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Execution-quality guide

Polymarket execution quality: visible price vs executable price

A market can show an attractive visible price while the orderbook makes the real entry worse for your chosen size. RealityGap describes that execution gap. It does not predict whether an outcome will happen.

What execution quality means

Execution quality is the difference between what a market appears to offer and what its orderbook can actually support. In a Polymarket-style orderbook, the best visible price is only one part of the picture.

A cleaner entry usually has a tight spread, enough ask-side depth for the selected size, limited slippage, and reasonable exit-side liquidity. A fragile entry can have a tempting headline price but little size available at that price.

Visible price is not always executable price

Suppose the best ask is 42¢, but only a small amount is available there. A larger entry may need to consume asks at 43¢, 44¢, or higher. The effective entry price is then worse than the headline price.

RealityGap focuses on this practical difference: visible price versus effective entry price.

Spread

Spread is the gap between the best bid and best ask. A wide spread means the market may be expensive to enter or exit cleanly. Spread is an execution-friction signal, not a prediction signal.

Orderbook depth and max clean size

Depth measures how much size is available across orderbook levels. Max clean size is a practical way to ask how large an entry can be before slippage becomes material.

A market can be acceptable for a small entry and fragile for a larger one. That is why RealityGap evaluates execution quality by selected size.

Slippage

Slippage is the movement between the best available price and the effective average price after consuming orderbook levels. It is one reason a trade can be worse than the visible market price suggested.

Exit liquidity risk

Clean entry is not the whole problem. If the bid side is weak, exiting can be harder or more expensive than entering. RealityGap treats exit-side weakness as an execution-quality risk.

Use the checker

The public checker applies these ideas to visible market data and summarizes spread, depth, clean size, and execution gap.

Open the Polymarket Execution Checker

Important guardrail

RealityGap is read-only: no wallet, no trading, no predictions, and no financial advice. It uses public market data and does not connect a wallet, place trades, make predictions, recommend outcomes, or provide financial advice.

Supporting execution-quality guides