Photon leads on 1 of 5 shared benchmarks, pump.fun on 4. Photon wins on Average swap size on Solana ($73.74 vs $34.7). pump.fun wins on Solana trading platform leaderboard ($123.58M vs $3.13M), Memecoin trading fees (0.12% vs 1.36%), Solana DEX volume ($88.50M vs $1.81M), Unique daily swap transactions on Solana (5.54M vs 40.8K).
Read methodology Last measured Window: rolling 24h5 shared benchmarks
Photon is a Solana trading terminal targeting advanced traders with fast token sniping, smart-money wallet tracking, and direct DEX routing. It charges a per-trade platform fee on swap volume.
pump.fun is the leading Solana memecoin launchpad. Tokens start on a bonding curve and graduate to PumpSwap (pump.fun's native AMM, launched March 2025) when the curve completes.
Volume figures are sourced from Mobula's lighthouse aggregator, which indexes on-chain swap events attributed to each trading platform or Telegram bot. Data is refreshed every 15 minutes. Platforms with zero volume may indicate no attributable on-chain activity in the last 24 hours or a temporary attribution gap in Mobula's indexing.
Take rate = fees / volume * 100. Fees are on-chain inflows to known fee wallets (Dune query 8316589, refreshed every 6h). Fomo fees come from DeFiLlama (on-chain USDC + off-chain relay). Volume is total Mobula-attributed volume; the take rate is a lower bound since platforms with variable or waivable fees will show lower observed rates.
Volume and revenue data sourced from DeFiLlama's DEX and fees APIs. DeFiLlama attributes volume via on-chain referral tags and program IDs; platforms without standard tags may be undercounted. Figures are 24-hour and 7-day rolling totals updated every 30 minutes. Revenue uses DeFiLlama's dailyRevenue dataType, stripping LP fees. Terminal volume (Axiom, GMGN, Fomo) and launchpad volume (pump.fun) use different attribution methods and are not directly additive.
Average swap size is computed as 24h attributed volume divided by 24h attributed trade count from Mobula lighthouse. Both numerator and denominator include bot and MEV activity; the metric reflects all on-chain swaps attributed to each platform, not human-only trades. pump.fun volume comes from the byLaunchpad bucket (bonding-curve swaps via pump.fun's own frontend); all other platforms come from byPlatform. Attribution is mutually exclusive per Mobula's referral-tag methodology.
Counts unique tx_ids per platform, not unique wallets. Actual unique-wallet count is 3-10x lower since active traders execute multiple transactions per day. Includes bots, MEV searchers, and multi-wallet traders. Terminals (GMGN, Axiom, Fomo, Trojan, Photon, Maestro) use fee wallet inflow detection; pump.fun uses Dune Spellbook (dex_solana.trades, project IN pumpdotfun/pumpswap) to avoid noise from fee-wallet micro-inflows at 0% fee.
Frequently asked questions
Photon vs pump.fun: which one is better?
Photon and pump.fun are compared on 5 shared OpenChainBench benchmarks. Photon leads on Average swap size on Solana. pump.fun leads on Solana trading platform leaderboard. See the live table on this page for every metric.
Which is cheaper, Photon or pump.fun?
On the Average swap size on Solana benchmark, Photon leads at $73.74 versus pump.fun at $34.7. Live measurement is updated continuously by the OpenChainBench harness.
Which is cheaper, Photon or pump.fun?
On the Solana trading platform leaderboard benchmark, pump.fun leads at $123.58M versus Photon at $3.13M. Live measurement is updated continuously by the OpenChainBench harness.
How is the Photon vs pump.fun comparison measured?
Every benchmark on this page uses the same open methodology, published at https://openchainbench.com/methodology. Data is CC-BY-4.0. Measurement harnesses are MIT-licensed.
Auto-generated pairs require: both providers in the same benchmark for seven consecutive days, at least 1000 samples per provider, observable third-party search demand, and a public /products/[slug] page on OCB. Editorially curated pairs (like this one) may publish early when search demand is high and data is accruing — panels with fewer than 100 samples are shown as provisional. The full pair ledger is versioned in the public repo.
