# Photon vs GMGN (2026): Fees, Chains & Which Terminal Fits Which Job

> Photon vs GMGN with sourced numbers: Photon's flat 1% from its own docs, GMGN's 1% reducible to 0.70%, seven chains against one, and DefiLlama fee share pulled 2026-08-06.

Source: https://photonguides.com/compare/photon-vs-gmgn

[Photon](/ecosystem/what-is-photon) and GMGN are both trading terminals that sit over DEX liquidity and remove the wallet-signature step from a swap, but they are built for different jobs, and the difference is not really about speed. Photon is a Solana execution tool: one chain, web only, a flat 1% on every buy and every sell confirmed in its own GitBook, with no discount path published anywhere. GMGN is a multichain terminal with an analytics layer, documenting Solana, Ethereum, Base, BSC, Monad, MegaETH and Hyperliquid L1, a 1% handling fee its own docs say drops to 0.70% to 0.90% with a referral code, and access from both a web app and Telegram. On DefiLlama's fees API pulled 6 August 2026, GMGN took $9.31M in 30-day gross fees for 23.0% of the named cohort against Photon's $507,610 and 1.26%. So GMGN is cheaper on published rates and roughly 18 times larger by fee revenue, while Photon's case rests on Memescope and a single-chain focus.

*Disclosure: PhotonGuides earns a commission when someone opens  [Photon](https://photon-sol.tinyastro.io/@Concept211) through our link. It costs you nothing extra, and because Photon publishes no referral discount there is no saving for us to withhold. We have no commercial relationship with  GMGN. Every fee figure below comes from a platform's own documentation, and every share and revenue figure from the DefiLlama fees API pulled **2026-08-06**. Our [methodology](/methodology) sets out how each class of figure is sourced.*

The honest split: GMGN if you trade more than one chain, want smart-money and contract-risk tooling, or want a fee below 1%. Photon if Solana launches are the whole job and Memescope is the screener you actually want to look at. Nothing about the fee comparison is close.

## The short answer, and who each is for

GMGN suits a trader whose activity spans chains. Seven networks behind one login means one wallet habit, one interface and one fee schedule rather than a different terminal per chain, and its analytics layer (contract risk scanning and smart-money wallet tracking) is among the more developed in the category. It also reaches you through Telegram, which matters if you want to act without a browser open.

Photon suits the opposite shape: a trader whose entire activity is Solana launches, who wants the shortest path from a token appearing to holding it, and who values [Memescope](/guides/trading/photon-memescope-guide) as a screener enough to pay a premium for it. Photon documents one chain in depth; GMGN reaches seven from one interface.

What Photon does not have is a discount path. That is the whole of the price argument and it does not require interpretation.

## Fees side by side

Both fee schedules are read off the platform's own documentation, never off a marketing page
or another comparison site, and each rate is quoted with the wording the source uses. Revenue
and share figures come from one DefiLlama pull on a single date so the two terminals are
measured over the same window. Execution-speed claims stay out of the table because no primary
source publishes them.

| | Photon | GMGN |
|---|---|---|
| Headline fee | Flat **1%** per buy and per sell (official GitBook) | **1% handling fee** per transaction (official docs) |
| Reducible to | Nothing. No tier, no referral discount published | **0.70% to 0.90%** with a referral code (official docs) |
| Round trip at the floor | **2.00%** | **1.40% to 1.80%** |
| Volume tiers | None documented | None documented beyond the referral reduction |
| Priority fee / tip | User-set, paid to validators, not to the platform | Same model |
| Fee history | None published | None published |

Photon charges **1% of the initial token used for every buy and sell transaction**, verbatim from [Photon's own fee documentation](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/photon-fees-sol). The docs give two worked examples: a 5 SOL buy incurs a 0.05 SOL fee, and a sale generating 1 SOL incurs a 0.01 SOL fee. Wallet-to-wallet transfers are not charged.

GMGN documents a **1% handling fee per transaction, reducible to 0.70% to 0.90% via referral code**, in [its own fee and settings documentation](https://docs.gmgn.ai/index/gmgn-fees-settings). That is a 10% to 30% reduction depending on the code.

On a $10,000 round trip, using only each platform's published numbers:

| Platform and rate | Cost per round trip |
|---|---|
| Photon, flat 1% | **$200.00** |
| GMGN, 1% headline | $200.00 |
| GMGN, 0.90% with a code | $180.00 |
| GMGN, 0.70% with a code | **$140.00** |

The gap is not dramatic on one trade. It compounds with turnover, which is the only fee lever that moves much: our [fees guide](/guides/fees/photon-fees-explained) works through what that does to an account over a hundred round trips.

