Guide

How to Use Jupiter

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Jupiter is the default trading interface for Solana. It’s a DEX aggregator — meaning it doesn’t hold liquidity itself but routes your trades across Raydium, Orca, Meteora, and 20+ other liquidity sources to find the best price for every swap. Over 70% of Solana swap volume flows through Jupiter. But swapping is just the start. Jupiter also offers limit orders, dollar-cost averaging (DCA), and perpetual futures trading. This guide covers every feature, step by step.

Getting Started: Connect Your Wallet

Go to jup.ag — verify the URL and bookmark it. Click “Connect Wallet”, select Phantom (or Solflare), and approve the connection. You need SOL in your wallet for transaction fees — keep at least 0.05 SOL reserved.

Feature 1: Token Swaps

Swapping is Jupiter’s core feature. Here’s the full process:

How to Swap

  1. On the main Jupiter page, you’ll see the swap interface with two token fields.
  2. From (top): Select the token you’re selling. SOL is the default.
  3. To (bottom): Select the token you’re buying. Click the token selector to search by name or paste a mint address.
  4. Enter the amount in the top field. Jupiter calculates and displays the output amount.
  5. Review the swap details:
    • Rate: The exchange rate (e.g., 1 SOL = 148.52 USDC).
    • Price impact: How much your swap moves the market. Under 0.1% is ideal. Above 1% means you’re trading large relative to available liquidity.
    • Route: Which DEXs Jupiter is routing through. You might see “via Orca Whirlpool” or “split: 60% Raydium, 40% Meteora.”
    • Minimum received: The worst-case amount after slippage. If the price moves beyond this, the transaction automatically cancels.
  6. Click “Swap” → review in your wallet (check amounts) → confirm.

The swap executes in under a second. Click the transaction link to verify on Solscan.

Understanding Routes and Price Impact

Jupiter’s routing engine queries every liquidity source on Solana — Raydium AMM, Raydium CLMM, Orca Whirlpools, Meteora DLMM, Phoenix order book, and 15+ more — then calculates whether a single-source or split route gives you the best price. It may route 60% through Raydium and 40% through Orca if splitting produces a better outcome. The entire route executes atomically — everything succeeds or nothing does.

Price impact is the percentage your swap moves the market price. Under 0.1% is ideal. For very large swaps ($100K+), even optimized routing may show significant impact — consider splitting into 3–5 smaller transactions.

Feature 2: Limit Orders

Limit orders let you set a target price and have Jupiter execute the swap automatically when the market reaches it — no need to watch prices manually.

How to Set a Limit Order

  1. Click the “Limit” tab at the top of the Jupiter interface.
  2. Select your sell token (e.g., USDC) and buy token (e.g., SOL).
  3. Enter the amount to sell.
  4. Set your target price — the rate at which you want the swap to execute. For example, “Buy SOL at $140” if the current price is $148.
  5. Set an expiry — how long the order stays active. Options include 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 30 days, or never.
  6. Click “Place Limit Order” → confirm in your wallet.

Your USDC is transferred to Jupiter’s limit order program and held there until the target price is reached. If the price hits your target, Jupiter executes the swap automatically. If the order expires before being filled, your USDC is returned to your wallet.

Cost: No protocol fee. You pay only the underlying pool’s swap fee and network fee when the order executes.

Important: Your tokens leave your wallet when you place the order — they’re held by Jupiter’s limit order program until execution or cancellation. This carries smart contract risk.

Feature 3: DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging)

Jupiter DCA automatically splits a large purchase into smaller orders executed at regular intervals. Instead of buying $5,000 of SOL at one price, you spread it across multiple buys to average out price volatility.

How to Set Up DCA

  1. Click the “DCA” tab at the top of Jupiter.
  2. Select your input token (e.g., USDC) and output token (e.g., SOL).
  3. Enter the total amount to spend (e.g., 5,000 USDC).
  4. Choose the frequency: every minute, every hour, every day, or every week.
  5. Choose the number of orders. For example, 10 orders of 500 USDC each over 10 days.
  6. Click “Start DCA” → confirm in your wallet.

Jupiter transfers your total USDC amount into the DCA program. It then executes one swap at each interval using Jupiter’s standard routing — so every individual order gets the best available price at that moment.

Cost: No Jupiter protocol fee. You pay the underlying swap fee and network fee on each individual order.

Tradeoff: DCA protects against buying at a local top, but means you miss buying entirely at a local bottom. It’s a risk-reduction strategy, not a profit-maximization strategy.

