Ranked & Reviewed
Best Crypto Bridges
Cross-chain bridges ranked on what secures your assets in transit, what the transfer actually costs, and how long it takes to settle.
No money changes hands. This is a non-commercial project: no advertising, no sponsored placements, and no affiliate or referral links. Links to the services below earn us nothing. Every overall score is the plain average of the criteria shown on the page, so you can check the arithmetic yourself — see our rating methodology and how the site is funded.
Axelar explains its security as a proof-of-stake validator set using threshold cryptography, publishes over forty audit reports from nine named firms, and releases under Apache 2.0. Its fees are described structurally rather than as figures.
Pros
- Trust model explained concretely: PoS validators holding key shares under a multi-party cryptography scheme
- Key shares allocated in proportion to staked AXL, so validator weight is explicit
- Apache License 2.0 — a recognised open-source licence
- Over forty audit reports published, by Ackee Blockchain, Certik, Cure53, NCC Group, Halborn, OtterSec and others
- States 80+ blockchains and 75+ validators
Cons
- Fees are described as a network base fee plus an execution fee, with no percentages published
- The base fee is fixed per chain pair but the schedule is not shown
- The homepage claim of zero exploits is a marketing assertion rather than a documented record
Across states its security assumption plainly: bundles are proposed with a bond and accepted unless challenged, and only a single honest actor is needed to dispute an invalid proposal. It supports 28 chains and is audited by OpenZeppelin, under a BUSL licence until 2027.
Pros
- Trust model stated in one clear sentence: only a single honest actor need dispute an invalid proposal
- Uses the UMA Optimistic Oracle, an external and independently documented component
- 28 chains stated with roughly two-second fills
- All audits by OpenZeppelin, covering V2, V3 and the token distributor
- Integrator app fee documented with its range, 0 to 1
Cons
- Business Source License 1.1 until 27 July 2027 — not an open-source licence today
- No fixed fee percentage: cost is the difference between input and output amount
- LP and relayer fee components are described but not quantified
Wormhole publishes the exact shape of its trust assumption — 19 guardians, of whom 13 must sign to produce a valid message — and releases under Apache 2.0. It publishes neither a fee nor a total chain count.
Pros
- Guardian set size and quorum published exactly: 13 of 19 signatures required
- States it relies on established validator companies rather than token-based incentives
- Apache License 2.0
- Audits published in-repo from Neodyme, Kudelski and Trail of Bits, plus per-chain folders
Cons
- No fee is stated on the protocol introduction page
- No total chain count is published; coverage is split across six separate product tables
- GitHub classifies the licence as NOASSERTION because the file uses a short-form notice
Celer publishes its fee as a base fee plus a protocol fee ranging from 0% to 2%, secures transfers through a proof-of-stake State Guardian Network, and releases its contracts under GPL-3.0.
Pros
- Fee structure published with a stated range: protocol fee 0% to 2%
- Base fee explained as covering destination-chain gas, paid in the transferred token
- State Guardian Network described as a proof-of-stake chain with CELR validators and delegators
- GPL-3.0 — a recognised open-source licence
- Earnings split published: 50% to SGN stakers and delegators, 50% to liquidity providers
Cons
- No total chain count is published
- No audit page could be reached and no auditing firm is named
- The cBridge-contracts repository returned 404 for licence lookup; the licence comes from the SGN v2 contracts repository
Stargate publishes a 6 basis point fee with its exact destination — 4 bps treasury, 1 bp veSTG holders, 1 bp liquidity providers — and LayerZero documents a configurable verifier stack with an unusually candid warning about single-provider chains.
Pros
- Fee published to the basis point: 6 bps total, split 4 treasury, 1 veSTG, 1 LP
- Partner rebate stated at 0.3 bps
- LayerZero documents its DVN security stack and how verification thresholds work
- Explicitly warns that production deployments should require a DVN not operated by LayerZero Labs, and that some chains have only one DVN provider
- Extensive audits named including Certora, OtterSec, Zellic, Paladin and Blockian
Cons
- The LayerZero v2 licence states in its own text that it is not an open source license
- Stargate Core's BUSL change date of 17 March 2026 has passed and the parameters name no successor licence at all
- The official supported-networks page renders a counter reading zero chains
- The fee schedule was found on the legacy documentation site, not the current one
deBridge publishes a flat fee for each of seventeen chains in the native gas token, plus 4 basis points on the input, and warns integrators not to hardcode the values because they can change.
Pros
- Flat fee published per chain, from 0.001 ETH to 15 CRO, across seventeen networks
- Variable component stated precisely as 4 bps of the input token
- Explicitly warns that fees can change and must be queried from the contract rather than hardcoded
- Seventeen chains enumerated in the fee table
Cons
- Trust model is described as a self-organised liquidity network with no validator or verification mechanism explained
- Business Source License 1.1 whose change date of 31 December 2025 has already passed
- No audits page could be reached and no auditing firm is named
Hop publishes every element of its cost — AMM swap fee 0% to 0.04%, bonder fee 0.05% to 0.30%, destination gas folded into the origin-chain charge, and a $0.25 minimum. Its security documentation is a single sentence.
