Sandwich Bot Alternatives: Arbitrage, Liquidations and More

The main alternatives to a sandwich bot are cross-venue arbitrage, flash-loan arbitrage, liquidation bots and market making. They share the same infrastructure demands, speed and simulation, but do not depend on trading around a specific user’s swap. None is risk-free, and all are crowded.

Why look for alternatives

Reasons vary. Some operators dislike the ethics of extracting value from a user’s slippage. Others worry about the legal uncertainty described in is sandwich trading legal. Many simply find that protected routing is shrinking the supply of exposed trades, as noted in how to avoid sandwich attacks. Whatever the motive, the useful question is what the alternative needs and where it fails.

The main options

Cross-DEX arbitrage

Buy a token where it is cheaper and sell where it is dearer. Price gaps appear after large trades and during volatility, and arbitrageurs close them. ethereum.org’s MEV overview lists DEX arbitrage among the core MEV strategies. CryptoMEV Bot’s explainer calls it the most “legitimate” form of MEV because it keeps prices aligned across venues; that is a vendor opinion, but it matches the common view. The vendor has chain-specific pages, such as DeFi arbitrage and Ethereum arbitrage.

Flash-loan arbitrage

Borrow within one transaction, trade, repay. It reduces the capital you must hold, but not the competition or the costs. If the transaction cannot repay, it reverts, so principal loss is limited to fees. The vendor lists flash loan arbitrage as a product page.

Liquidations

Lending protocols pay bonuses to those who liquidate under-collateralised positions. The race is to be first. On Solana the vendor’s page names Solend as a venue.

Market making

Quoting both sides of a market to earn the spread. It is a different business: inventory risk matters more than ordering speed.

Strategy	Needs	Main risk	Targets a specific user’s trade?
Sandwich	Mempool visibility, ordering	Competition, failed legs, legal	Yes
DEX arbitrage	Price feeds, fast submission	Competition, gas	No
Flash-loan arbitrage	Contract skill	Revert costs, contract bugs	No
Liquidations	Position monitoring	Competition for bonuses	No
Market making	Capital, inventory management	Price moves against inventory	No

Key takeaway: the alternatives avoid harming a specific user’s order, but they do not escape competition. Most MEV niches are crowded.

What carries over from sandwiching

Skills transfer: simulation, bundle submission, tip strategy, infrastructure. On Solana, Jito’s documentation describes the bundle mechanism that arbitrage bots also use. Cost frameworks in what a sandwich bot costs also apply, since gas, tips and servers are common to all.

What does not carry over

Opportunities. A sandwich needs a victim; arbitrage needs a price gap, which can be tiny and contested by many. Margins per trade can be small, so volume and cost control matter more. Failure modes differ too: arbitrage risks include stale prices and failed multi-hop routes, while liquidations risk oracle and gas dynamics.

Choosing among them

Ask yourself:

1. What infrastructure can I run well?
2. Where do I have an edge: capital, code, data or speed?
3. How much legal and reputational risk can I accept?
4. What can I measure honestly in a small test?

A cautious plan is to start with a small arbitrage test, record net results over weeks, and only then consider scaling. The vendor’s article on crypto arbitrage trading outlines the idea from its perspective. If you still want to evaluate sandwiching, compare with the sandwich bot page and read sandwich bot risks first.

Outside MEV

Many people who investigate bots end up concluding that simpler approaches fit them better: trading with defined rules, holding, or using DEXs only as a user. Compare any bot to the passive benchmark of simply holding your capital. A strategy that cannot beat that after costs, taxes and time is not worth running.

Summary

Alternatives exist, and some are more widely accepted than sandwiching. They are not safer in a financial sense. Treat any advertised profit with scepticism, verify features with the vendor and consider legal advice, as covered in the legal overview.

A practical comparison of effort

Beyond the table above, the effort profiles differ. Arbitrage needs reliable price data across many venues and the engineering to route across them in one atomic transaction. Flash-loan strategies need smart-contract development and careful testing, since a bug in a contract that handles borrowed funds can be costly. Liquidation bots need position monitoring across lending protocols and a model of each protocol’s incentives. Market making needs inventory and risk management disciplines that have little to do with block-ordering speed.

For a reader deciding among these, a sensible filter is whether you can test cheaply. Arbitrage and liquidation logic can be simulated on historical data at no cost; market making cannot be tested without capital; sandwiching can be simulated but depends on the supply of exposed victims, which changes as habits improve. Start with the option you can test most cheaply, and read the downside notes in sandwich bot risks.

What vendors offer across strategies

Commercial tools often bundle several strategies. CryptoMEV Bot, for example, has separate pages for Solana, Ethereum, Binance, Bitcoin and DeFi arbitrage, flash-loan arbitrage and front-running, and shows the same pricing tiers on the pages we reviewed. Whether a given tier includes every strategy is something to confirm with the vendor, since the pages we read list features for each product but do not state a cross-product matrix.

Reputation and sustainability

Strategies that rely on harming individual users tend to invite countermeasures: wallets add protection, protocols change ordering rules, communities publish names of operators. Strategies that provide something the market needs, such as price alignment or liquidations that keep lending markets solvent, are less likely to be fought. That is not a guarantee of profit, but it is relevant to how long a strategy might remain viable and how comfortable you are being associated with it.

A final comparison question

Ask what the market would look like if you did not exist. If a price gap would simply persist a few seconds longer, your arbitrage is a small service. If a user would have received a better price, your sandwich is a transfer from them to you. Many operators find that answer helpful when choosing where to put their effort. If you are still weighing the sandwich route, how a sandwich bot works lays out what it takes.

This article is educational and not financial or legal advice.