What splitting a transfer costs
Sending one transfer through one provider hands that provider both ends of it — the amount, the source, the destination and the timing. Splitting it across several removes that, and it is not free. Below is the same transfer priced as every shape it could take, against the open market, with how linkable each shape still is.
Splitting across two names is not the same as splitting across two prices. Four sets of providers here were measured quoting from one source — the gap between them holds to within a basis point where unrelated providers wander forty — so a split is now dealt across sources rather than names, and the first legs land on genuinely separate counterparties. Which ones, and the figures.
What a split looks like
The best shape this pair can run right now, drawn as it would be executed. The legs are deliberately unequal: equal ones carry no information to anybody reading the chain, which is exactly why they rejoin so easily.
You send 1,000 USDT (TRC-20), and it leaves as:
- exolix222.2222%addr 1
- mistex194.4419%addr 2
- changelly166.6717%addr 3
- fixedfloat138.8914%addr 4
- ccecash111.1111%addr 5
- sideshift83.338%addr 6
- bitxchange55.566%addr 7
- stealthex27.783%addr 8
1,000 USDT (TRC-20) into BTC
| Exchanges | Costs you | Linkability | Legs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.60% | 0 / 100 · linked | 1,000 down to 1,000 |
| 2 | 0.78% | 60 / 100 · moderate | 666.66666667 down to 333.33333333 |
| 3 | 0.79% | 77 / 100 · strong | 500 down to 166.66666667 |
| 4 | 0.82% | 91 / 100 · strong | 400 down to 100 |
| 5 | 0.94% | 100 / 100 · strong | 333.33333333 down to 66.66666667 |
| 6 | 1.03% | 100 / 100 · strong | 285.71428571 down to 47.61904762 |
| 7 | 1.27% | 100 / 100 · strong | 250 down to 35.71428571 |
| 8 | 1.43% | 100 / 100 · strong | 222.22222222 down to 27.77777778 |
Measured 13 November 2026, and refreshed through the day. Costs are the shortfall against mid-market, so they are what the transfer gives up rather than a fee anybody itemises.
What the choice is worth
One exchange gives up 0.60% and scores 0 — a single edge from your wallet to your destination, which one company watched from end to end. 8 exchanges give up 1.43% and score 100, with no provider seeing more than its own leg.
The difference between those two numbers is the whole decision, and it is smaller than most people expect. Nobody else publishes it because pricing it requires asking every provider at every leg size, which is what this site does anyway.
Why more legs cost more
Providers charge a fixed amount as well as a percentage, so a quarter of a transfer costs more than a quarter of its price. How much more is a fact about the pair rather than about small transfers in general: measured on one day across the pairs here, thirty-odd dollars gave up 1.12% on Litecoin into Bitcoin and 23.48% on Ether into Tether.
A split also never reuses a provider — one seeing two legs can rejoin them — so the second leg takes the second-best rate and the third the third. That, not the leg size alone, is most of what the extra legs cost.
How linkability is scored
Out of 100, from the shape alone: how many legs, how many different providers, how unevenly the amounts are divided, and whether each pays into its own address. Spacing in time is reported where a plan has run rather than scored, because what a given spread is worth depends on how much other traffic shared the window — a fact about the chain, not about the plan. It reads nothing from the chain and makes no promise about anonymity — a provider that logs and correlates its own legs defeats the amount signal entirely.
Equal legs score zero of the twenty-two points for amount shape, because identical payouts arriving together reassemble into one transfer by inspection. Plans built here are deliberately unequal for that reason, and it turns out to cost nothing: the largest leg goes to the cheapest provider, which more than pays for the smallest leg taking a worse rate.
Method
Every provider is asked for the same pair at six sizes in one pass, and each leg is priced against the sample nearest its own size. That is an approximation worth naming: a leg between two samples is priced at whichever it is closer to, so a figure here is good to roughly the gap between them rather than to the basis point.
Mid-market comes from the median of several large exchanges' public ticker endpoints, never one venue's word. A split never reuses a provider, so a shape can only be run when as many of them quote the pair as it has legs — which is why the widest rows above are dimmed whenever one is not answering. LetsExchange ceased trading on 1 October 2026 and was removed; PegasusSwap was added in its place.
Opens with this pair and amount filled in; the number of exchanges is chosen there. Any pair the providers list works, not only this one — no account, no sign-up, and nothing is held for you at any point. The pair pages price other pairs the same way, and why small swaps cost more covers the size effect behind these numbers.