Before you confirm, the message separates the trade into distinct items:

Tolerance and minimum received move together: widen the band and the minimum received drops. Neither one is a payment to the bot. The trading fee is.

A per-trade decision

Treat the value as per token and per trade. It is not a permanent account setting, and the number that suits one pair says nothing about the next.

Where the setting lives in each bot's settings menu

Most Telegram trading bots follow the same pattern. A settings menu, or a separate Buy settings and Sell settings screen, holds the tolerance field. It usually appears as a row of preset buttons plus a custom input for anything in between. You tap a preset or type a value, confirm, and the bot returns you to the trade screen.

Two variations matter. Some bots keep one tolerance for both directions; others split buy and sell, so a number you set on the buy side does not touch the sell side. And some save your choice between sessions while others fall back to a default after a restart or a wallet switch. That is the reason to read the field back before confirming rather than trusting the number you typed yesterday.

The snipe field is usually a different field

Sniping is a separate mode, and where a bot offers it, it often has its own tolerance that the normal trade setting does not overwrite.

A snipe setting is not automatically the field used when a limit order fires or when a copied wallet trades. Those paths can run through their own confirmation screen and their own tolerance. Check which mode you are actually in before you edit anything.

Find the field once, calmly

Open the settings menu before your next trade, not during one. Locate the normal tolerance, then the snipe tolerance if your bot has one, and note where each sits. The pages on sniping bots and limit order bots show which bots carry those modes.

The swap flow, step by step: quote, tolerance, minimum received, execution, revert

A swap in a Telegram bot runs through the same stages every time, on Solana or on an EVM chain. Knowing which stage produced a failure tells you what to change.

The quote

You enter an amount and confirm the trade. The bot asks a router or aggregator for a route: which pools to use and how much output the trade should return against current pool state. That quote is a snapshot, not a promise.

The tolerance becomes a floor

The bot takes the quoted output and applies your tolerance to it, which produces a minimum received amount. This is the floor: what you would get if the price moved against you by exactly the tolerance you set and no further. The order is built as "give this much, accept no less than the floor".

Execution or revert

The transaction reaches the chain. If the pool can fill at or above the floor, the swap completes and the output tokens arrive. If the price has moved past the floor by the time the transaction lands, the swap reverts.

The revert happens on chain, so the network fee for that attempt can still be spent even though nothing was swapped. Failed trades are not free. The bot then reports the failure in the chat. It does not quietly retry with a new tolerance, so running the trade again is your decision.

The same idea, two transaction formats

• On Solana, bots typically set the minimum output amount on the swap instruction itself, and attach a compute budget that caps how much processing the transaction may use.
• On EVM chains, bots set a minimum output on the router call, plus a gas limit on the transaction.
• Both encode the same promise: clear the floor, or do nothing.

Why the same number behaves differently

Solana blocks are fast and the quote goes stale quickly, while priority fees decide how soon the transaction lands. An EVM chain moves on its own block timing, and gas price sets the gap between quote and execution. So a tolerance that suits one chain can be too tight or too loose on the other. The /chain/solana page shows which bots trade there.

The bot's fee is separate

The bot's trading fee is charged on a completed trade, as its own line in the confirmation. Your tolerance changes the price you are willing to accept, not what the bot charges you.

Slippage tolerance is not price impact

These two numbers sit next to each other in the confirmation message, and that is most of the reason they get mixed up.

Price impact is caused by your order

Price impact is the movement your own swap creates in the pool. It is a property of two things: how deep the pool is and how large your order is relative to that depth. A small order in a deep pool barely moves the price. The same order in a thin pool moves it a lot, because there is little liquidity on the other side to absorb it. You cannot negotiate with price impact by changing a setting. It is a fact about the pool at the moment you trade.

Tolerance is a limit you set

Slippage tolerance is the band you accept between the quoted price and the worst price the swap may fill at. It is a property of your settings, not of the market. Raising it does not add liquidity and does not shrink price impact. It only allows the swap to complete at a worse price instead of reverting.

