Sui DEXs Compared (2026): Cetus, DeepBook, Bluefin, Turbos and Momentum by the Numbers

Short answer: In September 2026, two venues handle about 60% of all DEX volume on Sui: Cetus, a concentrated-liquidity AMM, and DeepBook, an on-chain order book. Bluefin Spot and Turbos take most of what's left. Everything else is small. Liquidity across the whole Sui DEX sector is also far thinner than it was 18 months ago, and that matters more than which logo you pick.

This guide compares Sui's DEXs on numbers you can check: volume, TVL, fees and turnover, all from DefiLlama on 16 September 2026. Then it covers what each design means for traders and for liquidity providers.

On a chain where the five biggest DEXs hold about $61M between them, the question isn't "which DEX is best". It's "how deep is this particular pool". Check before you trade size.

Sui DEXs at a glance

The whole Sui chain did about $1.32B of DEX volume in the 30 days to 16 September 2026. Cetus had 29.8% of it and DeepBook 29.7%. Bluefin Spot had 14.3% and Turbos 13.8%. Lotus Finance, a market-making protocol that trades on DeepBook and other order books, had another 7.7%. Momentum had 1.9%.

Fees are gross trading fees as reported. They include any protocol cut, so they aren't what liquidity providers take home.

Three designs, three different trade-offs

Sui DEXs fall into three families. The design decides who can provide liquidity, how prices form and where the risk sits.

Concentrated liquidity AMMs (CLMMs)

Cetus, Bluefin Spot, Turbos, Momentum, FlowX and Magma all use variants of the model Uniswap v3 made standard. LPs pick a price range. Their capital only trades, and only earns fees, while the price is inside that range. That makes liquidity much deeper around the current price. It also makes LPing an active job: if you pick a narrow range, you'll often be out of range, holding 100% of one asset and earning nothing. Our concentrated liquidity explainer works through the maths, including why impermanent loss is sharper inside a narrow range.

Order books (CLOBs)

DeepBook is a central limit order book that runs fully on-chain. Makers post bids and asks at specific prices, much like a centralised exchange. The big difference is that DeepBook is mainly infrastructure. Aggregators, wallets and other DEXs route orders through it, and professional market makers supply most of its liquidity. That's why it trades almost as much as Cetus on half the TVL. Order-book liquidity is quoted and re-quoted, so it doesn't sit idle.

Discrete-bin liquidity (DLMMs)

A newer family: Cetus DLMM (launched autumn 2025), Ferra DLMM and Magma. They split the price range into bins with a fixed price each. Swaps inside a single bin have zero price impact, and LPs can shape their liquidity bin by bin. On Sui this is still small, under $1M of TVL across the three.

The main DEXs, one by one

Cetus

Sui's largest AMM, and the most common destination for token launches and yield strategies on the chain. It runs a CLMM, a DLMM, a swap aggregator and the xCETUS escrowed-token system. Cetus is also the Sui DEX with the most important security history: a $223M exploit in May 2025, followed by a governance-led recovery. We cover both in What is Cetus Protocol?

Best for: the deepest AMM pools on major Sui pairs, and liquidity provision on long-tail tokens.

DeepBook

DeepBook calls itself the liquidity layer of Sui, and its volume backs that up. V3 introduced the DEEP token, which is used for trading-fee discounts and governance. Most users never visit DeepBook directly. They reach it through an aggregator or a front-end that routes orders there.

Best for: limit orders, and trades where order-book pricing beats an AMM curve.

Bluefin Spot

Bluefin started as a perpetual futures exchange and added a spot CLMM in late 2024. Spot TVL peaked at $112M in July 2025 and was $18.7M on 16 September 2026, which still makes it Sui's second-largest AMM by TVL, ahead of Turbos.

Best for: traders who also use Bluefin's perps, and major pairs where Bluefin's pool is deeper than the alternative.

Turbos Finance

One of Sui's earliest DEXs, running a CLMM since 2023. Its numbers stand out: $181.8M of 30-day volume on just $3.1M of TVL. That's a turnover of 58x TVL in a month, the highest of any major Sui DEX. High turnover on a small pool means strong fee income per dollar of liquidity. It also means shallow pools, where a large trade moves the price. Much of that volume likely arrives through aggregators, which split orders across venues.

Best for: LPs who care about fee income per dollar; smaller swaps routed through an aggregator.

Momentum

A ve(3,3) CLMM that launched in 2025. MMT holders lock for voting power and direct emissions to pools. Momentum grew faster than any other Sui DEX, from roughly $63M of TVL in May 2025 to a $633M peak on 25 October 2025. By 16 September 2026 it was down to $4.1M, a 99% drawdown. It's the clearest example on Sui of TVL that followed incentives in and left with them.

Best for: users who want to take part in its vote-and-bribe economy. If that's new to you, read who actually pays your staking yield first.