Several sites state that GMGN charges 1.5%. GMGN's own documentation says 1%, reducible to 0.70% to 0.90% with a referral code. The 1.5% number is not traceable to anything GMGN published. This is not a case of an unverified claim that might be true; it contradicts the primary source. We flag it because it appears often enough to shift a comparison's conclusion, and because a page that gets a competitor's headline rate wrong by 50% has not checked either platform.

Neither platform's priority fee or validator tip is a platform fee. Both let you set them, both pay them to validators, and any comparison that folds them into a headline rate is producing a number that depends on the author's own slippage settings rather than on either company's pricing.

## Chain coverage, which is the real difference

This is the substantive divergence and the reason the comparison is worth making at all.

GMGN documents seven networks: **Solana, Ethereum, Base, BSC, Monad, MegaETH and Hyperliquid L1**. Its center of gravity has also moved. GMGN is increasingly a BSC venue rather than a Solana one, with daily BSC fees exceeding its Solana fees on a sampled day in August 2026. If you are comparing the two purely as Solana tools, GMGN's headline size overstates how much of it is pointed at Solana.

Photon's documentation covers **Solana in detail**, plus an Ethereum deployment that now redirects and should be read as legacy. Separate Photon deployments are live on **BNB Chain and Base** under their own subdomains, and this is where honesty matters more than completeness: Photon's docs do not publish fee schedules for those deployments, and sources disagree on the current full chain list. Treat any confident "Photon supports N chains" claim, including on other sites, as unverified.

One chain documented in depth against seven reached from one interface. That is the trade, and which side of it you want has nothing to do with fees.

## Execution and speed

Here is where most comparisons invent a number, so this section is short.

Both platforms remove the browser-extension signature round trip, which is where the meaningful latency saving in this category comes from. Both route into the same underlying DEX pools, so the fill you get is set by pool depth and by the priority fee you attached, not by the terminal's branding.

Claims that Photon confirms transactions 100 to 300 milliseconds faster than competitors appear across several sites with **no published methodology and no reproducible test**. We are not going to repeat them as fact, and we are not going to assert the reverse either. What can be said from the documentation is that Photon's [Smart-MEV Protection](/guides/trading) routes tips differently by size (under 0.001 SOL direct to Jito in Fast Mode, 0.002 SOL in Secure Mode, with larger tips routed via Bloxroute), and that GMGN exposes comparable anti-MEV settings. Neither vendor publishes a benchmark you can check.

If execution speed is genuinely your deciding factor, the only number worth trusting is one you measure yourself on your own trade sizes. Our [failed transactions guide](/troubleshooting/photon-failed-transactions) covers how to read what a submitted trade actually did.

## Custody and key handling

Both are non-custodial, and both differ from a centralized exchange in the same way: the swap settles on-chain into a wallet whose key you hold, with no withdrawal approval standing between you and the token.

Photon generates a Solana wallet at signup and reveals its private key **exactly once**, behind a slider. Copy it offline before clicking past that screen, because Photon's [Terms of Use](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/terms-of-use) say the Company "has no way of granting you access to the site" if you lose access to or control of your wallet. Photon supports up to five wallets on one account, and the key can be [exported into Phantom](/security) later, which is also the documented route to using Photon on a phone.

GMGN likewise generates wallets you hold keys to across the chains it supports. The practical difference is surface area rather than model: a multichain terminal means more keys and more chains to keep straight.

It is phishing. A fake-Photon drainer at speedtrade[.]icu has been documented by security researchers at PCRisk, mimicking the real interface and draining wallets that connect to it. Photon's real domains all sit under `tinyastro.io`. Check the hostname character by character before funding anything, whichever terminal you pick. Our page on [whether Photon is safe](/security/is-photon-safe) goes through the custody model and the clone problem in full.

## Where each one actually stands

Fee revenue is the cleanest public proxy for how much trading a terminal handles, because it scales with volume and is reported independently. From the DefiLlama fees API, pulled **2026-08-06**:

| | GMGN | Photon |
|---|---|---|
| 30-day gross fees | **$9,309,944** | $507,610 |
| Share of named cohort | **23.0%** | 1.26% |
| Rank in cohort | **2nd** | 7th |
| 30-day trend | **-20.5%** | **-28.1%** |

GMGN is roughly 18 times larger than Photon by 30-day fees and sits second in the cohort behind Axiom's 55.3%. Both are shrinking, and neither is shrinking gently.