That is the whole relationship: a wide tolerance does not make a thin pool better, it just stops the swap from failing when it fills badly.

Reading the impact line

Look at the price impact figure in the quote before you touch the tolerance field.

• If the quote already shows a large impact, the trade is expensive before tolerance is involved. The swap is being priced badly because of your size against the pool.
• Treat that as a reason to size down, split the order, or skip the trade. Widening the tolerance at that point only guarantees you pay the bad price.
• If the impact is small but the fill still misses the quote, the price is moving between quote and execution. That is when tolerance is the right field to adjust.

A short rule

If the price impact is the problem, change the size. If the price is moving between quote and execution, change the tolerance.

What a too-low tolerance looks like

The swap reverts. The bot reports that the transaction failed or the minimum received was not met, and nothing arrives in your wallet. On a fast pair this can happen several times in a row while the price moves between the quote and the moment your transaction lands.

The retry loop

The usual fix is to nudge the tolerance up. The next attempt fills, and the habit forms: any failure gets a bigger number until the swap goes through. That works on a calm, deep pair too, where the original tolerance was probably fine and the failure came from something else. The setting drifts upward and stays there.

When the token contract is the cause

Some tokens take a cut on every transfer as part of their own contract rules. That cut happens on top of the price movement, so the output lands below the minimum even when the market barely moved. A tolerance set for a plain token can be too tight for one of these before any real price change occurs.

When the quote is stale

On a thin or freshly launched pair, the quoted price can be out of date by the time the transaction is included in a block. On Solana, fast blocks and priority fees mean your transaction competes for inclusion while the pool moves underneath it. New pairs have no price history to steady them, so the gap between quote and fill is wider than on an established pair.

Every failed swap has a cost

A revert still consumes network fees, and on Solana it can consume the priority fee you attached to get included quickly. Nothing fills, but the trade was not free. Read the confirmation message before dismissing it: it often names the reason, and "minimum received not met" points at the tolerance while other errors point elsewhere.

Do not answer repeated failures with an enormous tolerance. That converts a failed trade into a completed bad one, which is the next problem.

What a too-high tolerance costs you

A wide tolerance does not make a swap safer. It removes the condition that would have stopped it.

From rejected price to completed trade

The tolerance widens the band of prices the swap will accept. When the quote moves past the level you would have refused, but stays inside the wider band, the swap completes at that worse price. The bot reports success. Nothing looks broken, and no message asks you to confirm again.

How a sandwich works

An order that others can see before it settles, whether in a public mempool or in a block builder's flow, can be traded around. Someone buys ahead of your swap, pushing the price up, lets your order fill at the worse price your tolerance allows, then sells back into the pool. Your wide band is what makes that fill acceptable to the contract. Private routing and anti-MEV modes narrow that exposure, but they do not change the band you set.

Why size and depth matter

The larger your order relative to the pool, the more your own swap moves the price against you, and the more room a wide band leaves for a fill you would not have chosen. A thin pair has less depth to absorb the order, so the same tolerance that is harmless on a deep pair can complete a trade well below the quote.

Tokens with transfer taxes

On a token with a transfer tax or another contract level rule, the amount the pool promises and the amount that reaches your wallet differ. A tolerance copied from a plain, deep pair can behave badly here, because part of the output is removed after the swap rather than by the price.

The revert you gave up

A revert is the one mechanism that stops a terrible fill. Widen the tolerance far enough and it stops triggering: instead of a failed swap and a network fee, you get the trade.

Set the number for the token in front of you, not for how the session is going. Then read the fill afterwards. A fill far from the quote is quieter than a failed swap, and much easier to miss.

Reading the token before you touch the field

The tolerance field is the last decision, not the first. Look at the token and the pool it trades in, then set the order size and the tolerance together. A tolerance that is reasonable for a small order in a deep pool is reckless for a large order in a shallow one. These two numbers work as a pair.

Liquidity depth

Ask how much you could sell before the price moves against you. That is the practical meaning of depth. If your order is a large share of the pool, the quote you are shown is already drifting by the time you confirm, and no tolerance setting creates the missing liquidity. On Solana, pools are often small and young, so check depth in SOL terms per side, not in dollar headlines. The Solana chain page lists bots that trade these pairs.

