How pump.fun teams make money from trading bots
In the last 7 days, 217,080 wallets bought tokens launched by serial pump.fun creators. Together they put in 1,237,558 SOL and got 1,080,073 SOL back. Here is where the other 157,485 SOL went.
Measured on every pump.fun and PumpSwap trade of 76,103 launches. Updated every hour.
157,485 SOL lost in cash by 217,080 outside wallets went to:
- 92,202 SOLSold by wallets that never bought
- 29,438 SOLStill sitting in the curves and pools
- 17,842 SOLpump.fun protocol fees
- 11,264 SOLCreator fees, paid to the teams
- 6,739 SOLTeams' trading profit
Cash only: SOL that actually left or reached the wallets. Teams = a creator with 3 or more launches in 7 days plus the wallets that bought in the launch block of at least 3 of its launches.
Two sides of the same trades
of organised teams made money
538 teams made of a creator and 3 or more launch-block wallets. Together they made +18,196 SOL this week. A typical team made +4.6 SOL; the 93 largest ones made +46 SOL each.
of outside buyers lost money
217,080 wallets bought these teams' tokens and got back less SOL than they put in. Among the 1,456 busiest, clearly bots with 100+ positions this week, 80 % lost money, -2.0 SOL each for the typical one.
Launching tokens is not what pays: of the 4,159 serial creators who launch alone, without team wallets, only 39 % made money. What pays is being the team, on the selling side of the bots.
There are only two ways to win on pump.fun
1. Be the team
Create the token, buy it in the launch block with your own wallets, then sell to everyone who comes after you, collecting the creator fees on every trade. That is what the 538 organised teams above do.
This week 71 % of them made money; the 93 largest made about +46 SOL each. You cannot copy it: their edge is buying a token they created, in a block nobody else can enter.
2. Be first in line, every time
Buy before everyone else on every launch. That takes a dedicated Solana node (about $2,200 to $3,800 a month), a direct feed of new blocks (about $800 to $1,000 a month) and paid bundles that land your buy first, plus a tip on every trade. Count roughly $3,000 to $5,000 a month, about €2,500 to €4,500, before your first trade.
Our August and September measurements: the first buyer on a token won 54 % of the time and +0.55 SOL on average; buyers arriving 4th to 10th lost 0.41 SOL on average.
Without one of these two, a winning week is luck. It happens, and it does not last: the simulator replays the same rules 200 times on real launches, and the middle of the road loses.
Prices listed by the providers in October 2026: Helius (dedicated nodes from $2,900 a month, shred feed $800 to $1,000 a month per IP), RPC Fast (dedicated nodes from $2,200 to $3,800 a month). Euro amounts are rounded.
Serial creators took at least 18,003 SOL in a week
That is 6,739 SOL taken out by the identified team wallets selling into buyers, plus 11,264 SOL of creator fees, which pump.fun pays to the creator on every trade, whether the buyer wins or loses. On top of that, 87,565 wallets sold 92,202 SOL worth of tokens they never bought: they received them from another wallet, which is how teams spread their sales across fresh addresses, or we missed their buy. Pump.fun itself kept 17,842 SOL in fees.
How a launch team works
The launch block
The creator launches the token and a few wallets buy in the very same block. That is the cheapest price the token will ever have, and nobody outside the team can react that fast. Spreading the buys over several wallets makes them look like independent people. Where the team's own SOL comes from matters less than where its profit comes from: the buyers who follow.
The bait
A few seconds after launch the chart already shows buyers, volume and a rising price. That is exactly what most bots are told to look for: "buy tokens with momentum", "buy when others are buying". Every bot buy is SOL going into the token's bonding curve.
Selling into the buying
On pump.fun the price only moves up when someone buys. The team sells right behind each buy. The chart keeps climbing in small steps and the volume looks real, while the SOL that bots put in leaves through the team's sales. This week, on 69 % of launches where the creator bought, the creator had sold everything within 5 minutes.
The crash
When bots stop buying, nothing holds the price. It falls back towards where it started, because the curve only holds the SOL that the last buyers left in it.
