1inch Review
MIT-licensed aggregator with unpublished fees
of 10
1inch releases its limit order protocol under the MIT licence, one of the cleanest positions in this category. It does not publish its fees as percentages, describing instead a swap surplus retained by the API provider and infrastructure fees covered by the taker.
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.
Licence
MIT License
Fees
Not stated as percentages
Fee model
Swap surplus retained by API provider; infrastructure fees covered by the taker
Chains
Could not be verified
Audits
Not stated
Scores
Each criterion carries equal weight. The overall score is the average of these 5 scores — (3.0 + 9.0 + 4.0 + 3.0 + 3.0) ÷ 5 = 4.4.
Pros
- MIT License on the limit order protocol and the legacy protocol repository
- MIT is a recognised open-source licence with no change date or revocation
Cons
- No fee percentage is published; the help page describes swap surplus and infrastructure fees without figures
- Supported chains could not be verified — the business documentation portal rendered empty
- No audits named on the pages we read
- The former fees article now redirects to an unrelated page
A clean licence
The limit order protocol carries a full standard MIT grant, and so does the legacy 1inch protocol repository. Among the ten protocols compared here, only Balancer, Raydium and 1inch offer a recognised open-source licence with no strings attached.
Fees are described, not quantified
The current help page explains that a swap surplus is retained by the API provider and that infrastructure fees are covered by the taker who fills an order, without stating any percentage. The article that previously carried the figures now redirects to an unrelated page about token approvals.
For an aggregator whose proposition is finding the best execution, the absence of a published take rate is the most significant gap on this page, and the fee score reflects it.
How it compares
Jupiter
Zero protocol fees, unpublished core code
Orca
Detailed fee tiers under a revocable licence
Curve
Four named auditors, but the code grants no rights
Aerodrome
Honest about which parts stay upgradeable
Raydium
Exact fee tiers under a clean Apache licence
SushiSwap
Widest chain deployment, thinnest current disclosure
PancakeSwap
Ten named auditors and a GPL licence
Balancer
GPL-3.0 licensed and immutable by design
Uniswap
Published tiers and genuinely immutable core
Sources
Scored from published primary sources rather than hands-on use. Every figure above comes from one of the pages below, on the date shown. Manufacturers change prices and specifications without notice — if something here no longer matches the source, tell us and we will correct it.
- 1.1inch — do I pay fees when using 1inch — checked
- 2.1inch limit order protocol — LICENSE — checked
Frequently asked questions
Does 1inch charge fees?
1inch describes a swap surplus retained by the API provider and infrastructure fees covered by the taker, but publishes no percentage figures on the pages we checked.
Is 1inch open source?
Yes. The limit order protocol and the legacy protocol repository both carry the MIT License.
Nothing here is financial advice. Editorial policy · How we score · How we're funded.