A small widget fee is automatically applied to any swap natively made in the Safe{Wallet} UI and paid to CoW Swap. A part of this fee is then paid to Safe Ecosystem Foundation as a license fee to support Safe community initiatives. In this article we’ll explain in detail, how are these fees calculated, and what additional cost do swap feature users bear.
Fee tiers
Tiered fees for all token pairs (excluding stablecoin-only pairs)
Example: ETH to USDC
Trade size (in USD) | Applied fee |
0-100.000 | 0.35% |
>100.000 - 1.000.000 | 0.20% |
>1.000.000 | 0.1% |
Tiered fees for stablecoin-only pairs (USDC/USDT/DAI)
Currently only available on Ethereum and Arbitrum (12.12.2024)
Example: USDC to DAI
Trade size (in USD) | Applied fee |
0-100.000 | 0.1% |
>100.000 - 1.000.000 | 0.07% |
>1.000.000 | 0.05% |
How the fees are applied
The widget fee is always applied to the surplus currency. A surplus in CoW Swap is any improvements over the quoted price. Surplus currency depends on the order type - whether it's a sell or a buy order. Read more about surplus in this CoW Swap article.
Examples:
In case you define that you sell 1,000 USDT for ETH it's a sell order, and the surplus currency will be ETH as the exact amount to receive is unknown.
In case you define that you buy 1 ETH for USDT it's a buy order, and the surplus currency will be USDT as the exact amount to send is unknown.
As a consequence, it's not possible to know the exact amount of the widget fee before the swap execution. But the percentage to be charged is always known and displayed to a user.
Other fees and expenses
Besides the widget fee, other elements that affect the final amount users receive include:
Network costs. Network costs cover gas fees, liquidity pool fees, and other operational costs incurred by solvers when settling transactions.
Price improvement. If CoW Protocol can find a user more than it initially quoted, the additional amount is split between the trader and the protocol.
More detailed information about CoW Protocol fees & revenue can be found in the CoW DAO documentation.