When trading on decentralized exchanges, there are a range of variables that can alter the price of a trade, such as slippage, gas fees and price impact. Because of these variables, there are essentially three different prices that are important throughout the course of a trade: the quoted price, the executed price, and the adjusted price.‍

Quoted price

The quoted price is the “sticker price” of the asset, the price that users are advertised for a given trade on a DEX.

Executed price

The executed price is the price at which a trade was completed, after accounting for factors that could have impacted the price during the delay it takes for the trade to settle, like market volatility.

Adjusted price

The adjusted price is what the user ultimately gets once the trade is completed, after accounting for factors including gas fees and transaction fees. 

Why adjusted price is important 

When trading on DEX aggregators, users are often attracted to using one over the other because of the quoted price of the asset they’re looking to trade. As a result, this metric is often what is used to measure the performance of aggregators. But since this quoted price isn’t what the user ultimately ends up with, adjusted price is actually a more reliable metric when comparing aggregators. 

While some aggregators are optimized to generate the best quoted price, others such as Matcha, which is powered by 0x Swap API, are optimized to generate the best adjusted price. This becomes especially relevant when trading with high sums on DEXes, because that’s when aggregators perform their function of splitting up trades across various liquidity sources. Uniswap, for example, performs best at getting the lowest adjusted price on trades of below $5,000. But overall, Matcha, using Swap API, outperforms other aggregators seven out of ten times in terms of getting users the best adjusted price and because of its architecture and smart-order routing strategy. 

Always remember – the best quoted price doesn’t necessarily mean that a user will end up with the best adjusted price.

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