# Photon Limit Orders and DCA: How to Set Them Up (2026) > How to set Photon limit orders and DCA orders: buy dip, stop loss and take profit triggers, DCA fields, the 72-hour expiry cap, and what each fill costs. Source: https://photonguides.com/guides/trading/photon-limit-orders-dca Photon limit orders live on every token page. A limit buy is the **Buy Dip** option in the Buy panel, and limit sells are **Stop Loss** and **Take Profit** under **Auto Sell** in the Sell panel. Each one triggers on a market cap you set three ways: a percentage drop, an exact figure, or a line dragged on the chart. DCA orders sit under the **Orders tab**, where you split a buy or sell into a fixed number of orders at a fixed interval. Every order expires after 24, 48 or 72 hours. This guide covers where each control is, what each field does, what a fill costs, and the limits Photon's documentation states or leaves out. Everything here comes from Photon's own [limit orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/limit-orders) and [DCA orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/dca-orders) pages and the screenshots on them, read on November 1, 2026. If you have not placed a first trade yet, start with [how to trade on Photon](/guides/getting-started/how-to-trade-on-photon). *Disclosure: PhotonGuides may earn a referral commission if you sign up through our link. It costs you nothing extra, and Photon publishes no [referral discount](/referral). Nothing here is financial advice. It explains how the tools work, not when to use them.* A limit order on Photon is a trigger, not a guaranteed price. When the market cap crosses your target, Photon sends a normal transaction with the slippage, priority fee and bribe attached to that order. Those three settings decide how close the fill lands to the number you typed. ## What order types does Photon have? Photon's documentation lists three limit order types and one DCA order type: | Order | Panel | What it does | |---|---|---| | **Buy Dip** | Buy, switched from Buy Now | Buys a SOL amount once market cap falls to your target | | **Stop Loss** | Sell, Auto Sell | Sells a percentage of your holdings once market cap falls to your target | | **Take Profit** | Sell, Auto Sell | Sells a percentage of your holdings once market cap reaches your target | | **DCA** | Orders tab, DCA | Buys a SOL amount or sells a percentage in a set number of orders at a set interval | There is no documented trailing stop, no order that waits on a price from another token, and no good-until-cancelled option. If you are used to a centralized exchange, check those three before you rely on an order. Limit and DCA orders work on any Solana token you can open in [Photon](https://photon-sol.tinyastro.io/@Concept211), including the new launches that [Photon Memescope](/guides/trading/photon-memescope-guide) surfaces. Finding a token there and putting a stop loss on it a minute later is the most common way the two features meet. ## How do you set a Buy Dip limit order? Open the token page, go to the Buy panel and switch the toggle from **Buy Now** to **Buy Dip**. Pick a SOL amount from the quick buttons or type your own, then choose how the target is defined. *Source: [Photon documentation, Limit Orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/limit-orders), used under fair use for educational purposes* The trigger menu has three entries: - **MC ↓ by** sets the target as a percentage drop from the current market cap. Use it when you think in "buy it 20% lower" terms. - **MC is** sets an exact market cap. Photon's documentation says the order fires "the moment when the market cap is equal to or less than your stated number." - **By target line** puts a draggable line on the chart. You drag it to a level, and the order takes that level as its target. Whichever you pick, the line under the field reads **Triggers on:** with the market cap and token price the target resolves to. The documentation notes that these figures update in real time, so the preview moves with the market until you create the order. Check it before you click. A percentage typed into the wrong field shows up there right away. *Source: [Photon documentation, Limit Orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/limit-orders), used under fair use for educational purposes* Last, choose the expiry and click **Create Order**. The order then shows up under the Orders tab as active. Photon's limit order page prints the expiry options as "24/28/72 hour". Its DCA page and the expiry menu in its own screenshots use 24, 48 and 72, so 28 looks like a typo. Either way, three days is the documented maximum. ## How do you set a stop loss or take profit on Photon? Open the Sell panel and switch from **Sell Now** to **Auto Sell**. Two tabs appear, **Stop Loss** and **Take Profit**. Both take the same three trigger methods