A new SPL token cannot be bought or sold until it has a liquidity pool: a Raydium account holding your token on one side and SOL on the other, which anyone can swap against. Adding liquidity means opening that pool and making the first deposit.
On Solana this is one transaction. Opening a standard Raydium pool costs 0.15 SOL in Raydium's pool creation fee plus about 0.045 SOL in account rent and network fees, on top of the SOL and tokens you deposit. There is no "approve" step as on Ethereum, and the pool is live within seconds of confirming.
How to Add Liquidity to a Solana Token (Quick Steps)
- Put SOL and tokens in one wallet: the amounts you will deposit, plus about 0.195 SOL for fees and rent.
- Work out the starting price: SOL deposited divided by tokens deposited is your opening price per token.
- Create a standard (CPMM) pool on Raydium: pick SOL, paste your token's mint address, and enter both amounts.
- Sign one transaction: the pool opens and LP tokens for your share land in your wallet.
- Decide on the LP tokens: keep them, lock them, or burn them so the liquidity can never be pulled.
Prefer a form? Create the Raydium pool with SOLTokenLaunch, which builds the same pool and shows every fee before you sign.
What It Costs to Add Liquidity
The deposit is still yours (it becomes your LP position). The fees below are what you actually spend.
| Item | Who gets it | Raydium directly | Via SOLTokenLaunch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pool creation fee | Raydium | 0.15 SOL | 0.15 SOL |
| Account rent and network fee | Solana (rent is a deposit held by the pool accounts) | ~0.045 SOL | ~0.045 SOL |
| Platform fee | SOLTokenLaunch | None | 0.3 SOL |
| Total fees | ~0.195 SOL | ~0.495 SOL |
The rent figure comes from real pools opened through our tool, which cost between 0.040 and 0.044 SOL each. Raydium also charges 0.25% on every swap in the pool, and part of that goes to liquidity providers, which means whoever holds the LP tokens. You keep 100% of the LP tokens either way.
Doing it on Raydium yourself is cheaper. The platform fee pays for not having to: the form checks the mint, works out the price from your amounts, and offers the LP burn as the next step. If your token was created here with all three authorities revoked, the launch bundle prices the pool lower.
How Much Liquidity Should You Add?
Size the pool by how far one buy moves your price, not by a rule of thumb.
A Raydium standard pool is a constant-product pool. When someone buys with SOL, the price rises by the square of how much bigger the SOL side gets. That gives you a direct way to size the pool: decide the largest single buy you expect early on, and how far you are willing to let it move the price.
| SOL in the pool | 0.5 SOL buy | 1 SOL buy | 5 SOL buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 SOL | +21% | +44% | +300% |
| 10 SOL | +10% | +21% | +125% |
| 25 SOL | +4.0% | +8.2% | +44% |
| 50 SOL | +2.0% | +4.0% | +21% |
| 100 SOL | +1.0% | +2.0% | +10% |
Price rise caused by one buy, before the 0.25% swap fee. Sells move the price down in the same way.
Read it like this: with 5 SOL in the pool, a single 1 SOL buy lifts the price by 44%, which attracts snipers and puts off the next buyer. With 50 SOL, the same buy moves it 4.0%. Small launches that want a steady chart tend to put in between 10 and 50 SOL. Meme launches often go thinner on purpose, accepting a jumpy chart in exchange for a lower cost.
A useful rule
If you expect buys of around X SOL, a pool holding about 20 times X in SOL keeps each one to a move of about 10%. A pool of 10 times X lets each one move the price about 21%.
Your Deposit Sets the Starting Price
There is no separate price to choose. The opening price is the SOL you deposit divided by the tokens you deposit. So there are two decisions: how much SOL (the sizing above) and what share of your supply goes into the pool.
Worked example
- Total supply: 1,000,000,000 tokens
- Deposit: 20 SOL and 800,000,000 tokens (80% of supply)
- Starting price: 20 / 800,000,000 = 0.000000025 SOL per token
- Fully diluted value: 0.000000025 x 1,000,000,000 = 25 SOL
The 200,000,000 tokens kept outside the pool still count towards that 25 SOL. Buyers check how much of the supply sits outside the pool and who holds it.
Putting most of the supply into the pool gives buyers the most confidence, because no single wallet can dump a large bag on them. Keeping a big share back needs a reason you can explain, such as a vesting plan. The tokenomics calculator helps you plan the split before you mint.
Step-by-Step: Adding Liquidity on Raydium
Raydium changes its interface from time to time, so button labels may differ slightly. The steps do not.
Get the wallet ready
Hold the tokens and the SOL you plan to deposit in the wallet that created the token, plus about 0.195 SOL for the pool fee and rent. A wallet that is short by even a little fails at signing, not before. Have your token's mint address to hand; it is on your Solscan page, and in your dashboard if you created the token here.
