Top 10 BTC bridges to look out for (May 2025)

Over the last 12 months, we’ve seen an explosion in BTC bridging infra. What was once a 3-hour WBTC minting window with a 1% fee has evolved into near-instant cross-chain swaps and sub-10 bps spreads.

We broke down 10 top BTC bridges by two of your favourite metrics: Speed & Fees. Here’s how they stack up.

1. Optimex

Speed: ~10–15 minutes (1 BTC confirmation)
Fees: 1%

Pros:
No AMM slippage
Custody-less swaps

Cons:
RFQ model depends on active makers
Limited destination assets

2. Bitcoin Bridge (by PermuteFi)

Speed: ~ 10–20 mins (1 BTC confirmation)
Fees: ~0.1%

Pros:
BTC-native bridge
Lowest cost bridging
Very deep liquidity bridge

Cons:
Still in closed beta

3. Garden Finance

Speed: ~5–10 mins
Fees: 0.3%

Pros:
Fastest non-custodial bridge
No wrapping

Cons:
Still gaining awareness among retail users
Low liquidity (can’t swap more than 5 BTC)

4. Relay

Speed: 20 mins(1 BTC confirmation or less)
Fees: ~ 0.2% + Network Cost

Pros:
Extremely fast routing
Broadest chain support

Cons:
Relies on wrapped assets (e.g., WBTC)

5. ThorSwap

Speed: ~30–40 minutes
Fees: ~0.9% total (AMM model)

Pros:
Native asset swaps (no wrapping)
Proven decentralization (THORChain security)

Cons:
Slower than newer bridges
Higher slippage for large swaps
Have been compromised in the past

6. deBridge

Speed: Under 1 minute (for wrapped assets)
Fees: ~0.05%–0.1% average; highly optimized

Pros:
Smart routing via makers
Extremely low latency across chains

Cons:
BTC mints not instant on-chain
Also relies on wrapped assets

7. Across

Speed: 3 minutes
Fees: 0.05%

Pros:
Fast bridging

Cons:
Very limited token pairs
Can’t bridge native BTC

8. Avalanche BTC.b

Speed: ~1–2 hours (multiple confirmations + SGX process)
Fees: $3 to bridge in, $20 to bridge out (flat) + Bitcoin transaction fee (<$2)

Pros:
Deep liquidity on Avalanche
No % fees, good for whales

Cons:
Fixed fees harsh on small user
Doesn’t directly connect to Ethereum

9. Threshold tBTC

Speed: 10 min (optimistic mint); ~3–4 hours for full finality
Fees: Mint fee is 0% & Redemption fee is 0.2%

Pros:
Fully decentralized bridge
Native ERC-20 tBTC with strong integrations

Cons:
Slower redemptions (~6–12 hrs)
Slightly complex UX
Have been compromised in the past

10. Chainflip

Speed: ~10–30 minutes (BTC swaps)
Fees: ~0.2% (plus 0.05% for Boost)

Pros:
Seamless cross-chain AMM
Deep liquidity and market-maker support

Cons:
Boost swaps cost extra
Protocol still ramping up integrations

TL;DR Table

More bridges, lower latency, better fees.

Bitcoin is finally becoming multichain.

Resources

• Garden Docs
• Optimex docs
• Relay Bridge
• THORChain GitHub
• deBridge Protocol
• Across docs
• Avalanche BTC.b
• Threshold tBTC
• Chainflip Docs