Trading terminals: Axiom, GMGN, Photon and Terminal
What a terminal shows you, what each of the big ones is good and bad at, and what they charge.
A trading terminal is a website built for one job: finding and trading memecoins fast. Open one and you usually see three live columns. The first lists brand new coins. The second lists coins close to graduating from their launchpad. The third lists coins that just graduated to a full pool.
Each row shows the coin's age, market cap, number of holders and a buy button. Around that, terminals add the tools active traders lean on: charts, holder breakdowns, a feed of what tracked wallets are buying, alerts from X accounts, limit orders and automatic sells.
The big terminals in October 2026
Axiom was the most used Solana terminal by volume for much of 2025 and the first half of 2026, and it is backed by Y Combinator. In August 2026 the FOMO app passed it on daily volume. Axiom is known for a clean, fast layout, wallet tracking, an X monitor and buying and selling on migration. It also offers perpetual futures through Hyperliquid, which are bets with borrowed money and no place to start. It charges 1% and pays part of that back as cashback in SOL. What you really pay starts at 0.95% of each trade and falls to 0.75% as your trading volume grows.
GMGN is a terminal plus a set of Telegram bots, popular for its data. It tracks smart money wallets, insiders and snipers, and offers copy trading and automatic buys and sells. It works on Solana and several other chains. Its fee is 1% per trade, and its docs say GMGN adds nothing else on top.
Photon is one of the oldest Solana terminals, simple and quick to learn. Its own docs put its fee at 1% of every buy and every sell. It has limit and DCA orders, but fewer extras than Axiom or GMGN.
Terminal used to be called Padre. pump.fun bought it in October 2025 and renamed it, and pump.fun's own menu links to it. It trades on Solana, Ethereum, Base and BNB Chain. pump.fun's own app now adds a 0.45% fee to each trade, and pump.fun's fees page says that fee is not charged on trades placed through Terminal. Terminal does not publish its own fee schedule and pays part of its fee back as cashback, so read the fee in the order panel before you trade.
Phantom Terminal is the Phantom wallet team's desktop trading screen, with tokens, new launches and leveraged perpetual futures. It suits people who already keep their money in Phantom.
Perps, explained| Terminal | Fee per trade | Good at | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Axiom | 0.95%, falling to 0.75% with volume | Speed, clean layout, wallet tracking | A staff misuse allegation in February 2026 |
| GMGN | 1% | Smart money data, copy trading, automation | Busy screens for a newcomer |
| Photon | 1% | Simple and fast | Fewer extras |
| Terminal (Padre) | Not published, check the order panel | Run by pump.fun, four chains | No public fee schedule |
| Phantom Terminal | Check the trade screen | Uses the wallet you already have | Newer, with fewer tools |
Trust is part of the choice
In February 2026 an on-chain investigator accused Axiom staff of using internal support tools to look up users' private wallet activity, and of insider trading. Axiom said it was shocked, removed access to those tools and kept investigating. Whatever the final outcome, it shows something true of every platform: the company behind it can see what you do there.
Platforms also close. BullX was one of the biggest terminals in 2024 and 2025. On 1 June 2026 it paused trading in its app and said only wallets and withdrawals would keep working. Anyone who kept money there had to move it out.
What Axiom's tiers are worth
Say you trade 20 SOL in a month, buys and sells added together.
- Step 1: At the starting tier the net fee is 0.95%, so you pay 0.19 SOL.
- Step 2: At the top tier it is 0.75%, so you pay 0.15 SOL.
- Step 3: The gap is 0.04 SOL a month. Tiers matter to people trading hundreds of SOL. When you are starting out, one coin falling 30% costs far more than any fee difference.
Check what you learned
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This guide is for learning. It is not financial advice. Most memecoins go to zero and most people who trade them lose money. Only ever trade what you can afford to lose.