Price Impact
How much your own trade moves a pool's price, determined by your trade size relative to the pool's liquidity depth.
Price impact is how much your own trade moves the price in a liquidity pool, determined by the size of your trade relative to the pool's depth. Automated market makers price assets along a curve, so every unit you buy pushes the price higher for the next unit. A small trade in a deep pool barely moves the curve, while a large trade in a shallow pool can move the price dramatically and leave you with a far worse average price than the quoted spot price.
Unlike slippage, which includes unpredictable movement from other traders, price impact is deterministic: given the pool's current reserves, it can be computed exactly before you sign, and most interfaces display it in the quote. That makes it the first number to check on any swap. Concentrated liquidity designs reduce impact by packing more depth around the current price, and routing a trade across several pools spreads the size so no single pool absorbs the whole order.
Price impact matters most for small-cap tokens, new launches, and multi-asset products. Buying a large fraction of a thin launchpad pool can cost far more per token than the displayed price suggests, and selling back into the same pool compounds the loss. For index tokens that swap into many components, total impact adds up across every leg, which is why aggregated routing and deep, durably locked liquidity matter. If an interface shows double-digit price impact, pause and reconsider your trade size.