1inch vs CoWSwap
Neutral on-chain benchmarking of execution quality, MEV protection, and overall trade execution.
Protocol Scorecard
1inch and CoWSwap are both DEX aggregators: rather than holding liquidity themselves, they split each order across many underlying pools to find the best available price. Because both compete on routing quality, the difference between them shows up in execution — realized slippage and MEV exposure — far more than in their headline rates.
Across the trades ClearTrace benchmarked, 1inch posted an execution-quality score of 92.2/100 versus 84.7/100 for CoWSwap — a clear edge of 7.5 points. The score blends realized slippage with an MEV/toxicity measure, so a higher number means traders kept more of their expected value. 1inch was measured over 17,835 trades and CoWSwap over 14,604.
On this data, 1inch holds the stronger execution-quality score, but the gap reflects routing and MEV protection rather than one venue being universally better — results shift with trade size, token pair, and market conditions. We recalculate these scores on every data refresh; see our methodology for the full approach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which has better execution quality, 1inch or CoWSwap?
Based on ClearTrace's on-chain benchmarking, 1inch edges out CoWSwap on execution quality, 92.2/100 versus 84.7/100 (a 7.5-point gap).
Does 1inch or CoWSwap offer better MEV protection?
MEV protection is captured by our toxicity measure, where lower is better. 1inch scored a toxicity of 7.8 and CoWSwap 15.3, so 1inch showed somewhat stronger protection against value extraction such as sandwich attacks over the sample.
Is 1inch or CoWSwap better for large trades?
For large orders, aggregators such as 1inch can split a trade across multiple pools to reduce price impact, which often helps on size. The right venue still depends on the specific pair and amount — the live dashboard tracks current execution quality.