Pump.fun Token Alerts: What to Do When You Get One

Category: Guides

Your screen lights up. A new token just launched on Pump.fun. The name is catchy, the ticker is memeable, and the bonding curve is already climbing. You have maybe thirty seconds before the first wave of buyers pushes the price up. What do you do?

I’ve been in that exact situation hundreds of times over the past year, and I can tell you that how you handle the first few minutes after receiving a real-time token alert determines almost everything. Not the token itself, not the market conditions — your process. In this guide, I’m going to walk you through the exact decision tree I use every single time a pump.fun new tokens alert fires, from the moment the notification appears to the moment I decide to act or move on.

How Pump.fun Token Detection Actually Works

Before we talk about what to do with an alert, you need to understand what’s happening behind the scenes when a new token appears. Pump.fun broadcasts every token creation event over a public WebSocket connection. Tools like TokenRadar maintain a persistent connection to this feed, which means the moment someone deploys a new token contract on the Pump.fun bonding curve, your scanner knows about it — often within one to two seconds of the on-chain transaction confirming.

This is fundamentally different from polling-based detection (checking an API every 30 or 60 seconds). WebSocket-based detection is why a good solana token scanner can give you a meaningful head start. If you’re learning about tokens from Twitter or Telegram groups, you’re already minutes behind — and in this game, minutes are lifetimes.

If you want to understand the mechanics of the platform itself, I’d recommend reading our deep dive on what Pump.fun is and how it works before continuing here.

What the bonding curve means at alert time

Every Pump.fun token launches on a bonding curve — a mathematical pricing function where the price increases as more SOL flows into the liquidity pool. At the moment of creation, the token sits at the very bottom of the curve. The price is fractions of a cent, and the market cap is essentially zero. This is both the opportunity and the trap: everything is cheap, but you know almost nothing about the token yet.

For a full breakdown of bonding curve mechanics, check out our guide on how Pump.fun’s bonding curve pricing works.

What You Know at Alert Time vs. Five Minutes Later

This is the part most guides skip, and it’s the most important thing I’ve learned. The information available to you changes dramatically in the first few minutes after a launch. Here’s what that looks like:

Look at that table carefully. At alert time, you’re working with a name, a ticker, and a contract address. That’s it. Everything that actually tells you whether a token is safe or worth buying comes later. This is why reacting purely to alerts is so dangerous — and why having a framework matters more than having fast fingers.

We wrote an entire guide on what happens in the first 10 minutes of a Pump.fun token launch that goes deeper into this timeline.

My Decision Framework: Ignore, Watch, Research, Buy

Every alert gets sorted into one of four buckets. The goal is to make this sorting decision in under ten seconds so you can move on to the next alert or start deeper research.

Ignore (80-90% of alerts)

Most tokens launched on Pump.fun are low-effort copies, test deploys, or outright scams. If the name is a random string of characters, a direct copy of an existing popular token, or something clearly auto-generated, I close it immediately. No second thoughts. The sheer volume of pump.fun new tokens — sometimes hundreds per hour — means that being ruthlessly selective is a survival skill, not a luxury.

Watch (5-10% of alerts)

The token has an interesting name or concept, but I need more data before I commit any attention. I add it to my watchlist and check back in five minutes once enrichment data is available. At that point I’ll have holder counts, safety scores, and early volume — enough to decide whether to move it up or discard it.

Research (2-5% of alerts)

Something about this token stands out. Maybe the creator wallet has a history of successful launches. Maybe there’s already social buzz building around the concept. Maybe the bonding curve is filling unusually fast, suggesting coordinated buying. I open the token detail page, pull up the creator’s wallet history, and start checking social channels. This phase takes two to five minutes.

Buy (<1% of alerts)

The research checks out. Safety analysis looks clean. The timing is right. I execute. But even here, I’m following strict rules: position size is capped, slippage is set deliberately, and I have an exit plan before I enter.

Timing Windows: When Each Decision Happens

The clock doesn’t stop when an alert fires. Here’s how I think about the timing windows and what’s appropriate in each one:

The tension between speed and safety is real, and we explored it in detail in our piece on speed vs. safety in memecoin trading. The short version: patience almost always wins.

What Makes an Alert Worth Acting On

After processing thousands of alerts through a solana token scanner, I’ve noticed patterns in the ones that actually turned into profitable trades. Here’s what I look for:

• Original concept with cultural timing. The token references something happening right now — a trending event, a viral meme, a news story. Not a copy of yesterday’s winner.
• Clean creator wallet. The deployer has a history of legitimate token launches, or at least isn’t a freshly funded wallet with no transaction history.
• Healthy bonding curve progression. The curve is filling steadily with many small buys, not one or two massive purchases that suggest insider manipulation.
• Passing safety checks. Mint authority revoked, no freeze authority, no suspicious holder concentration. These are non-negotiable.
• Social presence that predates the launch. A Twitter account, a Telegram group, a website — something that suggests the creator invested effort beyond deploying a contract.

If a token checks three or more of these boxes after enrichment data arrives, it moves into serious consideration. If it checks all five, that’s rare — and usually worth a position.

A Personal Story: The Alert That Taught Me Patience

Last December, I was running TokenRadar during a quiet Sunday afternoon when an alert fired for a token themed around a niche internet meme I happened to recognize. The name was clever, the ticker was clean, and my gut screamed “buy now.”

