Cake Wallet vs Exodus (2026)

Exodus and Cake Wallet are both self-custody wallets: you hold the recovery phrase and neither company can move your funds. In 2025 Exodus sent its Monero users to Cake Wallet when it ended XMR support, which is why many people compare them. This page reflects October 2026. Frosting Guide is independent of both companies.

At a glance

Exodus and Monero

Exodus ended Monero support on 18 August 2025. Its support article says the XMR wallet is no longer available in Exodus, and points users to a compatible wallet, using Cake Wallet as the example (Exodus support, 2025). Exodus also says it is not affiliated with Cake Wallet. If you still have Monero from Exodus, nothing is lost: the funds are on the Monero blockchain. You need your Exodus 12-word secret phrase or the Monero 25-word mnemonic, and a restore date. Exodus suggests 26 April 2019, when it first supported Monero, if you do not know a better date. Our step-by-step guide is how to move Exodus Monero to Cake Wallet.

Exodus also ended support for its Exodus Web3 Wallet browser extension on 1 October 2026 (Exodus support, 2026). If you used it, restore your 12-word phrase in another wallet.

Fees

Both wallets let you send and receive without a wallet fee; you pay the network fee. In both, the price you see already includes the provider's spread. Exodus advertised swap rates "from 0.5%" in early 2025, while saying the final cost depends on the quote. Cake Wallet says providers build their fees into the quote, and its open-source code passes affiliate or markup settings, with unpublished amounts, to several of its current swap providers, such as Chainflip, SwapTrade and Trocador (Cake Wallet source code, October 2026). In both apps, compare the quote with another source. See swapping in Cake Wallet and Cake Wallet fees.

Privacy

This is the clearest difference. Cake Wallet is built around privacy: Monero, Bitcoin Silent Payments (reusable sp1 addresses, added May 2024), Payjoin v2 (May 2025), Litecoin MWEB, coin control, your own node, and an experimental built-in Tor. Exodus focuses on ease of use and breadth of assets; with Monero gone, it offers no privacy coin. In both wallets, buying, selling and swapping go through third-party providers, which may have their own data and identity checks. See Cake Wallet privacy settings.

Safety

Cake Wallet's code is fully open source under the MIT licence, though Cake says its builds are not reproducible. Exodus says some parts of its wallet are closed source, partly to make convincing fake copies harder to build. Open code lets outside experts review it; closed parts require trust in the company.

Security history is mixed for both. Cake Wallet generated weak 12-word Bitcoin seeds in 2020–2021, disclosed in May 2021; affected users had to move funds (details). For Exodus, researchers reported a malicious npm package in April 2025 that modified locally installed Exodus apps to redirect payments; official installers were not affected. In December 2025 Exodus agreed a USD 3.1 million settlement with the US Treasury's OFAC over apparent sanctions violations from 2017–2019, a compliance matter rather than a hack (CryptoSlate review, October 2026).

Both support hardware wallets. Cake Wallet supports Ledger and Trezor for Monero as well as Bitcoin, which Exodus no longer can. With either wallet, nobody from support will ask for your seed. Anyone who does is a scammer.

Features compared

• Design. Exodus is known for a polished interface and portfolio view. Cake Wallet was fully redesigned in 6.0 (February 2026).
• Desktop. Exodus has a full desktop app on Windows, macOS and Linux. Cake Wallet's Windows releases are paused; macOS and Linux are available.
• Bitcoin. Cake Wallet offers Silent Payments, Payjoin, coin control, RBF and Lightning (6.0, February 2026). WalletScrutiny relabelled Cake Wallet "custodial" on 6 October 2026 because of how the optional Lightning balance works; Cake describes Lightning as self-custodial. See Lightning in Cake Wallet.
• Extras. Cake Pay gift cards in Cake Wallet; a very large asset catalogue in Exodus.

Moving from Exodus to Cake Wallet

You do not have to move everything. Cake Wallet can hold your Monero while you keep other assets in Exodus. To restore Monero, install Cake Wallet from the official store (check it with our download checker), choose to restore a Monero wallet, enter the seed Exodus gives you, and set a restore date no later than your first XMR deposit. Then wait until the sync completes before judging the balance. If you would rather start fresh, create a new Cake Wallet Monero wallet, back up its seed, and send the funds to it from a restored copy. Exodus and Cake will never contact you first to "help" with a migration; anyone who does is a scammer.

Which should you choose?

Choose Cake Wallet if…

• you hold Monero, or moved it out of Exodus;
• you want Bitcoin and Litecoin privacy features;
• you prefer fully open-source code.

Choose Exodus if…

• you do not need Monero and want a wide range of tokens;
• you want a full desktop app on Windows today;
• ease of use matters more to you than privacy tools.

Plenty of people use both: Exodus for mainstream assets, Cake Wallet for Monero.

Frequently asked questions