MetaMask vs Phantom

MetaMask used to be the Ethereum wallet and Phantom the Solana one, and for a long time that was the whole story. It isn’t anymore. MetaMask has picked up Solana and Bitcoin, while Phantom now keeps Ethereum, Base, Polygon and Bitcoin next to your SOL, so the two tread on each other’s toes a lot more than they did.

If you want it in two lines: go with MetaMask when your coins are spread over lots of EVM networks, when your hardware wallet isn’t a Ledger, or when Firefox is your browser. Phantom’s the better fit if Solana is where you spend most of your time and you’d like a tidier app that shaves a hair off the swap fee.

Below we walk through networks, security, backups, day-to-day use, fees and the kind of person each wallet suits. We took every number from MetaMask’s or Phantom’s own pages in September 2026.

MetaMask vs Phantom Side by Side

If you only read one part, make it this table.

So What Is MetaMask These Days?

Consensys builds MetaMask, a wallet Kumavis and Dan Finlay started back in 2016. It’s self-custody, so the private keys (the secret numbers that actually move your coins) stay with you, and nobody else can freeze them or dig them back out if you lose them. We cover that trade-off properly in our explainer on custodial and non-custodial wallets.

The scale is hard to argue with: more than 100 million downloads, and roughly 190 countries where you can use it, by MetaMask’s own count. For most of its life it was an Ethereum tool and nothing else.

That changed on July 8, 2025, when Solana arrived. Bitcoin landed on December 15, 2025.

Every MetaMask account now carries three addresses at once, one EVM, one Solana and one Bitcoin, and a single recovery phrase produces all of them. Curious how it fares against other Ethereum-style wallets? Our head-to-head of MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet and the MetaMask vs Trust Wallet piece go there.

What You Get With MetaMask

• It ships with 18 networks switched on, and you can bolt on any custom one if you’ve got its RPC URL and chain ID.
• Swaps and bridges live inside the wallet on all 18 networks, and MetaMask keeps 0.875% of each swap.
• Security alerts come switched on, with Blockaid among the partners feeding them.
• It talks to 12 hardware wallets, Ledger, Trezor, Keystone and NGRAVE ZERO among them.
• There’s a pile of extras as well: perps at up to 50x leverage through Hyperliquid, prediction markets, the MetaMask Card, and a Money Account that advertises up to 4%, though that rate is variable.

And What Is Phantom?

Phantom got going in January 2021, and for its first few years it was a Solana wallet, full stop. These days it calls itself “Trusted by a community of 20+ million users.” Money hasn’t been a problem either: a $150M Series C in January 2025, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Paradigm, valued the company at $3B.

Its network list has grown to 7: Solana, Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Robinhood Chain, Bitcoin and HyperEVM. Sui is on its way out, with support ending on September 24, 2026.

Hold Sui there? Don’t panic. Phantom’s line is that the coins aren’t lost; they sit on the Sui blockchain, and any compatible wallet can reach them.

What You Get With Phantom

• Solana comes first, and Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Robinhood Chain, Bitcoin and HyperEVM sit alongside it.
• A swap costs 0.85% on select pairs, and bridges get routed through LI.FI.
• Before you sign, you get a transaction preview, scam detection and a phishing blocklist that anyone can read.
• You can open a wallet with nothing more than a Google or Apple account.
• Beyond the wallet itself, Phantom has a Cash account, a prepaid Visa card, perps, prediction markets, a desktop trading tool called Terminal and PSOL liquid staking.

Which Is Safer, MetaMask or Phantom?

On the basics they’re the same. Each is self-custodial and hands you a 12-word Secret Recovery Phrase, the master key to everything in the wallet, which means whoever holds it holds your money. Lose it and neither company can get it back for you.

Backing Up Without a Paper Phrase

You can now skip the pen-and-paper step at setup in either wallet, though they go about it in different ways. MetaMask’s social login accepts Google, Apple or Telegram; behind the scenes it encrypts the phrase, stores it online and splits the key using Shamir Secret Sharing.