Left holding the bag, again and again
The last buyers hold tokens that only the curve will buy back, at a fraction of what they paid. A few minutes later the same creator launches again: one of the creators below launched 635 tokens.
Why the price on your screen is not money
A token's market cap is its last price multiplied by every token in existence. The SOL you can actually get back is only what sits in its bonding curve or pool, and each sale lowers the price for the next one. On pump.fun nobody can pull that liquidity out (at migration the pool's liquidity tokens are burned), so the only way out is to sell into it, and the team sells first.
Screen value counted at the lower of what the tokens cost and their last price. Even if every holder sold at once, at most 29,438 SOL could come back, and much less in practice, because the team's leftover tokens compete for the same SOL.
The biggest teams this week
Ranked by SOL taken out (trading plus creator fees). Creator addresses are public on-chain accounts.
| Creator | Launches | Team wallets | Team took (SOL) | Outside buyers' cash (SOL) | Outside wallets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bwam…fSXa | 635 | 34 | +1,071 | -8,168 | 23,475 |
| E4FP…pZEA | 262 | 46 | +872 | -2,932 | 6,540 |
| D8pP…zoxy | 27 | 6 | +783 | -1,395 | 2,623 |
| 4ksb…SZdW | 12 | 3 | +717 | -2,006 | 2,808 |
| 85sB…USmn | 25 | 2 | +701 | -861 | 2,556 |
| gVDX…dAkx | 35 | 14 | +686 | -3,686 | 17,439 |
| B4JX…USKy | 17 | 4 | +632 | -10,916 | 28,354 |
| JDQK…rSrT | 93 | 16 | +608 | -3,665 | 14,484 |
| 98Rh…7xn9 | 9 | 2 | +573 | -621 | 2,879 |
| D4kg…QVCZ | 17 | 3 | +383 | -441 | 300 |
| 9kC3…HXYq | 17 | 3 | +374 | -498 | 2,262 |
| 7GhW…FH51 | 92 | 4 | +315 | -2,643 | 12,273 |
What happens if you try to follow them
Cash result of outside wallets on these teams' launches, by how fast they bought after the launch:
16,619 positions
286,401 positions
764,867 positions
606,056 positions
Being in the launch block without being the team is the worst place of all: you pay the team's price at the exact moment they start selling. Further out, the later you buy, the more you lose. Across all pump.fun bots we measure, 7 % of 118,493 active bots made money.
What your bot can do about it
- Crash-test your bot settings on real launches before spending SOL, and tick the two protection filters to see what they change.
- Before buying, check the creator: the free MCP tool
botsharper_check_walletsays whether an address is a serial creator or a launch-team wallet. Pro gives your bot the full list, refreshed every hour. - Test your real bot from its public wallet to see where it stands.
FAQ
Why do most pump.fun bots lose money?
Because the buyers who arrive first are often the people who launched the token. A bot that buys after them is the exit for their sales. Over the last 7 days, outside wallets lost 157,485 SOL in cash on serial creators' launches.
Can a token's price keep rising while the money leaves?
Not on its own: on pump.fun the price only rises when SOL comes in. What happens is that each new buy lifts the price a little and the team sells right after it, so the chart rises while the SOL coming in leaves through their sales.
Can I just copy a pump.fun team?
No. Their edge is buying in the launch block of a token they created, which nobody else can do. Outside wallets that also bought in the launch block lost 42 % of their stake in cash this week.
Can a pump.fun trading bot make money?
Only with one of two edges: being the team that launches the token, or being the first buyer on every launch, which takes infrastructure costing roughly $3,000 to $5,000 a month. Without either, a winning streak is luck.
Is the market cap real?
It is a price multiplied by a supply, not money. Only the SOL in the curve or pool can be paid out, and selling pushes the price down as you go.
How we measured
Every pump.fun bonding-curve trade and every SOL-quoted PumpSwap trade we collected over the last 7 days, read from Solana's public chain. A team is a creator with 3 or more launches in 7 days plus the wallets that bought in the launch block of at least 3 of its launches; some of those wallets may be fast snipers rather than team members. Cash = SOL received minus SOL paid, fees included. Outside wallets include bots and people. Facts about what already happened, not advice.