What Is the Difference between an Arbitrage Bot and a Front-Running Bot?

An arbitrage bot exploits legitimate price discrepancies between different markets or liquidity pools to profit, which helps to maintain market efficiency. A front-running bot exploits knowledge of a pending transaction to place an order ahead of it, causing the original user to execute at a worse price for the attacker's gain.

The key difference is the intent: arbitrage corrects market inefficiency, while front-running exploits an individual user's transaction for predatory profit.