A crypto market order slippage cap limits the execution prices allowed under a venue's rules; it does not guarantee that the requested quantity will fill. Some venues implement the setting as an immediate-or-cancel limit order, filling eligible quantity and canceling the remainder. Check the reference quote, units, supported order types and final fills before treating a tolerance percentage as a complete execution instruction.
Translate the percentage into an actual price
A tolerance needs an anchor. A limit based on the best ask is different from one based on your chart's last trade, a decision-time midpoint or an exchange's mark price. Record which reference the documented setting uses and when your own observation was captured.
For its Futures interface, Binance documents that enabling market-order slippage tolerance creates a limit order with immediate-or-cancel, or IOC, time in force. Its percentage calculation uses the best ask for buys and best bid for sells. Available depth can produce a partial fill, with the rest canceled. Binance Futures: market order slippage tolerance.
If the applicable buy reference is 100 USDT and the tolerance is 0.4%, the theoretical ceiling is 100 × 1.004 = 100.40 USDT. A sell with a 100 USDT bid and the same percentage has a theoretical floor of 100 × 0.996 = 99.60 USDT. These hypothetical prices omit instrument filters and fees.
That is a boundary for acceptable execution prices. It does not mean the average fill must be exactly 0.4% worse, nor does it specify how much can trade inside the boundary. The order-book depth worksheet covers estimating available quantity; here the question is what the instruction permits when that estimate falls short.
Read the specific submission path
A trading-page control and an API parameter can express related ideas through different units. Bybit's V5 placement reference specifies TickSize and Percent modes. The tick mode adds a number of price ticks to the ask for buys or subtracts them from the bid for sells. Its percentage mode scales the relevant best quote. The documented parameters exclude take-profit, stop-loss and conditional orders. Bybit API: place order.
For example, in an invented instrument with a 0.05 USDT tick, eight ticks mean 0.40 USDT of price distance. Eight percent means something entirely different. Store the mode alongside the number; a bare value of eight is incomplete.
When constructing an explicit IOC limit yourself, round a buy ceiling down and a sell floor up to valid ticks if the objective is to stay inside your stated bound. This is a conservative calculation convention, not a claim about how any venue normalizes its native tolerance parameter. Verify the submitted and accepted values.
An IOC instruction can take liquidity immediately. It does not join a passive queue for its canceled remainder. If waiting is acceptable, limit-order queue estimation addresses a different decision: what can actually be inferred about the quantity ahead of a resting order.
A cap that works can leave three units unbought
Consider a fictional ABC/USDT market. The intention is to buy ten ABC. Assume the cap calculation uses an ask of 100 USDT, a 0.4% tolerance and a valid 100.40 ceiling. All quantities are valid, the book remains fixed during this attempt, all displayed liquidity is eligible, and fees and competing orders are excluded.
| Ask, USDT per ABC | Available ABC | ABC bought within cap | Quote cost, USDT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100.00 | 3 | 3 | 300.00 |
| 100.25 | 4 | 4 | 401.00 |
| 100.80 | 6 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Total | 13 | 7 | 701.00 |
The modeled order buys seven ABC for 701 USDT. Its average is 701 ÷ 7 = 100.142857… USDT, while three requested ABC are canceled. No fill crossed 100.40. The cap operated as intended even though the purchase is only 70% complete.
Thirteen ABC were displayed, but only seven were offered at acceptable prices. A deep-looking book outside the authorized range cannot complete this instruction. If all eligible asks disappear before matching, a valid capped attempt can instead buy nothing.
Cancellation does not erase the seven acquired ABC. The partial-fill management guide explains the resulting inventory and fee accounting. Here the canceled quantity is unfinished intent, with no permission to keep trading under that terminated order.
A refreshed cap changes the permission
Suppose a second, separately authorized attempt requests the missing three ABC after the first order's final result is known. Its applicable ask is now 100.80. Reusing 0.4% produces a theoretical ceiling of 100.80 × 1.004 = 101.2032 USDT. Under an explicit 0.01-tick convention rounded inward, that would be 101.20.
Assume all three fill at 100.80. The second attempt satisfies its own new boundary, but its fills exceed the original 100.40 ceiling.
| Policy or observation | Meaning for the missing three ABC |
|---|---|
| Preserve the original 100.40 ceiling | No fill at the new 100.80 ask |
| Recalculate 0.4% from 100.80 | New permission can allow a fill at 100.80 |
| Report only the combined average | Conceals that some fills exceeded 100.40 |
The completed intention costs 701 + 302.40 = 1,003.40 USDT and averages 100.34. That average is below 100.40, despite three individual fills exceeding the original boundary. An average-price check cannot establish that a per-fill ceiling was preserved across attempts.
Choose the policy explicitly: keep the original absolute boundary, or reconsider it against a fresh market observation. Repeated automatic resets can become a price-chasing process even when every child order displays the same tolerance. A smaller percentage does not resolve that policy question.
Keep a receipt for the bound and the remainder
Retain enough information to answer these questions after execution:
| Receipt field | What it establishes |
|---|---|
| Venue, product and submission path | Which documented behavior applies |
| Side, requested quantity and quantity unit | What the attempt was allowed to change |
| Reference, tolerance mode and value | How the price boundary was calculated |
| Effective price, tick rules and timestamps | Whether the intended boundary survived submission |
| Distinct fills, fees and terminal status | What traded and what stopped |
| Parent boundary and retry decision | Whether a later attempt changed the permission |
Bybit's private order stream exposes cumulative executed quantity, executed value, average price and remaining quantity, alongside order status and tolerance fields. Use documented fields for the relevant product rather than deriving completion from a generic canceled label. Bybit API: private order stream.
A missing response is a separate uncertainty; use order-timeout reconciliation before resubmitting. Fees can also raise acquisition cost beyond the price-only calculation. Neither a capped purchase nor a capped sale establishes a maximum future account loss.
Finally, check the trading phase. A continuous-book example does not establish that the same order is accepted during a listing auction; the call-auction matching guide covers those phase restrictions. Stop-trigger price protection is another separate condition, explained in the stop protection guide.
This educational article was prepared with AI assistance from primary venue documentation reviewed on October 23, 2026. Its worksheets are constructed examples, and the cited venue settings do not establish corresponding KLINEO controls. A useful cap record preserves both the allowed price and the quantity that remains unfinished.