Pump.fun is the best known way to launch a coin on Solana, but it is not the only one. A cluster of rival launchpads has grown up around it, and every few months the crypto press crowns a different one as the new leader. This whole landscape sorts itself out once you read each launchpad on three plain questions: what it charges, where a coin goes when it graduates, and what the platform does with the money it earns. Those three answers, not this week's ranking, are what really separate one launchpad from the next.
Read every launchpad on three questions
Every Solana launchpad works the same way at a high level, since anyone can create a coin, it trades on a bonding curve, and if it gets big enough it graduates to a real exchange, so the differences show up in the details. The first is the fee, meaning what it costs to create a coin and what each trade costs. The second is the graduation venue, where the coin's liquidity lands when it leaves the curve, and some launchpads send it to their own exchange, like PumpSwap, while some send it to a shared exchange such as Raydium. The third is what the platform does with its revenue, and Pump.fun, for example, uses part of its fees to buy back and burn its own token. Keep those three questions in mind and every launchpad below sorts itself out.
The BONK challenger, now called Bonk.fun
The rival that got the most attention is LetsBonk, since rebranded Bonk.fun. The BONK community built it with the Raydium exchange in April 2025, running on Raydium's own launch technology (source: Cryptonews). Read on the three questions, it charges a 1 percent fee on trades, and its coins graduate to a Raydium pool rather than to a house exchange. Its fees are used to buy BONK, the project's own token, so the money feeds back into the BONK ecosystem instead of flowing out to a neutral venue, and the exact split has been changed more than once since launch. So where Pump.fun's fees prop up its own PUMP token, Bonk.fun's fees prop up BONK, the same idea with a different token on the receiving end.
Raydium's own launchpad, LaunchLab
Raydium did not stop at the Bonk partnership, and it launched its own pad, LaunchLab, in April 2025 (source: crypto.news). On the three questions it charges about a 1 percent trading fee, and third-party front ends can add their own on top. Coins graduate into a Raydium pool once they raise about 85 SOL, which is the point, since Raydium earns the trading fees afterward, and a quarter of its trading fees go to buying back the RAY token. LaunchLab also lets a creator pick the shape of the bonding curve, which most pads do not offer. The pattern is the same as Bonk.fun, since fees feed the platform's own token while liquidity feeds Raydium.
The rest of the field
Below the two Raydium-linked pads sits a longer tail of smaller venues. Believe lets you launch a coin by replying to a bot on X, and its coins graduate to the Meteora exchange. Bags is a mobile-first app with an Apple Pay onramp, aimed at people who do not already hold crypto, and it pays creators a cut of every trade. Moonshot is built into the DexScreener charting site, so its coins get seen by traders who are already there (source: bitbank.nz). Each one is chasing a different kind of user, but all of them answer the same three questions, and you can line them up the same way.
Why the leader keeps changing
Here is the part that trips people up, because the launchpad in second place is not fixed and it rotates from month to month. In early July 2025, LetsBonk overtook Pump.fun in daily coins launched for the first time, reaching about 58 percent of the market on July 6 while Pump.fun fell to about 35 percent (source: Cointribune), and the headlines called it the changing of the guard. Then within weeks Pump.fun was back above 70 percent and LetsBonk had slipped to around 15 percent (source: Cointelegraph). This has happened more than once, and with more than one challenger, as a new pad surges, gets called the new leader, and then the ranking moves again. So a single snapshot of who leads is close to useless a month later.
Where PUMP trading fits
Reading launchpads this way also tells you where to trade the coins themselves once they have graduated. Pump.fun's own token trades on BloFin, where the PUMP/USDT Spot market suits a straight buy and hold, while the PUMPUSDT Perpetual suits traders who want leverage or a short position.
Both markets sit on one exchange, so you can size a position against the same order book instead of hunting liquidity across half a dozen pads, and what that position costs comes down to the trading fee that BloFin sets out in its current fee schedule.
What this means for you
So do not shop for a launchpad by which one is "on top" this week, because that changes, and read the three questions instead. If you are looking at a coin, the useful facts are what the platform charged, where the coin trades now, and whose token its fees are feeding, because those tell you who profits when you trade and they do not swing with the weekly headline. If you want the running scoreboard of who leads and by how much, that is a separate topic covered in pump.fun's market share, which also explains why the number jumps around so much. And if the word launchpad itself is confusing you, an exchange launchpad is a very different thing from an open pad like these, a distinction laid out in pump.fun versus an exchange launchpad.
Looking to trade PUMP? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the PUMP/USDT Spot trading page or PUMPUSDT Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
What launchpads compete with Pump.fun on Solana?
The main challengers are LetsBonk, now called Bonk.fun, which the BONK community built with Raydium, and LaunchLab, which is Raydium's own launchpad. Smaller ones include Believe, Bags, and Moonshot. Each one launches coins on Solana in a slightly different way, but all of them can be read on the same three questions of what they charge, where their coins graduate, and what they do with the fees.
How do these launchpads actually differ?
Read each one on three questions: what it charges to create and trade a coin, where the coin's liquidity goes when it graduates, and what the platform does with its fee revenue. Those three answers separate the venues far better than any weekly ranking does.
Where do coins from Bonk.fun and LaunchLab trade after they graduate?
Both send graduated coins to Raydium, a shared Solana exchange. That is different from Pump.fun, which sends its graduated coins to its own exchange, PumpSwap. So a Bonk.fun or LaunchLab coin helps Raydium earn fees, while a Pump.fun coin keeps the fees in-house.
Is Pump.fun still the biggest Solana launchpad?
Usually, but the lead has changed hands. In July 2025 LetsBonk briefly overtook Pump.fun in daily coins launched, then Pump.fun regained a large lead within weeks. The top spot has flipped more than once, so any single snapshot goes stale quickly.
What does each launchpad do with the fees it collects?
It varies, and it is worth checking. Pump.fun buys and burns its own PUMP token. Bonk.fun uses its fees to buy BONK, feeding the BONK ecosystem. LaunchLab uses about a quarter of its fees to buy back RAY. In each case the fee revenue tends to feed the platform's own token.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. Primary sources are Pump.fun's own published documentation and announcements and independent reporting from the outlets cited above. All facts independently verified against cited documentation current as of September 2026.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not financial, investment, or trading advice. Digital assets are volatile and many newly launched tokens lose all value. Do your own research and consider your own circumstances before trading.