“Slippage” is often blamed for every DEX swap mismatch. The settled result is actually a stack of separate mechanisms. 🔍

Quote: a snapshot of the selected route and pool state.
Price impact: how the order size moves through available liquidity.
Tolerance: the execution boundary, often expressed as minimum received—not a fee.
Routing: the pools, hops and fee tiers used.
Gas: a separate network cost.
Ordering: transactions ahead of yours can change pool state before execution.
Before naming the cause, compare the quoted output, route, price impact, minimum received, gas and execution time.