The rest

Aftermath runs an AMM, a well-used swap aggregator and the afSUI liquid staking token. FlowX and Kriya are among Sui's older AMMs. STEAMM, from the Suilend team, lends out idle pool liquidity to earn extra yield. Magma and Ferra are newer bin-based designs. All of them held under $3M of TVL on 16 September 2026.

The number most comparisons leave out: how far liquidity has fallen

Part of this is price. TVL is measured in dollars, and SUI was trading around $0.69 on 16 September 2026. Part of it is structural. Liquidity mining programmes ended, and Cetus's pools dropped from $238M to $37M across the two days of its May 2025 exploit and never came back.

DeepBook fell the least. That fits its design: market makers who quote an order book aren't farming emissions, so they had less reason to leave when emissions ended.

What this means in practice:

1. Check pool depth, not DEX size. A DEX-level TVL figure says nothing about the pool you're about to trade in. Look at the price impact your swap interface shows before you confirm.
2. Use an aggregator for anything sizeable. With liquidity split between an order book and several AMMs, a router that splits your trade will usually beat any single venue.
3. Be careful with high fee APRs. High fees per dollar of liquidity often mean the pool is thin, and a thin pool is exactly where price moves hurt LPs most.

For liquidity providers: fees relative to TVL

Gross 30-day fees multiplied by 12 and divided by TVL give a rough ceiling on what a DEX's liquidity earned in fees, before any protocol cut and before impermanent loss:

• Turbos: ~43% annualised
• Cetus CLMM: ~30%
• Bluefin Spot: ~11%
• Momentum: ~11%
• DeepBook: ~6% (most DeepBook liquidity is quoted, not deposited, so this ratio understates what makers earn)

These are sector-wide averages. Inside any single DEX, a tight range on an active pair can earn many times the average, and a wide range on a quiet pair can earn almost nothing. Fees also aren't profit. In concentrated liquidity, a price move that takes you out of range can cost more than months of fees.

Where JewelSwap fits

JewelSwap isn't a DEX. On Sui it runs automated vaults on top of two of the DEXs above:

• Cetus farms: USDC–SUI, wUSDC–SUI, USDC–ETH, USDC–CETUS, USDC–SCA, CETUS–SUI, SCA–SUI, DEEP–SUI, NS–SUI and HIPPO–SUI. Rewards are harvested and re-added as liquidity every 30 minutes, with CETUS staked as xCETUS for boosted rewards.
• Turbos farms: USDT–USDC, SUI–USDC and NS–SUI, compounded on the same schedule.

Both run at 1× leverage, so there's no borrowing and no liquidation risk. A 15% performance fee is taken from harvested rewards before they're reinvested. Pairs with two different assets still carry impermanent loss. The vault removes the manual work, not the market risk. See the Cetus farming docs and Turbos farming docs for details. For a leveraged option, see our Scallop farm guide.

Frequently asked questions

What is the biggest DEX on Sui?

By AMM liquidity, Cetus, with $23.4M of TVL on 16 September 2026. By volume, Cetus and DeepBook are effectively tied at about $392M each over 30 days, together about 60% of Sui DEX volume.

What is the best DEX on Sui for swapping?

For small swaps any major venue works. For anything sizeable, use an aggregator that routes across DeepBook, Cetus, Bluefin and Turbos. Sui liquidity is split across an order book and several AMMs, so no single venue reliably gives the best price.

Is Turbos Finance safe?

Turbos has run a CLMM on Sui since 2023 with no major exploit reported. No DEX is risk-free, though. The risks are smart contract bugs, thin pools and, for LPs, impermanent loss. Turbos's TVL was $3.1M on 16 September 2026, so check pool depth before trading size.

What is DeepBook on Sui?

DeepBook is a central limit order book that runs fully on-chain and serves as shared liquidity for the Sui ecosystem. Other apps and aggregators route orders to it. Its V3 release introduced the DEEP token for fee discounts and governance.

Why has Sui DEX TVL fallen so much?

Three reasons: lower token prices, liquidity mining programmes ending, and the May 2025 Cetus exploit, which cut Cetus's TVL from $238M to $37M in two days. Momentum shows the incentive effect most clearly, with a 99% fall from its October 2025 peak.

Can I provide liquidity on Sui without managing ranges myself?

Yes. Automated vaults, including JewelSwap's Cetus and Turbos farms, add liquidity and compound rewards for you. They take on the operational work but not the impermanent loss that comes with holding two different assets.

Keep reading

• What is Cetus Protocol? Sui's largest DEX, the $223M exploit and xCETUS
• Concentrated liquidity (CLMM) explained
• Best DeFi platforms on Sui in 2026
• Impermanent loss explained
• TVL explained: what it does and doesn't tell you

This article is educational and isn't financial advice. Volume, TVL and fee figures are from DefiLlama on 16 September 2026 and change daily. JewelSwap operates vaults on Cetus and Turbos and has an interest in both.