We installed MetaMask, swapped tokens through its built-in exchange, and compared its transaction previews against Rabby's, to see whether the wallet everyone starts with still deserves that spot in 2026.
Almost every DeFi tutorial still says "connect MetaMask" first, so we installed it fresh, moved a small amount of ETH in, and used it as our only wallet for two weeks before opening Rabby side by side to see if the comparison articles floating around this year are onto something real.
Setup has not gotten harder, and that is the point
Creating a wallet takes under three minutes: generate a seed phrase, confirm it, set a password, done. MetaMask still forces you to re-enter a random selection of seed words before finishing setup, a small piece of friction that catches the person who screenshots their phrase instead of writing it down. The bigger change since last year is multichain accounts, rolled out from January 2026, which let a single MetaMask account manage Ethereum and EVM chains, Solana, Bitcoin and Tron without installing a separate wallet for each. We added a Solana account inside the same interface and it appeared next to our Ethereum holdings within seconds.
The swap fee is the quiet cost most users never check
Swapping inside MetaMask is convenient because it routes across multiple liquidity sources and shows you the best quote without leaving the extension. That convenience carries a 0.875% service fee on top of whatever gas the network charges, a number MetaMask does not headline anywhere in the interface itself. On networks where MetaMask offers gasless swaps, currently Ethereum mainnet, BNB Chain, Linea, Arbitrum and Base, you skip the separate gas step but the service fee still applies. Traders doing meaningful volume are better off routing through a dedicated DEX aggregator and paying gas directly; casual users moving a few hundred dollars will not notice the difference enough to justify the extra steps.
