How much your own order moves the market price, measured from the mid price before your trade to the price after it.
Last verified 13 September 2026 · written by the DexLadder team
What it means
How much your own order moves the market price, measured from the mid price before your trade to the price after it.
Why it matters when you trade
Slippage is what you pay; price impact is why you pay it. On an order book, impact is the depth you consume. On an automated market maker it is arithmetic you can compute exactly before you trade, because the pool price is a function of its reserves. Impact scales super-linearly with size: doubling your order much more than doubles the cost, which is the single most common reason a strategy that looks profitable on paper stops working at size.
Worked example
A constant-product pool holds 100 ETH and 300,000 USDC. Buying 5 ETH leaves 95 ETH in the pool, so the invariant forces USDC up to 30,000,000/95 = 315,789 — you pay 15,789 USDC for 5 ETH, an average of 3,158 against a starting price of 3,000. That is 5.3% price impact before any fee.
See it on live markets
DexLadder runs price impact against live market and pool data, with simulated capital, so you can watch it act on an order instead of reading about it — no account, no wallet, nothing installed.