Getting that wallet back later takes two things together: the social account and your MetaMask password. MetaMask asks you to treat the password “as securely as you would manage your SRP,” which is fair enough, since it’s now half of your backup.

Phantom keeps it simpler. You sign up with Google or Apple and sign back in with the same account to restore, and there’s still a recovery phrase underneath that you’re able to export. We’d export it and write it down, because leaning on a single login feels thin to us.

How Each One Flags a Bad Transaction

Out of the box, MetaMask runs security alerts in both the extension and the phone app. A risky request gets tagged “Warning” or “Malicious”, with Blockaid among the sources, but you’re still free to press confirm, so treat the alert as a nudge rather than a wall.

What bothered us is that Solana doesn’t appear on the network list of MetaMask’s security-alert page. Phantom, which grew up on Solana, gives you transaction previews, scam detection and a phishing blocklist it keeps public on GitHub.

If you want insurance on top, MetaMask sells an opt-in plan called Transaction Shield for $9.99 a month or $99 a year at the time of writing (September 2026). That buys cover of up to $10,000 a month over as many as 100 transactions, on the extension only. A leaked recovery phrase or private key isn’t covered, and that’s the one we’d worry about most.

Known Flaws and Who Can Read the Code

MetaMask’s best-known bug has a name. Halborn found “Demonic” (CVE-2022-32969), and MetaMask wrote it up in June 2022: during an import, the browser’s session-restore feature could save your recovery phrase to disk as plain text.

It wasn’t easy to hit. You needed an unencrypted drive, an import on a device that was already compromised, and the “Show Secret Recovery Phrase” box ticked, all at the same time.

Extension 10.11.3 closed the hole, and the mobile app was never exposed. As for Phantom, its own pages disclose no breach of the wallet that we could find.

Code is a murkier story. MetaMask puts the extension and mobile source on GitHub, yet the Consensys licence only permits non-commercial reuse, while Phantom shares audit reports and its blocklist but not the wallet app itself. Phantom does pay bug bounties, up to $50,000 for a flaw that could cost users their funds.

Plugging In a Hardware Wallet

A hardware wallet is a separate gadget that holds your keys and makes you approve each transaction on the device itself. MetaMask works with 12 of them: Ledger on both extension and mobile, Trezor and Lattice on the extension alone, and Keystone and NGRAVE ZERO over QR codes on either.

Phantom is Ledger or nothing. On mobile that means the Nano X, Stax and Flex over Bluetooth; on the extension it’s the Nano S, Nano S Plus, Stax and Flex by cable, while the Ledger Nano Gen5, every Trezor and every Tangem are left out.

MetaMask has its own blind spot, and it’s a big one if you hold SOL. Its hardware accounts stay EVM-only, so a Ledger can’t guard your Solana there, whereas Phantom will do exactly that. On the Ethereum side, our roundup of hardware wallets that pair well with MetaMask is the place to start.

MetaMask vs Phantom in Everyday Use

MetaMask’s extension installs on Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Opera and Edge, and there are apps for iOS and Android. Phantom is built for Chrome, iOS and Android, and while it does run on Brave, Opera and Edge, Phantom doesn’t publish to those stores and won’t promise the same stability there.

Firefox fans, take note. Phantom has stopped updating its Firefox extension, and Safari was never on the list.

Getting started isn’t identical either. A recovery-phrase wallet in Phantom can only be made in the browser extension, starting from “Create a New Wallet” and then “Create a Recovery Phrase Wallet”, with a password of eight characters or more. On a phone you either import a phrase you already have or go the Google or Apple route.

Once you’re set up, neither app gets in your way. MetaMask’s swap sits behind a “Swap” button; Phantom’s extension puts “Swap” on the Home tab and finishes with “Swap Now”. We liked that Phantom handles gas by itself on EVM chains and hands back whatever a transaction didn’t burn.

Solana inside MetaMask asks a bit more of you. When a Solana app wants to connect, you might have to open “View More Wallets” and find the MetaMask icon there.

