BULK vs Jupiter Perpetuals

A grounded comparison between BULK and Jupiter Perpetuals — the other major Solana perpetuals venue. These are genuinely different products under the hood, not just competing brands, so "which is better" depends heavily on what you're trying to do.

The fundamental difference: order book vs. pool

This is the single most important distinction, and it shapes everything else below.

BULK runs a central limit order book (CLOB) — your order matches against other traders' resting orders, with maker/taker roles, price-time priority, and the full suite of order types described in Order Types on BULK. See Fair Ordering for how BULK prevents front-running within that book.

Jupiter Perpetuals works completely differently: there's no order book at all. You trade directly against a liquidity pool (JLP) at the oracle price. This eliminates order-book slippage entirely for the assets it supports, but it also means concepts like "maker fee," "post-only order," or "queue position" simply don't apply — you're not competing with other traders for a spot in a book, you're borrowing from a pool.

Neither model is strictly "better" — they're solving the liquidity problem in opposite ways.

Markets

Jupiter supports exactly three assets: SOL, ETH, and wrapped BTC (max 6 simultaneous positions, one per asset per side). BULK lists 20 markets as of this writing — see Markets on BULK for the full, current list. If you want exposure beyond majors, BULK is the only option of the two; if you only ever trade SOL/ETH/BTC, Jupiter's pool model is a legitimate simpler alternative.

Leverage

Jupiter's own documentation states a leverage range of 1.1x up to 250x on its supported assets. BULK goes up to 100x on some instruments, with the exact per-market cap enforced live and varying by instrument (see Fees on BULK and check `/exchangeInfo` for the current number on any specific market). Higher leverage isn't automatically an advantage — it's a bigger tool that requires more caution, not less. See How Liquidations Work before assuming "more leverage available" is a reason to use more of it.

Fees

This is a place where the two aren't directly comparable, and it's worth being honest about that rather than forcing a false apples-to-apples number. BULK publishes explicit basis-point fee tiers by volume (see Fees on BULK for the current schedule). Jupiter's documentation describes its fee mechanism — a base fee, a price-impact fee, and an hourly borrow fee calculated as utilization × hourly rate × position size — but does not publish a flat headline rate the way BULK does. If you see a specific "Jupiter fee is X bps" claim somewhere, treat it skeptically unless it links to Jupiter's own live rate card.

Capital efficiency

BULK's portfolio margin system can meaningfully reduce collateral requirements for correlated, hedged positions across its 20 markets. Jupiter's pool model doesn't have an equivalent concept — you're not holding a "portfolio" against the pool in the same sense, so this specific efficiency gain is unique to CLOB-style venues like BULK.

Who each is actually for

Jupiter — you want simple, no-slippage exposure to SOL/ETH/BTC specifically, you're already using the Jupiter ecosystem, and you don't need advanced order types or cross-asset margin efficiency.
BULK — you want a broader market selection, real order-book control (limit orders, post-only, conditional orders — see Conditional Orders Playbook), and portfolio-level margin efficiency if you're running hedged or correlated positions.

A note on sourcing

Jupiter's figures here are pulled directly from Jupiter's own documentation. Anything not explicitly confirmed there (like a specific fee percentage) is intentionally left out rather than repeated from secondhand sources — the same standard this wiki applies to claims about BULK itself.