Photon's longer arc is on the record and worth stating plainly rather than burying: it launched in January 2024, peaked in **January 2025 at $84,588,376 in a single month**, and has $440,842,744 in lifetime gross fees behind it. The current monthly run rate is between roughly $467,000 and $674,000, a drawdown of about **99.4% from peak**. That is a mature product that lost a share war, not a broken one. The [comparison hub](/compare) sets both against the whole cohort.

## Which to choose for which job

**Choose GMGN if** you trade on more than one chain, you want contract-risk scanning and smart-money wallet tracking as part of the terminal rather than as a separate subscription, you want Telegram access, or you simply want to pay less than 1% and are willing to use a referral code to get there.

**Choose Photon if** Solana launches are the entire job, Memescope's filter set is the screener you actually want in front of you, and you would rather have one chain documented in depth than seven reached from one interface. You are paying a premium of 10 to 30 basis points per side against GMGN's floor for that, with no path to reducing it.

**Choose neither if** you only need plain execution on established Solana tokens. A straightforward aggregator charges 0 to 10 basis points for the same swap, and 1% per side is a large amount to pay for an interface you are not using the launch-screening half of.

Anyone weighing this against the category leader should read [Photon vs Axiom](/compare/photon-vs-axiom) as well, because Axiom's published floor of 0.75% plus SOL cashback undercuts both platforms on this page.

## Sources

Photon's fee schedule and feature set come from [Photon's GitBook](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/photon-fees-sol). GMGN's fee schedule comes from [GMGN's own fee and settings documentation](https://docs.gmgn.ai/index/gmgn-fees-settings). All fee revenue, share and trend figures come from the DefiLlama fees API pulled **2026-08-06**; re-pull before relying on them, because this category moves fast. GMGN's chain list and its shift toward BSC come from our own competitor research on the same date. Where a figure could not be traced to a primary source it is marked unverified above rather than printed as fact, and the execution-speed claims are the clearest example. More on how we work is on our [methodology page](/methodology) and our [about page](/about).

## FAQ

### Is Photon or GMGN cheaper?

GMGN, on the published schedules. Photon charges a flat 1% on every buy and every sell with no volume tiers and no published referral discount. GMGN's own documentation states a 1% handling fee reducible to 0.70 to 0.90 percent with a referral code, so a GMGN user with a code pays between 10 and 30 percent less per side than a Photon user pays. Both figures come from each platform's own docs, not from review sites.

### Does GMGN really charge 1.5%?

No, and this is one of the most repeated errors in this category. GMGN's official fee documentation states a 1% handling fee, reducible to 0.70 to 0.90 percent with a referral code. The 1.5 percent figure appears on several secondary sites and is not traceable to anything GMGN published. Treat it as wrong rather than merely unverified.

### Which chains does each terminal support?

GMGN documents Solana, Ethereum, Base, BSC, Monad, MegaETH and Hyperliquid L1. Photon's documentation covers Solana in detail plus a now-retired Ethereum deployment, and separate Photon deployments exist on BNB Chain and Base under their own subdomains without documented fee schedules. If you trade across more than one chain from one interface, that is the substantive difference between the two.

### Does Photon have a Telegram bot like GMGN?

No. Photon is a web application only, and nothing in its documentation describes a Telegram bot or a native mobile app. GMGN is reachable from both a web app and Telegram. The documented mobile route for Photon is exporting your private key into the Phantom wallet's in-app browser.

### Which is bigger, Photon or GMGN?

GMGN, by a wide margin. DefiLlama's fees API pulled on 6 August 2026 shows GMGN took 9.31 million dollars in 30-day gross fees for 23.0 percent of the named terminal cohort, against Photon's 507,610 dollars and 1.26 percent. Both are declining over the same window, GMGN by 20.5 percent and Photon by 28.1 percent.

### Does either one have a token or an airdrop?

Neither has a confirmed token or airdrop. There is no Photon token, and any contract address presented as one should be treated as a scam, since several unrelated projects use the PHOTON and PHO tickers. GMGN has no confirmed token either. A Photon Points leaderboard with a weekly jackpot is documented on the Ethereum side of Photon's product.