RugCheck vs Bubblemaps vs Cabal-Hunter (2026): Which Scam Each One Actually Catches

The three questions

Every Solana token scam needs at least one of three things to work, and each tool here interrogates one of them:

A malicious or unsafe contract — live mint authority, freeze authority, honeypot mechanics. RugCheck's home turf.
A concentrated or connected holder base — a few entities holding the float behind many addresses. Bubblemaps' home turf.
A coordinated operation — wallets seeded by a common source, bundled launches, planned exits, a deployer with a graveyard of past launches. Cabal-Hunter's home turf.

Contract safety · free

RugCheck (rugcheck.xyz)

The default Solana token checker, and deservedly so — it's fast, free, and its risk summary is readable at a glance. It has also been expanding beyond the contract: its Insider Networks feature flags connections between top holders.

Contract-level truth in seconds: mint/freeze authority, LP state, holder concentration, creator's other tokens. As a first-pass filter it has earned its position as the community standard.

Its Insider Networks feature does connect holders through token transfers, so "it only checks the contract" would be unfair. The gap that remains is one of timing: any analysis built on the current holder list cannot show you a coordinated group that already sold and left. Wallets that took a double-digit slice at launch and exited are gone from the holder chart — but they are still there in the funding history of the first buyers.

Holder visualization · freemium

Bubblemaps

The canonical "who really holds this" tool, on Solana and everywhere else. V2's Magic Nodes automatically expands the map beyond top holders to reveal hidden connections — real innovation, and its integrations into pump.fun and DexScreener put it in front of millions.

Nothing else makes ownership structure this legible. For manual investigation of a token you're seriously considering, it's the best half-hour you can spend.

It's an exploration surface, not a verdict. It shows connections and leaves the interpretation, the risk weighting and the decision to you — which is exactly what a human researcher wants and exactly what a pre-trade check or a bot can't use. Some advanced features are gated to BMT token holders.

Coordination detection · free tier + API

Cabal-Hunter (that's us)

One scan, one 0–100 Exit-Liquidity Risk score, one plain-English verdict — built for the moment before a buy, human or bot. The detection layers target coordination specifically: funding-source tracing (each wallet back to its funder), first-buyer tracing (which keeps working after snipers exit), same-block bundle detection, same-block coordinated-dump detection, and the deployer's launch history with the share of launches now dead.

The funding graph with receipts: each wallet cluster comes with the on-chain transactions that prove it. And it answers in a format a trading bot or AI agent can act on directly (REST + MCP).

Coordination-first, not contract-first: it checks authorities and honeypot traps, but RugCheck's contract report is deeper on that layer. Solana-only. And we're the newcomer here — the other two have years of reputation we haven't earned yet.

Side by side

Capability	RugCheck	Bubblemaps	Cabal-Hunter
Mint / freeze authority, LP state	YES — best in class	no	yes
Honeypot / Token-2022 traps	YES	no	yes
Holder concentration	YES	YES — visual	yes
Holder connection graph	Insider Networks	YES — best in class	clusters, not a visual graph
Funding-source trace (one hop), with evidence txs	no	holder-to-holder links	YES
First-buyer trace (works after snipers exit)	no	no	YES
Same-block (Jito bundle) launch detection	no	no	YES
Same-block coordinated-dump detection	no	no	YES
Deployer launch history scored	lists creator's tokens	no	YES — dead-launch rate
Single actionable verdict	risk list	visual	YES — score + sentence
Bot/agent integration	API	API (licensed)	REST + MCP, 5 free scans/month with no key

The case that separates them: a token with authorities revoked, LP burned, and a clean holder chart — but whose first buyers were funded from one shared wallet, took a double-digit slice at launch, and have already exited. RugCheck's contract report shows green. The bubble map looks clean because the snipers are gone from the holder list. The only place the operation still exists is the funding history of the first buyers — which is exactly what our early-buyer trace reads. This "unbundled launch" pattern is documented at scale; we wrote up the mechanics in our bundle-checker guide.

When to use which

Browsing / first filter: RugCheck. Free, instant, catches the crude scams that are still most of the volume.
Deep manual research on a serious position: Bubblemaps, alongside everything else.
The last check before a buy — or inside a bot/agent: Cabal-Hunter. One call, one verdict, evidence attached:

# free tier: 5 scans/month no signup, 250/month with a free key
curl "https://api.cabal-hunter.com/api/scan-cabal?mintAddress=<MINT>"

"verdict": "AVOID — 6 wallets funded by the same source (7dK2…mQ4x),
controlling 23.1% of supply. High probability of coordinated dump."

Or, for AI agents, the same engine as an MCP server: npx cabal-hunter-mcp.

Bottom line

Use all three; they overlap more than the "vs" framing suggests, and that's worth saying plainly. RugCheck checks the contract and connects holders through token transfers — it is not just a contract checker, and if it does what you need, use it. Bubblemaps shows you who holds it, beautifully. What Cabal-Hunter adds is a question of timing: it walks back to the token's first buyers, so it can still show you a coordinated group after they have sold and vanished from the holder list — the one place a current-holder view, however good, cannot look. The expensive scams of 2026 are the ones that look clean precisely because the operators already left. Our full comparison page has the pricing and the honest matrix.

RugCheck vs Bubblemaps vs Cabal-Hunter: which scam each one actually catches