Cancelling: Cancel any active DCA order from the DCA tab. Unspent funds return to your wallet. Already-executed orders stay completed.

Feature 4: Jupiter Perps

Jupiter Perps lets you trade perpetual futures on SOL, ETH, and BTC with up to 100x leverage. This is fundamentally different from swapping — you’re speculating on price direction with amplified exposure.

How It Works

Go to jup.ag/perps. Select the market (SOL-PERP, ETH-PERP, or BTC-PERP), choose Long or Short, enter your collateral amount, set leverage (1.1x to 100x), and review the liquidation price before confirming.

At 5x leverage, a 10% price move in your favor produces a 50% gain — but a 10% move against you produces a 50% loss. If the market moves enough to exhaust your margin, your position is liquidated and you lose your collateral.

Fees: 0.06% position fee on open/close, plus an hourly borrow fee based on utilization.

Warning: Most leveraged traders lose money. At 10x leverage, a 10% adverse move wipes your position. At 100x, a 1% move does the same. If you’re new to trading, perps are not where to start.

Advanced Settings

Slippage

Access via the gear icon on the swap page. Slippage tolerance is the maximum price movement you’ll accept:

  • 0.3% — Tight. Best for major pairs (SOL/USDC, USDT/USDC). May cause failures during volatile moments.
  • 0.5% — Default. Works for most swaps with established tokens.
  • 1–3% — For smaller, less liquid tokens. Higher slippage means accepting a potentially worse price but fewer failed transactions.
  • 5%+ — Almost never advisable. If a token requires this much slippage, it has dangerously low liquidity.

Priority Fees

During network congestion, transactions without priority fees may fail repeatedly. Jupiter offers priority fee levels:

  • Auto: Jupiter estimates the appropriate fee based on current network conditions. Recommended for most users.
  • Custom: Set your own fee. During extreme congestion (major launches, airdrops), you may need $0.05–$0.10+ to get transactions through.

Priority fees don’t affect your swap price — they’re paid to validators to process your transaction faster.

MEV Protection

MEV bots can sandwich your swaps — buying before you to push the price up, letting your swap execute at the worse price, then selling for profit. Jupiter includes MEV protection settings that route transactions through protected channels to reduce sandwich attack exposure.

When to enable: For any swap above $500, enabling MEV protection is worth the slight additional latency. For small swaps under $100, sandwiching is usually not profitable for bots and protection is less necessary.

Direct Route Only

In settings, you can toggle “Direct Route Only” to force Jupiter to use a single-pool route instead of splitting across multiple DEXs. This reduces transaction complexity and lowers the chance of failure during congestion — but may give a worse price because Jupiter can’t optimize across multiple pools.

When to use: During extreme network congestion when multi-hop transactions keep failing. Under normal conditions, leave it off and let Jupiter optimize routing.

Jupiter Token Lists

Jupiter maintains a verified token list that flags legitimate tokens vs. unverified ones. In settings:

  • Strict mode: Shows only verified tokens. Maximum protection against fake tokens. Recommended for beginners.
  • All tokens: Shows everything, including unverified tokens. Necessary if you’re trading newly launched tokens that haven’t been verified yet, but you must manually verify mint addresses.

Always verify before swapping an unverified token. Check the mint address against the project’s official website, Twitter/X, or CoinGecko. Fake tokens copy names, symbols, and logos of legitimate projects.

Common Issues and Solutions

“Transaction failed” after clicking swap. Usually caused by slippage being too tight or insufficient priority fee during congestion. Increase slippage by 0.5% or bump your priority fee, then retry. You don’t lose funds — failed transactions revert.

“Insufficient SOL for fees.” You don’t have enough SOL to pay the network fee. You need at least 0.001 SOL per transaction. Send SOL from a CEX or ask someone to send you a small amount.

Route shows “high price impact.” Your swap is too large relative to available liquidity. Split into smaller swaps.

Limit order not filling. The market price hasn’t reached your target yet. Check the order is still active in the Limit tab.

Jupiter vs. Swapping Directly on a DEX

There is almost no scenario where swapping directly on Raydium or Orca gives you a better price than Jupiter, because Jupiter checks those pools and all others. Use individual DEXs when you need their specific features — providing liquidity, farming rewards, or managing concentrated liquidity positions. For swapping, always use Jupiter.

Jupiter handles the routing complexity so you don’t have to. Set your slippage, enable MEV protection for larger swaps, verify token addresses, and let the aggregator find you the best price across all of Solana.

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