Both apps score well on the App Store: 4.7 out of 5 for MetaMask across 76,094 ratings, and 4.8 for Phantom across 64,204. To our eyes Phantom looks tidier, and MetaMask shows more settings simply because it covers so many more networks, which annoys us a little when all we want is a quick swap.

What MetaMask and Phantom Will Actually Hold

Straight after install, MetaMask gives you 18 networks: Ethereum, Bitcoin, Linea, Base, Solana, Tron, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Monad, Robinhood Chain, OP, Sei, Avalanche, zkSync Era, MegaETH, HyperEVM and Tempo. Nearly any EVM network beyond that can be added by hand.

Phantom stops at 7. Its help centre says in so many words that BSC, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Unichain and Linea aren’t supported, so if any of those chains matter to you, Phantom can’t be your only wallet.

Solana inside MetaMask comes with strings attached. You’re stuck with Infura as the RPC provider, Solana private keys can’t be imported, and a Ledger can’t be connected for Solana.

Bitcoin is a similar story: MetaMask sticks to Native SegWit for now and says Taproot is coming, while Phantom already lists Native Segwit/Taproot.

Please check the network every time you send. Pick a network your wallet doesn’t show, or paste the wrong address, and the funds can be gone for good, with nobody able to reverse it. Our explainer on wallet addresses covers why an address from one chain won’t work on another.

Want the bigger picture on the chains these wallets came from? Try our Polygon vs Solana comparison.

What MetaMask and Phantom Cost You

Neither charges anything to install. The cost shows up in fees: 0.875% of each swap goes to MetaMask, while Phantom takes 0.85% and only on select pairs, so some Phantom swaps carry no Phantom fee at all.

Bridging, which just means moving tokens from one chain to another, works a little differently in each. Phantom sends bridges through LI.FI, puts typical bridge fees at 0.1 to 0.5%, and its cross-chain swapper adds 0.85% on top of that. MetaMask draws its routes from Li.fi, Socket, Across, Stargate, Relay and others.

Network fees are a separate thing, paid to the blockchain’s validators, and Phantom says none of that money reaches it. It suggests keeping 0.02 SOL on Solana and 0.002 ETH on Ethereum or Base so you’re never stuck.

Where they really split is the paid extras. A virtual MetaMask Card costs nothing and pays 1% back; the metal one is $199 a year and pays 3% on the first $10,000 you spend, though US and UK signups are paused for now. Phantom’s virtual card is free to issue and free to use for US purchases, it’s US only, and loading Phantom Cash costs 1.75% from a debit card or 3.50% from a credit card.

Staking goes the same way. MetaMask lets you pool any amount of ETH, or use Lido and Rocket Pool, while Phantom’s PSOL keeps 4% of your rewards and charges 0.1% when you leave.

MetaMask and Phantom: The Good and the Annoying

Where MetaMask Shines and Stumbles

Where Phantom Shines and Stumbles

So Which Wallet Should You Install?

Spend most of your time on Solana? Then install Phantom. It was made for that chain, and of the two it’s the one that lets a Ledger hold your SOL.

Arbitrum, Optimism, BNB Chain, Avalanche or Linea on your list? MetaMask is the answer, since Phantom supports none of them.

Own a Trezor, a Keystone or an NGRAVE ZERO? MetaMask again, because Phantom only talks to Ledger. Nothing stops you running both, either, with Phantom for Solana and MetaMask for the EVM side, which is roughly how we’d set things up ourselves.

MetaMask vs Phantom FAQ

Our Verdict: MetaMask or Phantom?

Solana users should take Phantom. A Ledger can sign for SOL there, the swap fee is a touch lower, and it’s the wallet whose scam checks we’d rather have on that chain. MetaMask takes the other ground: EVM chains past Ethereum, Base and Polygon, and any hardware wallet that isn’t a Ledger.

Got coins on both sides? Keeping both installed is a perfectly sensible arrangement. Whichever way you go, keep your recovery phrase written down somewhere offline, and look at the network twice before you send anything.

This article is for general information only and is not financial, legal, or investment advice. Prices and features change; check the vendor’s official page before buying.