Pros
- AMM swap fee published as 0% to 0.04% per swap, with the two-swap L2-to-L2 case explained
- Bonder fee published as 0.05% to 0.30%, varying by asset and route
- Minimum fee stated as $0.25 per transfer
- Destination-chain gas explicitly folded into the origin-chain fee
- MIT License on the main repository
Cons
- Security is asserted in one sentence — trustless and decentralised because it lives on-chain — with no mechanism described
- Bonders, challenge periods and validator assumptions are not explained anywhere we could read
- The security documentation page returned 404
- No chain list is published on the FAQ
Squid states plainly that it charges no fees and that users pay only gas on the source and destination chains. It claims 100+ chains and nine audits, but names no auditing firm and publishes no licence we could find.
Pros
- States outright that Squid currently charges no fees beyond gas
- Explicitly notes CCTP transfers carry no fee and IBC relaying costs nothing
- Claims 100+ chains and 20,000 tokens
- Partner fee mechanism documented, with partners electing their own percentage
Cons
- Nine audits are claimed on the homepage but no auditing firm is named anywhere
- No LICENSE file could be found in the probed repositories
- The trust model is not stated; the fees page mentions only that destination-swap fees go to Axelar relayers
- The portion of partner fees Squid retains is not disclosed
Chainflip publishes a single clear economic fact — 0.1% of swap volume is used to buy and burn FLIP — and releases its backend under Apache 2.0. Its validator and security documentation could not be reached.
Pros
- Fee published as a single figure: 0.1% of swap volume, used to buy and burn FLIP
- Apache License 2.0 on the backend repository
- Names Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana among supported assets
Cons
- Validator overview and swapping introduction pages both returned 404, so the trust model is unverified
- No chain count is published, only that it supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and more
- No audits page could be reached and no firm is named
- Validator figures appear in search results but not on any live official page we could read
Synapse releases its monorepo under the MIT licence. Beyond that, almost nothing could be verified: the documentation homepage renders as an empty client-side application and the supported-chains page returns 404.
Pros
- MIT License on the sanguine monorepo, a recognised open-source licence
- Three transfer routes documented by name: Synapse Router, CCTP and RFQ
Cons
- No fee percentages published on any page we could reach
- No security or trust model discussion on the About page
- The supported-chains page returned 404
- The documentation homepage renders empty as a client-side application
- No audits page reached and no auditing firm named
- The synapse-contracts repository returned 404 for a licence lookup
At a glance
| Service | Score | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Axelar | 8.6 | Apache-licensed with the deepest audit archive |
| Across | 7.4 | Optimistic security explained in one sentence |
| Wormhole | 6.8 | A named quorum: 13 of 19 guardians |
| Celer cBridge | 6.2 | GPL-3.0 with a published fee ceiling |
| Stargate / LayerZero | 6.0 | Exact fee split, and a licence that expired unresolved |
| deBridge | 5.4 | Per-chain flat fees, published in full |
| Hop Protocol | 5.4 | Every fee component published as a range |
| Squid | 4.8 | Charges nothing, documents little |
| Chainflip | 4.6 | Apache-licensed, with documentation gaps |
| Synapse | 3.4 | MIT-licensed, and little else readable |
A bridge moves value between blockchains that cannot talk to each other directly. For the moments your assets are in transit, you are trusting the bridge's design — a validator set, a multisig, a light client or an optimistic scheme — and that design is the single biggest difference between one bridge and another.
The advertised fee is rarely the real cost. Slippage on the route, gas on the destination chain and the gap between the quote and the amount that lands can matter more than the headline rate, which is why we score fees on what arrives rather than on what is posted.
How we score this category
A bridge holds your assets while they are in transit, and what secures them in that window is a design choice the protocol either explains or does not. This rubric scores that explanation alongside the cost, the licence and the audit record. We do not score past incidents unless a protocol documents one itself — reporting an exploit from memory, on a page about somebody else's security, is not something we are willing to do.
Every service in this ranking is scored 0–10 against the same 5 criteria, each carrying equal weight (20% apiece). The overall score is their plain average, rounded to one decimal place, and each review prints the individual numbers and the arithmetic so you can reproduce the result yourself.
What each criterion covers
- Fee transparency20% of the score
- Whether the cost of a transfer is published as figures — a percentage, a flat amount per chain, or an explicit statement that there is no fee — rather than described only as components a user discovers at quote time.
- Trust model disclosure20% of the score
- How clearly the protocol explains what actually secures a transfer: a validator set with a stated quorum, an optimistic challenge window, a light client, or a configurable verifier stack. Naming the assumption, including its weak points, scores far above asserting that the bridge is trustless.
- Licence & code openness20% of the score
- The licence in the repository, read from the file. A recognised open-source licence scores highest; a delayed-open licence scores mid-table; a licence that states in its own text that it is not open source, or no licence file at all, scores lowest.
- Chain coverage20% of the score
- The networks the protocol states it connects, taken from its own documentation. A page that cannot produce a list, or a counter that renders as zero, is scored as the absence of a published answer.
- Audit disclosure20% of the score
- Whether audit reports are published with the firms named. A homepage claiming a number of audits without naming a single auditor is not disclosure.
What does not affect a score
Nothing commercial, because there is nothing commercial to affect it. This is a non-commercial project: no advertising, no sponsored placements, and no affiliate or referral links anywhere on the site. Links to the services above earn us nothing, so no provider can buy a score, a rank, or an entry in this list. Where two services finish level, they are listed alphabetically rather than ordered silently.
The process across all categories, including how often we re-check, is set out in our ratings methodology.
Rankings are editorial. Nothing here is financial advice. Editorial policy · How we score · How we're funded.