Mastering Slippage Tolerance: Your Guide to Controlled Market Orders

When trading in volatile markets, price movements can happen in milliseconds. Slippage tolerance is your insurance policy—it sets boundaries on how much price movement you’ll accept when executing a market order. Whether you’re trading Spot, Spot Margin, or Futures, this feature puts you in control of your execution expectations, ensuring trades happen within your comfort zone rather than at whatever price the market throws at you.

What is Slippage Tolerance and Why You Need It

In traditional market orders, you submit an order at current market prices (Ask1 for buys, Bid1 for sells) and accept whatever execution price results. Between order placement and execution, prices can shift—sometimes dramatically. This is slippage, and it’s especially pronounced in low-liquidity environments or fast-moving markets.

Slippage tolerance solves this by transforming your market order into a controlled execution. You specify how much price deviation you’re willing to tolerate—either as a fixed amount or a percentage—and your order only fills if prices stay within that window. Think of it as turning a market order into a limit order with built-in flexibility. The advantages are clear:

• Smoother execution in thin markets: Especially valuable for Futures contracts with lower liquidity where slippage can be severe
• Predictable trading costs: You know the worst-case scenario before you hit buy or sell
• Protection from extreme price swings: Your order won’t fill at unfavorable prices during flash crashes or spikes
• Faster alternative to traditional limit orders: You get price protection while maintaining the speed advantage of market orders

How Slippage Tolerance Actually Works

When disabled, your market orders behave normally—no price restrictions apply. Your order executes at whatever prices are available in the order book, regardless of slippage impact.

When enabled, your market order operates like a limit order. It will only execute if prices remain within your specified tolerance range. Any portion of your order outside that range gets canceled automatically. This is where your control begins.

Two Ways to Set Your Slippage Tolerance: Amount vs Percentage

Setting By Fixed Amount

Define your tolerance as a specific currency value, measured against Ask1 (for buy orders) or Bid1 (for sell orders).

For buy orders: Limit Price = Ask1 + {amount}

For sell orders: Limit Price = Bid1 − {amount}

Practical example: You’re trading ETH/USDT. The current Ask1 is 2,100 USDT and Bid1 is 2,000 USDT. You set slippage tolerance to 0.1 USDT:

• Buy order: Your limit becomes 2,100.1 USDT. Your buy only executes if ETH price is 2,100.1 or lower
• Sell order: Your limit becomes 1,999.9 USDT. Your sell only executes if ETH price is 1,999.9 or higher
• Any portion trying to execute outside these boundaries gets canceled

Important note: When using fixed amounts, the denomination always matches the settlement currency (USDT in this example). For BTC and ETH specifically, this is the only method available—you cannot set slippage by percentage.

Setting By Percentage

Define tolerance as a percentage deviation from Ask1 or Bid1, giving you proportional protection regardless of price level.

For buy orders: Limit Price = Ask1 × (1 + {percentage}%)

For sell orders: Limit Price = Bid1 × (1 − {percentage}%)

Using our ETH/USDT example with a 0.5% tolerance:

• Buy order: Limit becomes 2,110.5 USDT [2,100 × (1 + 0.5%)]. Executes only if price stays at 2,110.5 or lower
• Sell order: Limit becomes 1,990 USDT [2,000 × (1 − 0.5%)]. Executes only if price stays at 1,990 or higher

Percentage-based tolerance scales with the asset price, making it more flexible across different price ranges.

Step-by-Step: Placing Orders with Slippage Tolerance Control

Step 1: Set up your order Navigate to the trading page and select your desired trading pair. In the right panel, choose your direction (buy or sell), select Market order type, and enter your order value or quantity as you normally would.

Step 2: Activate and configure slippage tolerance Check the Slippage Tolerance box. Click the dropdown to choose between Amount and Percentage. The system immediately displays market depth and shows whether your order is expected to execute fully. This preview is crucial—if order book depth is shallow, you might only get partial execution even within tolerance.

Step 3: Confirm and execute Review all details in the confirmation popup, then click Buy or Sell. Your order now has built-in price protection.

Tracking Your Orders and Slippage Settings

Viewing your order details: On the trading page, check the Order History section at the bottom. Hover over any order to see its slippage tolerance parameters. Alternatively, click Orders in the top-right navigation to access your complete order history with the same hover-over detail view.

Important behaviors:

• Slippage tolerance is disabled by default
• The system remembers your last settings when you return to the trading page
• Settings apply consistently until you manually change them

Key Limitations and Compatibility Notes

Market depth matters: Slippage tolerance cannot guarantee full execution. If the order book doesn’t have sufficient depth within your tolerance range, only the portion that fits gets filled. The rest cancels automatically—you won’t see partial executions at worse prices.

Incompatible order types: Slippage tolerance does not work with:

• OCO (One-Cancels-Other) orders
• Conditional orders
• Trailing Stop orders

Futures market close special case: When using Futures Market Close orders, you can also enable slippage tolerance and set either percentage or amount parameters exactly as you would for regular orders.

This feature transforms how you think about market order execution—from “pray and accept what you get” to “I’m in control of my acceptable price range.” Whether protecting against liquidity gaps or ensuring predictable costs, slippage tolerance puts precision trading within reach.