as Buy Dip, plus a **Sell Amount** as a percentage of the tokens you hold, and an expiry. Photon handles one case for you. If a stop loss and a take profit on the same token are **both set to sell 100%**, Photon cancels the other one as soon as either executes, so a filled take profit never leaves a stray stop loss behind. The documentation describes that only for orders selling the full position. With partial amounts, such as a take profit on half, check the Orders tab after each fill and delete anything you no longer want. ## Where do you see and cancel your orders? Every limit order lands under the **Orders** tab on the token page, next to Transactions, My Holdings, Top Traders and Holders. A toggle limits the list to the token you are viewing, and a Filter menu narrows it further. *Source: [Photon documentation, Limit Orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/limit-orders), used under fair use for educational purposes* Each row shows the token, the amount, the condition, the price and market cap when you created the order, the target, the price it **triggered at**, the status, the slippage, the priority fee, and the creation time with a countdown to expiry. The trash icon on the right deletes an order. Compare the **Target price** and **Triggered at** columns in that screenshot. On several rows the two differ. The target is the condition. The triggered figure is where the market was when Photon acted on it. In a token that moves fast, that gap is normal, and the fill can land further away again depending on slippage. ## How does DCA work on Photon? DCA on Photon breaks one buy or sell into several smaller ones spread over time. Open a token page, click the **Orders** tab and choose **DCA** from the drop-down. There is also a **Create DCA** button on the DCA list. The form has a Buy side and a Sell side and asks for five things: *Source: [Photon documentation, DCA Orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/dca-orders), used under fair use for educational purposes* - **I want to buy / sell.** A SOL amount on the Buy side, a percentage of your holdings on the Sell side. - **Every.** The gap between orders, in minutes or hours. - **Over.** The total number of orders. - **Mktcap target range.** An optional minimum and maximum market cap. - **Expires in.** 24, 48 or 72 hours. Photon's documentation says you can set the priority fee and bribe for each DCA order. The form also has a collapsed **Advanced Settings** section, which the documentation does not describe, so open it and check what it holds before you create the order. *Source: [Photon documentation, DCA Orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/dca-orders), used under fair use for educational purposes* The DCA list shows progress as a bar and a count, such as "4 / 4 txns", with the trigger range as both a price band and a market cap band. Each row shows two SOL figures. In every row of Photon's screenshot, the larger equals the smaller times the transaction count (0.0125 × 4 = 0.05), so they read as the size of each order and the total. Photon's text says only "the amount you wish to spend," so check which figure your own form expects before you submit a large order. Photon's documentation does not say what happens to a DCA order when the market cap leaves your range: whether that order is skipped, waits for the price to come back, or still counts toward the total. If the range matters to you, watch the first few orders on the list before trusting it with size. ## What does a limit or DCA order cost? Photon charges a [flat 1% on every buy and sell](/guides/fees/photon-fees-explained). A filled limit order is a buy or a sell, so it pays the same 1% as a market order. Nothing in the documentation adds a separate fee for using limit or DCA orders. What changes with DCA is the number of transactions. Each order is its own Solana transaction, and each one pays: - the Solana base network fee, - the priority fee you set, - the Jito bribe you set. None of those three is a Photon fee, and the [fees guide](/guides/fees/photon-fees-explained#what-is-not-a-photon-fee) explains the difference. But they multiply with the order count. As a worked example, our own arithmetic rather than a Photon figure: with a 0.01 SOL priority fee, a single buy pays that fee once, while a DCA split into 5 orders pays 0.05 SOL in priority fees alone before any bribe. On a small position, that can cost more than the 1% itself. Photon's 1% is proportional, so splitting the trade does not change it. All of these fees come out of the same wallet as the trade. An order that triggers when the wallet cannot cover them fails, so keep a SOL buffer, as the [Photon wallet guide](/guides/getting-started/photon-wallet) explains. ## Why didn't my Photon limit order fill? Photon's documentation names one cause directly. It says to set "a sufficiently high Priority + Bribe amount" because "if you set it too low, your limit order may not get in as early as possible." Each order carries its own priority fee and bribe, so an order created last week keeps last week's settings even if you have since changed your preset. The other usual causes are the same as for any Photon trade: - **Slippage.