Squid Review
Charges nothing, documents little
of 10
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.
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.
Squid fee
None — users pay only source and destination gas
CCTP transfers
No fee
Chains
100+ claimed
Audits
9 claimed; no firm named
Licence
Not found
Scores
Each criterion carries equal weight. The overall score is the average of these 5 scores — (9.0 + 3.0 + 2.0 + 8.0 + 2.0) ÷ 5 = 4.8.
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
Free, stated without hedging
Squid states that it currently charges no fees and that a user pays only gas on the source and destination chains, adding that CCTP is not treated as a transfer and carries no fee, and that IBC relaying comes at zero cost. As a cost statement it is unambiguous.
Claims without the receipts
The homepage asserts nine audits, zero exploits, 99.99% uptime and $6bn safely routed. Not one auditing firm is named. A count of audits with no auditor attached cannot be checked by anyone, and this rubric treats an unverifiable claim as no disclosure — which is why the audit score sits at the bottom despite the confident number.
Licence and trust model
No LICENSE file was found in the repositories we probed. The fees page mentions that destination-swap fees are paid to Axelar's relayers, which hints at the underlying infrastructure without stating a security model.
How it compares
Synapse
MIT-licensed, and little else readable
Chainflip
Apache-licensed, with documentation gaps
deBridge
Per-chain flat fees, published in full
Hop Protocol
Every fee component published as a range
Stargate / LayerZero
Exact fee split, and a licence that expired unresolved
Celer cBridge
GPL-3.0 with a published fee ceiling
Wormhole
A named quorum: 13 of 19 guardians
Across
Optimistic security explained in one sentence
Axelar
Apache-licensed with the deepest audit archive
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.Squid — transaction times and fees — checked
- 2.Squid — official site — checked
Frequently asked questions
Does Squid charge fees?
Squid states it currently charges no fees; users pay only gas on the source and destination chains.
Who audited Squid?
The homepage claims nine audits but names no auditing firm on any page we checked on 24 July 2026.
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