1inch Review

How 1inch scores in decentralized exchanges

This entry rates 1inch, a DEX aggregator that routes swaps across other venues, in our decentralized exchange ranking. The basis is desk research of 1inch's own help center, developer documentation, security page and GitHub repositories, checked on November 1, 2026. No swap was made. The category uses five criteria, each marked 0 to 10 and weighted equally, as set out in our ratings methodology.

The overall score is the plain average: (6 + 9 + 8 + 9 + 10) ÷ 5 = 42 ÷ 5 = 8.4. On the scores currently recorded for the other eight protocols, that places 1inch first, tied with Uniswap at 8.4 and listed first alphabetically, ahead of PancakeSwap at 8.2.

Four marks changed on this pass, each because 1inch now publishes something the July 2026 check could not find. Fee transparency rose from 3 to 6 after 1inch Business began stating infrastructure fee ranges. Immutability & governance rose from 4 to 8 on the security page's non-upgradability statement. Chain coverage rose from 3 to 9 once the Swap API's network table could be read, and audit disclosure rose from 3 to 10 on the GitHub audit archive. The licence mark of 9 was rechecked and stands. The overall score moves from 4.4 to 8.4.

Strongest criteria: audits, licence and chains

Audit disclosure (10)

The 1inch-audits repository on GitHub keeps reports by product and version, with the firm named for each. Aggregation Router v6 lists Consensys, Decurity, Hexens, OpenZeppelin, PeckShield and Pessimistic. The Fusion+ cross-chain swap contracts list AstraSec, Consensys, Decurity, Igor Gulamov, OpenZeppelin and Pessimistic, and the Solana Fusion program lists eight firms including OtterSec and Quantstamp. The rubric asks whether reports are published and firms named; this archive meets both, which is the same standard that earned PancakeSwap a 10. The index carries no audit dates, so a reader has to open each report to see when it was done. An audit reviews code at a point in time and is not insurance.

Licence & code openness (9)

The limit-order-protocol, fusion-protocol and cross-chain-swap repositories each carry the MIT licence, which GitHub's own classifier also reports. MIT is a recognised open-source licence with no change date and no revocation clause. That is a cleaner position than the delayed-open BUSL licence on Uniswap's v4 core.

Chain coverage (9)

The Swap API overview names 18 networks, among them Ethereum, Solana, Base, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, Linea and zkSync. Solana supports the intent and cross-chain modes but not classic routing. The mark is below the 10 given to Curve's 30 listed networks and above PancakeSwap's 8 for eleven networks.

Weaker criteria: fees and pausing

Fee transparency (6): bounded, not fixed

1inch Business states that all 1inch interfaces, the dApp and Wallet included, may charge infrastructure fees of 0 to 5 basis points on stablecoin pairs and 0 to 30 on others, deducted from the amount received. On a $1,000 swap of a volatile token, that is anywhere from $0 to $3.00. The help center adds that in the Swap interface and for limit orders the taker who fills the order covers the fee, while on classic aggregator swaps the user does.

The gap is twofold. A range is an upper bound rather than the rate a given swap will pay, and the help center says swap surplus from positive slippage is kept by the API provider layer, with no figure for how often or how much. The rubric scores discrete published tiers above upper bounds, so this sits below PancakeSwap's 8 and the 9s and 10s given for fixed tiers. This is a deficiency in disclosure, not a measurement of what 1inch actually costs; execution quality was not tested.

Immutability & governance (8): plain, but partial

The security page answers the upgrade question directly: 1inch smart contracts are non-upgradable by design, and no privileged admin keys can change core logic after deployment. That is the kind of plain statement the criterion rewards. It does not say whether any contract can be paused, which is part of what Uniswap's statement covers and why Uniswap holds the 10.

What the score does not cover

The rubric reads published disclosures. It does not measure price execution, how often resolvers fill Fusion orders, liquidity depth or the size of retained surplus. It also does not grade incident history. 1inch's own blog reports that on March 5, 2025 a flaw in the obsolete Fusion v1 settlement contract was exploited against third-party resolver contracts, that no end users were affected and that resolvers now use Fusion v2. Readers weighing approvals and fake front ends can start with our guide to avoiding wallet scams and phishing.

1inch vs Uniswap and PancakeSwap

Uniswap ties 1inch at 8.4. It leads on its published v2 and v3 fee tiers and a fuller immutability statement, while 1inch leads it on licence and audits. Against PancakeSwap, 1inch ties on licence and audits, trails on fees and pulls ahead on its upgrade statement and wider network list.

Who this rating suits

The score is most useful to readers who route swaps across many networks and want open-licensed, extensively audited, non-upgradable contracts. It is less reassuring for anyone who needs to know the exact fee before signing: the published figure is a range, and surplus retention is not quantified. Our guide to comparing DEXs on what matters explains how to check the quoted amount received against these ranges. The score describes disclosure, not suitability for any individual trade.