** If the price moves past your slippage tolerance between trigger and inclusion, the transaction fails. See [slippage failures](/troubleshooting/photon-failed-transactions#3-slippage-failures). - **Fees too low under congestion.** See [priority fee and bribe set too low](/troubleshooting/photon-failed-transactions#4-priority-fee-and-bribe-set-too-low). - **Not enough SOL.** See [not enough SOL for fees](/troubleshooting/photon-failed-transactions#1-not-enough-sol-for-fees). - **The order expired.** After 72 hours at most, it is gone. Check the status column before assuming it failed. ## What can't Photon limit orders do? These are gaps in Photon's documentation, not features we tested and found missing: - Nothing lasts longer than 72 hours. A stop loss on a position you plan to hold for a week has to be created again at least twice. - There is no trailing stop. A stop loss sits at a fixed market cap or price. It does not move up with the token. - Triggers are market cap and price only. No order waits on volume, holder count or time of day. - Photon does not say whether orders run while you are logged out. Do not assume either way with real size. - A stop loss is not a guaranteed exit. On a thin pool, the trigger can fire and the sell still fill well below it, or fail on slippage. That is how the mechanism works on any Solana memecoin, not a Photon defect. Photon's documentation for both features says it was last updated more than a year ago, and the screenshots are undated. The forms in the live app may have moved on since. The [Photon safety guide](/security/is-photon-safe) covers the wider risks of handing exits to an automated order. ## Sources Every claim on this page was read from Photon's own documentation on **2026-11-01**: - [Limit Orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/limit-orders): the three order types, the three trigger methods, the expiry options, the Orders tab columns, the 100% auto-cancel rule, the priority fee and bribe note, and the first three screenshots above. - [DCA Orders](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/dca-orders): where DCA is opened, the five fields, the per-order priority and bribe, deleting an order, and the last two screenshots above. - [Photon fees - SOL](https://pies-organization.gitbook.io/photon-trading/photon-on-sol/photon-fees-sol): the 1% on buys and sells. The screenshots come from Photon's documentation, not from a funded account. The left and right panels in the first image are two separate documentation screenshots shown side by side. Where the documentation is silent, this page says so rather than guessing. More on how we work is on our [methodology page](/methodology). {/* Citation values are this page's own publish and update dates. Both docs pages in the Sources section were read on 2026-11-01. /seo-recs rec #7250. */} ## FAQ ### Where are limit orders on Photon? On every token page. In the Buy panel, switch from Buy Now to Buy Dip for a limit buy. In the Sell panel, switch to Auto Sell and choose Stop Loss or Take Profit. Active and finished orders are listed under the Orders tab on the same page. ### How do I set a DCA order on Photon? Open a token page, click the Orders tab, and choose DCA from the drop-down. Fill in the amount (SOL for a buy, a percentage for a sell), the interval in minutes or hours, the number of orders, an optional market cap range, and an expiry of 24, 48 or 72 hours, then create the order. ### How long do Photon limit orders last? Photon's documentation offers expiries of 24, 48 or 72 hours for limit orders and the same three for DCA orders. No longer option and no good-until-cancelled setting is documented, so an order you still want after three days has to be created again. ### Do limit and DCA orders cost more than a normal trade on Photon? Photon's fee is a flat 1 percent of every buy and sell, so a filled limit order pays the same rate as a market order. A DCA order splits one trade into several transactions, and each one pays its own Solana network fee, priority fee and bribe. Those go to the network and validators, not to Photon, but they add up across many small orders. ### What happens to my take profit if my stop loss fills? If a stop loss and a take profit are both set to sell 100 percent of your tokens, Photon cancels the other order automatically as soon as one of them executes. Photon's documentation describes that behavior only for orders selling the full position, so check the Orders tab yourself after a partial sell.