So I did. Within fifteen seconds of the alert, I had a position. The price immediately spiked — up 300% in the first two minutes. I felt like a genius.

Then the enrichment data came in five minutes later. Mint authority was still active. The top wallet held 40% of supply. The RugCheck score was flashing danger. I’d skipped every safety check I preach about in this guide because the name was funny and the chart was green.

The creator dumped their holdings eight minutes after launch. My 300% gain turned into a 90% loss faster than I could set a sell order. Total damage: 2.3 SOL — not life-changing money, but an expensive lesson in discipline.

The irony? I watched the next token with the same meme theme launch two hours later. Different creator, clean safety checks, real social presence. That one graduated to Raydium and did a 50x. I bought it at the five-minute mark after full research, and it became one of my best trades of the month.

Same meme. Same day. Completely different outcomes, entirely determined by process.

Common Mistakes When Reacting to Alerts

I see the same mistakes over and over in trading communities. Here are the ones that cost real money:

1. FOMO buying in the first 30 seconds

You see the bonding curve climbing and panic-buy because you think you’re missing the move. But that early curve movement is almost always bots and insiders. The real move — if there is one — hasn’t started yet. The five-minute mark gives you safety data. The fifteen-minute mark tells you if there’s real demand. Buying at second zero is gambling, not trading.

2. Skipping safety checks because “it’s mooning”

Price going up is not a safety signal. Some of the most profitable-looking early charts belong to tokens specifically designed to rug. If the mint authority is active, if there’s a freeze authority, if the top holder owns an outsized share — none of that changes because the chart looks good. Run the checklist. Every single time.

3. Setting slippage too high

In the rush to get a fill, traders crank slippage to 15-20% or higher. This is handing free money to MEV bots that sandwich your transaction. For most Pump.fun tokens, 1-3% slippage is sufficient if you’re buying after the initial chaos settles. If your transaction won’t fill at 3% slippage, that’s actually useful information — it means the order book is too thin or too volatile for a safe entry.

4. No exit plan

You bought. Great. Now what? If you don’t know your take-profit and stop-loss before you enter, you’ll either hold through a rug or sell a winner too early. My default: take initial investment out at 2-3x, let the rest ride with a trailing mental stop.

5. Ignoring the source of the alert

Not all real-time token alerts are created equal. An alert from a WebSocket-connected scanner that shows you raw on-chain data is fundamentally different from a “call” in a Telegram group where someone already bought and wants you to pump their bag. Know the difference.

The Graduation Signal and Why It Matters

One of the most powerful signals you can get from monitoring Pump.fun tokens is the graduation event — the moment a token fills its bonding curve and migrates to Raydium’s open liquidity pool. This is a critical inflection point that many traders overlook.

When a token graduates, several things change simultaneously: it moves from Pump.fun’s bonding curve to a real AMM pool on Raydium, it becomes tradeable on Jupiter and other Solana aggregators, and it gains visibility to a much larger audience of traders who don’t monitor Pump.fun directly.

Graduation is not a guarantee of success, but it’s a strong filter. The majority of Pump.fun tokens never reach this point. A token that fills its entire bonding curve has, by definition, attracted enough buying interest to absorb all the initial supply. That’s a meaningful signal of demand.

For a complete breakdown of what happens during graduation, read our explainer on token graduation on Solana.

My approach to graduation alerts is different from new token alerts. When I see a graduation event for a token I’ve been watching, I treat it as a second entry opportunity. I already have safety data, holder distribution, and volume history. The graduation itself tells me that organic demand was strong enough to fill the curve. If the fundamentals still look good, I’ll add to my position or enter fresh.

Building Your Own Alert Workflow

Here’s the workflow I’d recommend if you’re just starting to use real-time token alerts seriously:

1. Set up a proper scanner. You need WebSocket-based detection, not polling. You need safety data integrated into the same view. TokenRadar does this, but whatever you use, make sure it shows enrichment data alongside the alert.
2. Create your ignore list. Write down the patterns you’ll always skip: copied names, random strings, tokens from flagged wallets. Make this automatic so you don’t waste cognitive energy.
3. Define your checklist. Before you ever buy, know exactly what boxes need to be checked. Mint authority, freeze authority, holder distribution, creator history. Write it down. Follow it every time.
4. Set position size rules. Never risk more than you’re prepared to lose entirely. For early-stage Pump.fun tokens, I never allocate more than 0.5-1 SOL per position regardless of conviction.
5. Journal your trades. Every alert you acted on, what you saw, what you did, what happened. After a month, patterns will emerge that no guide can teach you.

Final Thoughts

Getting a pump.fun new tokens alert is the easy part. The hard part is having the discipline to follow a process when your brain is screaming at you to buy immediately. The traders who survive in this space aren’t the fastest clickers — they’re the ones who’ve built a system and trust it even when it means watching a token moon without them.

Every alert is an opportunity to practice your decision-making. Most of the time, the right decision is to do nothing. And that’s fine. The good setups come often enough that you don’t need to chase the marginal ones.

Trust your process. Wait for the data. Size your risk. And remember that the best trade you’ll ever make might be the one you didn’t take.