Holder concentration

A few wallets holding most of the supply can sell into the same pool you are buying from. When they do, the quote goes stale faster than your confirmation. High concentration means smaller size and a wider band, or no trade.

Transfer tax and contract rules

Some tokens take a cut on transfer, and buying and selling rules are not always the same. A sell-side tax lowers what actually reaches your wallet, so the output you receive differs from the output the pool quoted. Read the contract before you trade it, not after.

Pair age

A pair that is minutes old has no price history and no tested depth. A pair that is months old with steady liquidity behaves very differently, and a tighter tolerance can be appropriate there. If you are buying launches, the sniping feature page shows which bots carry that workflow.

Where to look

• The bot's quote screen: expected output and minimum received for your size.
• The token contract on a block explorer: taxes, mint authority, holder list.
• The pool page: reserves per side, age, and recent volume.

A token that fails these checks is a size problem first and a setting problem second. Shrink the order or skip it. Raising the tolerance only changes which bad fill you accept.

Slippage when sniping and copy trading

Sniping and copy trading both put more pressure on the tolerance field than a manual buy on a pair you have watched for a week.

Sniping: the first seconds have no price history

A fresh launch has no chart worth reading and thin liquidity, so the price can move between the quote you see and the block that includes your order. That is why some bots keep a separate snipe tolerance, distinct from the one used on normal buys.

The trap is setting it once on a busy launch and forgetting it. A snipe tolerance tuned where there was real depth gets applied to the next launch where there is almost none, and the same number means something different.

A snipe tolerance and a normal tolerance are two settings, not one number copied across. Check both fields before you confirm.

Copy trading: the mirrored trade uses your tolerance

A mirrored trade executes with your settings, your size and your tolerance, not the source wallet's. The wallet you copy may fill inside its own band while your copy reverts, because your order arrived later or was larger.

Size changes this too. Copying with a bigger amount than the source wallet changes the price impact on the pool, even when the trade is identical in direction.

Exits matter as much as entries

Auto-sell and take-profit rules run through the same slippage machinery as a manual sell, and exits often land in worse conditions: volume spikes, liquidity pulled, holders racing for the same exit. A carefully set entry tolerance next to an untouched exit tolerance is a common way to stay stuck in a position.

One bot, several flows

Sigma carries sniping, limit orders and copy trading; Bloom and GMGN carry sniping and copy trading; Maestro carries sniping and copy trading; GMGN also lists auto-sell and TP-SL. In each, the same field can serve several flows, so the value you set for a manual buy is also what a mirrored trade or a snipe may use unless the bot separates them.

For bots that support it, see /feature/sniping, and /compare/banana-gun-vs-maestro to put two multi-chain bots side by side.

MEV protection and slippage together

MEV protection and slippage tolerance are separate controls that sit next to each other in a bot's settings. Slippage sets the price band the swap will accept. Protection changes how the order travels to the chain. Mixing them up is how traders end up with a wide tolerance they never needed.

What a protection mode changes

Anti-sandwich modes and private routing keep the pending transaction away from the public view that others can watch and trade around, or submit it in a way that makes front and back running harder. That lowers one kind of exposure. It does not add liquidity, deepen the pool, or change the token's own contract rules, so a thin pair stays thin.

The latency trade

A protection route can take longer to land than a plain submission. In that window the quote goes stale, and the swap is judged against the tolerance you set before it left. Failures come back to the slippage field, not to the protection mode.

Treat protection as a second layer

A protection mode is not a licence to set a wide tolerance on every trade. A wide band still turns a bad quote into a completed bad trade, protected route or not. Set a tolerance that fits the token, then add protection on top.

MevX carries MEV protection alongside copy trading and limit orders, so it is a practical place to see the two settings side by side in one menu. See /bot/mevx and the bots listed under /feature/limit-orders.

