Slippage Tolerance Explained: Controlling Your Market Order Price Range

When you place a market order on an exchange, you’re exposed to slippage—the difference between the price you expect and the price you actually get. Slippage tolerance is a feature that lets you set boundaries on this price difference, ensuring your market orders execute within your acceptable range. Available across Spot, Spot Margin, and Futures trading, this tool transforms unpredictable market orders into controlled transactions.

What Is Slippage Tolerance and Why Does It Matter?

Slippage tolerance allows you to specify the maximum price deviation you’ll accept when executing a market order, either as a fixed amount or a percentage. Instead of accepting whatever price the market provides, your order becomes conditional—it only fills if the price stays within your defined parameters.

Think of it as a safety net. Without slippage tolerance, a market order on a thin order book could execute at a dramatically worse price than expected. With it enabled, your order behaves like a limit order, refusing to fill at prices beyond your comfort zone. Any portion that can’t be filled within your tolerance gets canceled automatically.

How Slippage Tolerance Actually Works on Spot, Margin & Futures

When Disabled: Your market order executes as a standard market order with no price protection. You accept whatever prices are available on the order book, which can be problematic during volatile or low-liquidity conditions.

When Enabled: Your market order morphs into a hybrid that combines the speed of market orders with the price protection of limit orders. The system calculates a limit price based on your tolerance setting and Ask1 (for buy orders) or Bid1 (for sell orders) prices, then only executes at prices within that range.

This approach is particularly valuable for Futures contracts with lower liquidity. Rather than watching your order sliced across dozens of price levels at worsening rates, slippage tolerance lets you capture better fills efficiently. It also provides a superior alternative to traditional limit taker orders based on Ask1 and Bid1 pricing.

Configuring Your Slippage Settings: Amount vs Percentage

You can set slippage tolerance two ways:

By Amount

This method applies a fixed monetary deviation from the current Ask1 or Bid1.

Buy Orders: Your limit price becomes Ask1 + (your amount) Sell Orders: Your limit price becomes Bid1 − (your amount)

For example, if ETH/USDT shows Ask1 at 2,100 USDT and you set a 0.1 USDT tolerance, your buy limit price becomes 2,100.1 USDT. Your order will only execute if the market price reaches 2,100.1 USDT or lower. Similarly, if Bid1 is 2,000 USDT, your sell limit price becomes 1,999.9 USDT—execution only happens at 1,999.9 USDT or higher.

When setting by amount, values are always denominated in the settlement currency. Note that for BTC and ETH, percentage-based slippage tolerance isn’t available—only the amount method works.

By Percentage

This method applies a percentage-based deviation, which scales automatically with current market prices.

Buy Orders: Your limit price becomes Ask1 × (1 + your percentage) Sell Orders: Your limit price becomes Bid1 × (1 − your percentage)

Using the same ETH/USDT example with 0.5% tolerance: your buy limit price becomes 2,110.5 USDT [2,100 × 1.005], and your sell limit price becomes 1,990 USDT [2,000 × 0.995]. Partial fills are possible—only the portion within your tolerance range executes, while anything beyond gets canceled.

Market depth matters here. Full execution isn’t guaranteed if order book depth is thin. The system fills what it can within your slippage range, then cancels the rest.

Step-by-Step: Placing & Monitoring Orders with Slippage Tolerance

Placing Your Order

Step 1: Navigate to the trading page and select your desired trading pair. On the right panel, choose your direction (buy or sell), select Market as your order type, and input your order value or quantity.

Step 2: Enable the Slippage Tolerance checkbox. Click the dropdown to switch between By Amount and By Percentage modes. The interface displays market depth and indicates whether full execution is expected.

Step 3: Review the order details in the confirmation popup, then click Buy or Sell to finalize. Your market order with slippage tolerance is now live.

Viewing Your Orders

Once placed, find your order history at the bottom of the trading page, or click Orders in the top-right navigation. Hover over any order to view its slippage tolerance settings.

Important Notes:

• Slippage tolerance defaults to disabled, but the system remembers your settings
• It doesn’t work with OCO orders, Conditional orders, or Trailing Stop orders
• For Futures trading, you can also apply slippage tolerance to Market Close operations

By mastering slippage tolerance, you transform market orders from unpredictable transactions into precisely controlled executions that protect your portfolio during volatile market conditions.