Pump fun sniper explained: speed, costs and real risks

The short answer

A pump.fun sniper watches the chain for new coins and buys the ones that match its filters the moment it sees them. How early it buys depends on where it runs: server bots reading blocks next to validators can buy in the same block as the launch, while a sniper in your browser typically buys 2 to 4 seconds later, at a higher price on the curve. Either way, sniping is high risk: in the 30 days to November 5, 2026, only about 2.75% of pump.fun coins graduated.

How does a pump.fun sniper work?

A pump.fun sniper works in three steps: detect a launch, decide, and buy.

1. Detect. Every pump.fun create transaction includes pump.fun's mint authority account; ordinary buys and sells do not. Watching that account gives a feed of launches only. The sniper reads each new create and decodes pump.fun's CreateEvent from the logs: name, ticker, metadata link, mint and creator, plus the creator's own buy.
2. Decide. Filters decide which coins to buy: keywords in the name, the creator's wallet, the size of the dev buy, whether the metadata has socials, and a cap on how many coins to buy.
3. Buy. The sniper sends a buy from each wallet, usually with pump.fun's buy_exact_sol_in instruction, which spends exactly the SOL you set and fails if it would get fewer tokens than your slippage allows. Most bots add a priority fee and a Jito tip to land faster.

There are also one-mint snipers, which watch a specific mint address and buy the instant its bonding curve exists, and creator snipers, which buy a specific wallet's next coin.

Why do server bots buy before browser snipers?

Server bots buy first because they see blocks sooner and send from closer to the leader. The gap is a few seconds, and on a bonding curve a few seconds is a lot of price.

	Server sniper bot	Browser sniper (SOLTidy)
How it sees launches	Streams from validators or a Geyser feed, often colocated	Polls an HTTP RPC every 0.5, 1 or 2 seconds
When it sees a launch	Before or as the block confirms	1 to 2 seconds after the block time
Time to buy	Milliseconds to build and send	Another 1 to 2 seconds to build, send and confirm
Typical landing	Same block as the create, or the next	A few blocks later
Keys	Held by the bot's servers	Stay in your browser tab
Runs when you're away	Yes	Only while the tab is open

The browser figures come from SOLTidy's own mainnet tests of its Pump.fun Sniper: launches decoded 1 to 2 seconds after their block time, and buys taking another second or two. Slots on Solana are about 400 milliseconds, so that is several blocks.

Two groups buy before any polling sniper. Server bots next to validators land in the launch block or the next one. And bundled launches put the creator's own wallets in the same block as the create, all or nothing, as how a pump.fun bundler works explains. By the time a browser sniper buys, it is often buying from those wallets' price, not the launch price.

What does sniping cost?

Sniping costs the curve fee, the bot's fee, the priority fee and tip, and token account rent, on every buy, and again on the sell.

Cost	Typical amount (November 2026)
pump.fun curve fee	1.25% of each buy and sell
Bot fee, server bots	1% per trade for GMGN, BullX NEO and Trojan; 0.75% to 0.95% on Axiom by volume tier
Bot fee, SOLTidy sniper	0.5% of the SOL spent on a buy
Priority fee	Fixed presets of 0.0001, 0.001 or 0.005 SOL per buy on SOLTidy
Jito tip	Optional; 0.001 SOL is a common setting
Token account rent	≈ 0.0015 SOL per coin, refundable when the account is closed

The fixed costs matter at small sizes. A 0.05 SOL snipe at Fast priority with a 0.001 SOL tip pays 0.00025 SOL to SOLTidy, 0.001 SOL of priority fee and 0.001 SOL of tip: about 4.5% of the buy before the curve fee and before the rent. Spending 0.05 SOL per coin on 20 coins means about 0.04 SOL in priority fees and tips alone. The free Priority Fee Tracker shows what the network actually demands at the moment, and what is a Jito bundle has current tip levels.

A round trip on a server bot charging 1% each way, plus pump.fun's 1.25% each way, costs about 4.5% of the position before any price movement.

Why do most snipes lose money?

Most snipes lose money because most launches go nowhere and the people who bought first can sell to you.

• Few coins graduate. Jupiter's launchpad index, tracked daily on SOLTidy's Launchpad Stats, counted 1,132,904 pump.fun launches and 31,174 graduations in the 30 days to November 5, 2026. About 97 of every 100 coins never filled their curve. Pump.fun graduation explained shows the curve math.
• You buy after the fastest wallets. Every buy before yours raises the price. The creator, bundled wallets and colocated bots are ahead of a late sniper.
• Creators sell into snipers. A common pattern is a creator who launches, waits for automated buys, then sells the dev buy into them. A coin can lose most of its value in one transaction.
• Slippage cuts both ways. A high slippage setting gets buys through in a busy block, but fills them at the worst price allowed.
• Fees add up. At 3% to 4.5% per round trip, a sniper that breaks even on price still loses money.

None of this makes sniping illegal or always unprofitable. It does mean that "buy every new launch" is a strategy that, on average, transfers SOL to whoever is faster.

How do you use SOLTidy's pump.fun sniper?

SOLTidy has two browser snipers. The Pump.fun Sniper watches pump.fun launches with filters, a creator's next coin, or one mint. The Solana Token Sniper buys a mint the moment it can trade: when its pump.fun curve is created, or when a Raydium or Meteora pool with SOL appears and Jupiter can route to it, which can take seconds to minutes after the pool opens.

1. Paste burner wallet keys. Up to 20, one per line. They stay in the tab's memory, sign buys there, and are wiped when you stop, clear or leave.
2. Choose what to snipe. Filters for new launches, creator mode for one wallet's next coin, or one-mint mode.
3. Set the buy. SOL per wallet per coin, a cap on coins, max slippage, a priority preset and an optional Jito tip.
4. Review and arm. The review shows the most the run can spend. The activity log shows every launch, why it was skipped or bought, and each transaction.

With simulation on, a buy that would fail is caught before it is sent, so it costs nothing. Without it, a failed buy that lands still pays its network and priority fee.

Plan the exit before you arm. The Pump.fun Auto Sell sets take-profit, stop-loss and trailing-stop rules for the coins you buy; take profit and stop loss on Solana memecoins explains why stops can gap. And check a coin with the free rug check before buying more of it.

Bottom line

A pump.fun sniper is a launch watcher that buys fast. Server bots buy in the launch block; browser snipers like SOLTidy's buy a few seconds later, at a higher curve price, with keys that never leave your machine. Fees run 0.5% to 1% per trade on the bot plus 1.25% to pump.fun, and with only about 2.75% of launches graduating, most snipes go to zero. Use burner wallets, small amounts you can lose, and an exit plan.