A short routine before every trade

Before you touch the field

1. Pool depth. Look at the liquidity in the pair you are about to trade, not the token's market cap. A shallow pool is where a quote and a fill drift apart.
2. Transfer rules. Check whether the token contract taxes transfers or restricts them. A token with a transfer tax needs a different tolerance from a deep, plain pair.
3. Pair age. A pair that is minutes old and one that is months old behave differently. Fresh launches have no price history to lean on.
4. Size first. Set the trade size before the tolerance. A larger order pushes a thin pool further.
5. Tolerance last. Set it for this token and this size, not as a house default.

Read it back before confirming

Some bots reset to a default between sessions. Open the buy or sell field and read the number that is actually there. Then read the minimum received line in the confirmation, not just the tolerance figure: that line is the price the swap will accept.

After the fill

Compare the fill with the quote you were shown. A fill far from the quote is the signal to tighten. A revert is the signal to look at the token, its liquidity and its contract rules, not only at the field.

When you change token type

Reset both the normal and the snipe tolerance. A wide snipe setting left in place carries into the next fresh launch, and a high normal setting follows your next copy-traded position.

Keep the basics straight

A bot that holds your private key can lose your funds. Use only the official bot from the bot's own website, and never share a seed phrase with anyone.

Every bot stores its slippage setting in a slightly different place, so open your bot's settings menu once and learn where yours sits before the next trade.

If you are still choosing, put two multi-chain bots side by side on the Banana Gun vs Maestro comparison and pick the one whose trading settings you can actually find and read.

Frequently asked questions

Why did my swap fail even though I raised the slippage?

Slippage tolerance only covers price movement between the quote and execution. A swap can still fail because there is no route, liquidity is too thin, the token blocks transfers or has a transfer tax, your wallet lacks the network fee or rent, the transaction expires before it lands, or the venue rejects it during simulation. A high price impact can also push the trade past another limit. Raising slippage does not fix those. Check the error message, the pool, your balance and the token contract before trying again. Trading memecoins can lose all the money put in.

Does the slippage amount go to the bot?

No. Slippage is a limit you set, not a payment. It defines the worst price you will accept. If the market moves within that limit, you receive fewer tokens or less quote currency because of the price change. That difference goes to the liquidity pool and other traders, not to the bot. A bot's fee is separate and is stated in its own docs. For example, Bloom's fee docs state a 1% trade fee on every supported chain, or 0.9% with a referral. Check the fee line before you confirm.

Where do I change slippage in a Telegram trading bot?

Open the bot's own chat and look for its settings menu or the buy/sell panel before you confirm a trade. Many Telegram bots show slippage as a button or a value you can edit, and some store a default you can override per trade. Change it there, then review the quote and the minimum received before you press buy or sell. Start the bot only from its official website, because impersonator bots are common. If you cannot find the setting, do not guess a handle from a group message; use the bot's own site.

Is a wide slippage setting dangerous?

Yes. A wide slippage tolerance accepts a much worse execution price. In a thin pool or a fast-moving memecoin, that can turn a small price move into a large loss. It also gives you less protection if the token contract has a transfer tax or changes behavior after you quote. A very wide setting can let a trade fill far from the price you saw and leave you with far fewer tokens. Use the tightest tolerance that still lets your intended trade land, and treat any fill far outside your quote as a warning to stop and check.

Do I need to change it for every trade?

No. Many bots let you set a default and change it only when the trade needs it. Review it when liquidity is thin, volatility is high, the token has a transfer tax, or you are trading a size that moves the pool. For routine trades, a default that matches your strategy is enough. If you change it for one trade, check whether the bot keeps that value for the next one. Confirm the quote and minimum received each time, because those numbers matter more than the setting alone.

What is the difference between slippage tolerance and price impact?

Slippage tolerance is the maximum price movement you choose to accept between the quote and execution. Price impact is the change your own order causes in the pool because of its size relative to available liquidity. Price impact is already visible in the quote; slippage is your buffer around that quote. If price impact is high, your order is moving the market, and raising slippage only allows a worse fill. It does not reduce price impact. Check both numbers before confirming, and size the trade so the price impact stays acceptable.