Finish the token first
Buyers and rug checkers look at the token the moment the pool appears. Make sure the name, logo and links show correctly, and revoke mint and freeze authority before you open the pool. A pool on a token with live mint authority is the first thing scanners flag. See revoking authorities.
Open Raydium and create a pool
On raydium.io, connect your wallet, go to Liquidity and choose to create a pool. Pick the standard AMM (CPMM) pool type; it works with SPL and Token-2022 tokens and is the type DEX trackers pick up.
Pick SOL and paste your mint address
Set one side to SOL and paste your token's mint address into the other. Check that the name and symbol Raydium shows match yours. Scam tokens copy names, so the mint address is the only thing to trust.
Enter both amounts
Type the SOL amount and the token amount. Raydium shows the resulting price; compare it with the price you worked out above. There is usually a start time option as well; leave it at "now" unless you have announced a launch time.
Sign the transaction
Your wallet shows one transaction, including the 0.15 SOL pool fee. Once it confirms, usually within a few seconds, the pool is live and LP tokens for your share are in your wallet.
Check it is tradeable
Open the pool on Raydium and on Solscan, and try a small swap from another wallet. DEX Screener and Birdeye usually list the pair once the first trades happen. If your logo or name does not show there, see why a Solana token is not showing.
Keep, Lock or Burn the LP Tokens?
Whoever holds the LP tokens can withdraw the liquidity. That is the rug risk buyers check for.
Keep
You can add more or remove liquidity whenever you like. Scanners show the liquidity as unlocked, and many buyers will not touch it.
Lock
A locker holds the LP tokens until a set date. Buyers are protected until then, and you get the liquidity back afterwards. See locking liquidity on Solana.
Burn
The LP tokens are destroyed and the liquidity stays in the pool for good. It is the strongest signal and it cannot be undone. Burn LP tokens.
Adding More Liquidity to an Existing Pool
A deeper pool means each buy moves the price less. You do not need a new pool for that.
Once the pool exists, every new deposit has to match its current ratio of SOL to tokens. That ratio is the current price, so adding liquidity never moves the price. It only makes the pool deeper. You also cannot choose a new price this way: if you want a different price, that comes from trading, not from depositing.
Worked example
- The pool opened with 20 SOL and 800,000,000 tokens, as in the example above.
- Buyers have since taken it to 25 SOL and 640,000,000 tokens. The price is 56% above the opening price.
- To add 5 SOL you must also add 5 / 25 x 640,000,000 = 128,000,000 tokens.
- The new LP tokens are worth 16.7% of the bigger pool, and the price stays where it was.
On Raydium, go to Liquidity, find your pool by pasting the mint address, and choose to deposit. Enter the SOL amount and Raydium fills in the matching token amount (or the other way round). One transaction later, the new LP tokens are in your wallet.
Adding Liquidity for a Tax Token (Token-2022)
A tax token charges its transfer fee on every move, and moving tokens into a pool is a transfer. Raydium's standard pool accepts Token-2022 tokens with a transfer fee, but the fee is withheld from your deposit on the way in, so the pool receives fewer tokens than you enter.
What that does to the numbers
- With a 5% tax, depositing 800,000,000 tokens puts 760,000,000 in the pool.
- Paired with 20 SOL, the starting price is about 5.3% higher than the same sum without tax, because the token side is smaller.
- Every swap in or out pays the tax as well, on top of Raydium's 0.25% swap fee. Buyers see both.
The withheld tax is not lost. As the token's fee authority you can claim it with the Collect Tax Fees tool, including the part taken from your own deposit. Our liquidity tool detects a tax token from its mint and warns you before you sign.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Not leaving SOL for the fees
Depositing every last SOL leaves nothing for the 0.195 SOL of fees and rent, and the transaction fails at signing.
A starting price out by a factor of ten
One extra zero on the token amount divides the starting price by ten. Check the price Raydium shows against your own sum before you sign, because the first buyer gets the difference.
Opening the pool before the token is ready
A missing logo, live mint authority or live freeze authority all show up in scanners the moment the pool exists, and first impressions stick.
Opening a pool for a copycat mint
Always paste the mint address rather than searching by name. A pool opened on the wrong mint cannot be moved.
Pulling liquidity after launch
Removing liquidity crashes the price and looks exactly like a rug pull on-chain, whatever the reason. If you may need the SOL back, lock the LP for a fixed period instead of leaving it loose.
Raydium or Orca?
For a new token, Raydium's standard pool is the usual choice: it needs no price range, and DEX Screener, Birdeye and Jupiter route to it straight away. Orca's Whirlpools use concentrated liquidity, which uses capital more efficiently but makes you choose and manage a price range. Jupiter is an aggregator, not a place to open a pool. The full comparison is in Raydium vs Orca and the Solana DEX comparison.