Cheapest cross-chain bridge for USDC at $300 notional
Total cost as a percent of notional, fees plus slippage plus destination gas combined, sampled at $300 USDC across Solana, Base and Arbitrum corridors.
TL;DR. As of , Socket Protocol posts the lowest effective fee at 0.013% (24h avg) across 8 ranked providers. Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/bridge-fee.
This benchmark measures the cheapest cross-chain bridge live, refreshed every five minutes across the major USDC corridors. The headline figure is total cost (fees plus slippage plus destination gas) expressed as a percent of trade size, not the explicit fee field most providers advertise. Bridge fee tables in the wild quote $1000 or $10000 notionals, where fixed costs are diluted into the percentage. We sample at $300, the size where small-trade dynamics actually dominate. Gas eats a larger share, intent spreads compress, aggregator markups become visible. The leaderboard sorts by p50 over 24 hours, so a single favourable quote cannot crown a winner. Below the table the same providers split into three pricing architectures (intent, aggregator, direct protocol) because each absorbs cost differently and they do not converge under the same query.
Methodology
We measure the effective fee each bridge charges, the bottom-line cost a user pays (fees plus slippage plus destination gas) as a percentage of trade size. The harness uses Prometheus gauge `bridge_cost_percent` rather than the narrower `bridge_fees_percent` because providers structure pricing differently. Some charge an explicit fee, others bake it into the spread. Comparing only the explicit fee field would let aggregators with implicit pricing show a misleading 0%. Sampled at $300 notional so small-amount fixed-fee blowups don't skew the percentile aggregates.
- Routes: USDC pairs spanning Solana, Base and Arbitrum.
- Reference notional: $300 USDC. Smaller sizes ($5, $50) are captured by the harness but excluded from this report.
- Cost: `bridge_cost_percent{amount_usd="300"}`, in percent of notional. Includes fees + slippage + destination gas.
- Cadence: full sweep every 5 minutes for 24 hours.
- Aggregation: the headline number is the average of per-corridor 24h medians over the corridors a provider actually quotes. The TRUMP to BRETT calibration route is excluded. deBridge does not quote the Arbitrum to HyperCore corridor, so its aggregate covers the remaining three. Across also skips Arbitrum to HyperCore, so its aggregate covers the same three corridors as deBridge.
- Normalization: cost is quoted USD in minus quoted USD delivered, the same all-in definition for every provider. Near Intents bundles the destination chain withdrawal fee into its quoted amountOut (the 1Click API documents withdrawFee as already deducted), so no extra gas term is added on top.
- Origin: every figure is measured from EU-West (Paris). The us-east and sgp probes have been paused since 2026-09-10, so there is no region selector: one origin, stated once, rather than a tab offering a choice of one.
- Failures (quote_failed, unsupported route) excluded from cost aggregates and counted toward success rate.
- Provider types are surfaced as badges: direct protocols (deBridge) charge their own bridging fees; aggregators (LI.FI) route through whichever underlying bridge is cheapest, so their effective fee includes that bridge's cost plus any aggregator markup; intent / relay layers (Mobula, Relay, Across, Near Intents) bake cost into the spread of a settlement intent or optimistic fill rather than charging an explicit fee.
- Excluded by design: Stargate, because its keyless quote endpoint was deprecated in favor of a key-gated LayerZero API, and its on-chain quoteOFT path is same-asset EVM-only, which matches none of this bench's corridors. CCTP, because Circle's burn/mint has no quote that returns a delivered amount; standard transfers mint 1:1 and the whole cost is user-paid gas we would have to estimate ourselves, which breaks the quoted USD in minus quoted USD delivered definition used for every other row.
- Also excluded, for a different reason: pump.fun's Pump Bridge is not a USDC transfer. Its only user instruction is DepositForSwap, taking a stable on Solana and delivering a token on the destination chain, so there is no USDC to USDC corridor to price and no quote endpoint to call. What it charges is read on chain in bench 268 instead.
Results: 8 providers ranked by Effective fee (24h avg)
| № | Providers | p50 | Success |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Socket Protocol | 0.013% | 100.00% (n=2880) |
| 2 | Squid Router | 0.023% | 100.00% (n=2880) |
| 3 | Near Intents | 0.045% | 98.70% (n=25916) |
| 4 | Across | 0.074% | 79.98% (n=23036) |
| 5 | Relay | 0.093% | 99.34% (n=46072) |
| 6 | Mobula | 0.19% | 99.93% (n=46072) |
| 7 | LI.FI | 0.38% | 84.18% (n=46072) |
| 8 | deBridge | 0.98% | 100.00% (n=37434) |
Frequently asked
What is the cheapest cross-chain bridge right now?
Socket Protocol currently leads the cross-corridor aggregate at 0.013% (p50, 24 h) for $300 USDC trades, averaged across the Solana/Base/Arbitrum corridors the harness sweeps. The leaderboard re-sorts every five minutes against fresh Prometheus samples, so the answer is anchored to the last 24 hours of live data rather than a frozen table from a blog post. Per-corridor leaders can diverge from this aggregate when a solver has deep inventory on one specific route and not on others, that breakdown is on the roadmap once corridor dimensions are surfaced in the page UI.
How much does it cost to bridge $300 USDC?
Total cost varies between providers. The current p50 across 8 bridges spans from 0.013% (leader) up to 0.98% (laggard) of the $300 notional. The figure already includes fees, slippage and destination gas because we report `bridge_cost_percent`, the all-in number that actually leaves the user's wallet, not the explicit fee field providers advertise.
Why do bridge fees vary 10x between providers?
Three pricing architectures cohabit in this leaderboard. Direct protocols (deBridge) charge a native-token fee front-loaded into the quote. Aggregators (LI.FI) pay an underlying bridge plus a thin markup. Intent and relay layers (Mobula, Relay, Across, Near Intents) compress all of it into a single spread quoted on a settlement intent or an optimistic fill. On small trades the fixed-fee component dominates and the gap stretches, on large trades the spread component dominates and the leaderboard re-orders.
Are bridge aggregators cheaper than direct bridges?
Not consistently. Aggregators route through whichever underlying bridge is cheapest at quote time, but they add a markup on top and their best route is constrained to the bridges they have integrated. Intent layers can route to any solver willing to settle the intent, including aggregators themselves. On liquid USDC corridors intent layers usually lead this leaderboard, but aggregators win when a corridor has only one underlying bridge and that bridge is cheaper than every solver's quote.
Is it cheaper to bridge small or large amounts?
Large amounts, in percentage terms. Part of every bridge quote is fixed (destination gas, base protocol fee), so at $300 the fixed component is the dominant share of the cost, while at $1000 or $10000 it dilutes into the percentage and the leaderboard re-orders. That is also why published bridge fee tables sampled at $10000 understate what retail users pay. The harness records $5, $50, $300, $1000 and $10000 buckets; this report surfaces $300 because the small-trade regime is where intent layers compress costs hardest, aggregator markups become visible, and most real transfers happen.
Why does the cheapest bridge change throughout the day?
Solver competition is the main driver. Intent layers like Mobula and Relay rank quotes from a rotating set of solvers whose inventory and risk appetite shift with destination-chain volatility and time of day. When Solana gas spikes or an L2 sees a deposit cluster, solvers reprice, and the leaderboard re-orders. The 5-minute scrape cadence catches these moves; the 24-hour p50 smooths them so the headline number reflects sustained competitiveness rather than a single favourable quote.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/bridge-monitor