Cost and speed
Solana transaction costs are a tiny fraction of Ethereum mainnet and confirmation is typically sub-second. For small and medium trades this is decisive — fixed cost is close to irrelevant rather than dominant.
Ethereum rollups close much of this gap, which is why the realistic comparison for many users is Solana against a rollup rather than against mainnet.
Liquidity depth
Ethereum mainnet still holds the deepest pools for many major and long-tail assets, which matters when your order is large enough to walk a curve. Solana has deep liquidity for its own ecosystem and major assets and thinner coverage for some long-tail EVM tokens.
The practical test is the same on both: quote your actual size and read the price impact.
Failure modes differ
On Ethereum a failed transaction consumes gas. On Solana an under-prioritised transaction expires and costs nothing, but may need several attempts during congestion.
Solana has experienced network-wide degradation historically; Ethereum has experienced sustained fee spikes. Both are real and they affect you differently.
Tooling maturity differs as well. The EVM networks share one account model, one address format and one set of libraries, so a habit learned on one transfers to the next. Solana is its own system, and that knowledge does not carry over in either direction.
Choosing per trade
Small trade, asset available on both: Solana or a rollup, almost always. Large trade in a major EVM asset: depth usually favours Ethereum. Asset native to one ecosystem: trade where it lives.
FBT Swap supports both, plus fifteen other networks, and shows route, price impact and fee for whichever you select so the comparison is a quote rather than an opinion.