TRANSACTION FEES
How much does it cost to send Bitcoin?
What it costs to send a Bitcoin transaction, and what that says about how busy the network is.
Average cost per Bitcoin transaction
What an average transaction cost to send, each day since 2010. The scale gives equal space to equal percentage changes, so fractions of a cent and the fees of recent years fit on one chart. The daily line is jumpy: add a 7, 30 or 200-day average to see the trend.
Inspect and compare dates
Compare what sending Bitcoin cost on two dates: the average transaction, the whole day's fees and the middle transaction.
| Measure | Change | Relative change | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per transaction | $0.26 | $0.37 | +$0.11 | +43.1% |
| Fees paid per day | $187,999 | $285,661 | +$97,663 | +51.9% |
| Middle transaction | $0.12 | $0.035 | −$0.084 | −70.5% |
Right now
Sending Bitcoin is cheap: the average transaction paid $0.37 in fees on 28 Sep 2026.
There is plenty of room in Bitcoin's blocks, so a transaction goes through for pocket change. That means leaner times for miners, who earn part of their pay from fees.
Against its history
Across the 5,750 days with a reading since 2010, the average transaction has cost as little as $0.000002, on 21 Nov 2010, and as much as $126.78, on 20 Apr 2024. On 28 Sep 2026 it sat in the middle of that range: 43% of those days cost the same or less.
Against the last four years alone it sat near the bottom: 155 of the 1,461 days since 29 Sep 2022 cost the same or less.
What a typical transaction paid
A sat is the smallest piece of a Bitcoin, one hundred millionth of one. On 28 Sep 2026, half of all transactions paid less than 42 sats, about 3.5 cents. The average was 10.5 times that, because a few senders paying large fees pull it up.
what the middle transaction paid
about 3.5 cents
what the average transaction paid
10.5 times the middle one
sats per byte, the going rate
the number a wallet asks you to set
The average is the number most fee charts show, this page's cost per transaction included, so the fee most people actually pay is a lot lower.
For you
Cheap fees are good news if you want to send Bitcoin, and they usually mean the network has room to spare. They say nothing about where the price is going, only that demand for space in blocks is light.
Understanding
Transaction Fees
Where it stands today
The average Bitcoin transaction cost $0.37 to send as of .
What do fees tell you?
Every Bitcoin transaction pays a fee to get into a block, and those fees go to the miners, the computers that secure Bitcoin. What one transaction costs, and what everyone pays in a day, are two of the clearest signs of how much demand there is for space on the blockchain.
What do high and low fees mean?
High fees usually mean space in blocks is scarce, so senders bid against each other to get in. Low fees mean there is plenty of room, so the cost settles near the minimum. High fees are not automatically good and low fees are not automatically bad: what is going on around the reading matters as much as the number.
Why do fees spike?
Fees jump when demand surges: a rush to write data or tokens onto Bitcoin, a big price move that sends people hurrying to move coins, or a queue of transactions after a slow block. A spike that fades without a lasting rise came from one event, not from a change in the trend. The most expensive day in the record was 20 Apr 2024, when the average transaction cost $126.78, the day Bitcoin's fourth halving cut miners' reward in half and a new way to create tokens on Bitcoin went live.
Can fees rise in dollars while the network is no busier?
Yes. The same fee in Bitcoin is worth more dollars when Bitcoin's price rises, so the dollar cost of a transaction, and the day's dollar total, can climb with no change in how busy the network is.
What are inscriptions and runes?
Ways of writing data, pictures or tokens onto Bitcoin itself. They can dominate fees for weeks at a time, and a spike from them is demand for storing data on Bitcoin, not demand for payments.
How have upgrades changed fees?
Upgrades to how transactions are written, SegWit in 2017 and Taproot in 2021, let more transactions fit in each block. That tends to lower the cost per transaction in normal times, so recent readings sit on a lower baseline than older ones.
Why can fees jump for a few hours?
Transactions wait in a queue until a miner puts them in a block. When the queue builds, after a slow block say, fees spike, then fall quickly once it clears. A few hours like that can pull up a whole day's average.
Does every Bitcoin payment show up here?
No. Small payments increasingly travel over the Lightning Network, a payment network built on top of Bitcoin, and those pay no fee on the blockchain. Lower fees on the blockchain do not necessarily mean less use of Bitcoin.
The numbers
behind the chart
What does the current reading show?
Cost per transaction: the latest reading is $0.37, on . The highest reading since is $126.78 on ; the lowest is $0.000002 on .
Fees paid per day: the latest reading is $285,661, on . The highest reading since is $80,617,894 on ; the lowest is $0.01 on .
Middle transaction: the latest reading is $0.035, on . The highest reading since is $35.33 on ; the lowest is $0.000019 on .
Daily readings since 17 Jul 2010 let you compare the latest day with earlier months. Highest and lowest cover every reading since then; month-end values use the last reading on or before that date. Some days have no reading: 138 for the cost per transaction, 138 for the fees paid per day and 310 for the middle transaction.
What are the latest, highest and lowest readings?
| Measure | Latest | Highest | Lowest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per transaction | $0.37 | $126.78 | $0.000002 |
| Fees paid per day | $285,661 | $80,617,894 | $0.01 |
| Middle transaction | $0.035 | $35.33 | $0.000019 |
How do the readings compare with earlier dates?
| Reference date | Cost per transaction | Fees paid per day | Middle transaction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 month ago | $0.48 | $272,100 | $0.044 |
| 3 months ago | $0.22 | $136,799 | $0.04 |
| 6 months ago | $0.16 | $123,919 | $0.19 |
| 1 year ago | $0.38 | $241,239 | $0.16 |
| 2 years ago | $1.30 | $661,722 | $0.72 |
What was the reading at each month’s end?
| Reading date | Cost per transaction | Fees paid per day | Middle transaction |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.33 | $231,632 | $0.035 | |
| $0.60 | $367,218 | $0.089 | |
| $0.38 | $238,746 | $0.16 | |
| $0.28 | $203,052 | $0.052 | |
| $0.74 | $302,418 | $0.36 | |
| $0.32 | $166,812 | $0.012 | |
| $0.39 | $166,950 | $0.17 | |
| $0.61 | $246,219 | $0.012 | |
| $0.68 | $277,944 | $0.022 | |
| $0.38 | $194,475 | $0.38 | |
| $0.83 | $384,528 | $0.094 | |
| $0.65 | $359,051 | $0.33 | |
| $0.69 | $324,202 | $0.041 | |
| $0.97 | $468,390 | $0.46 | |
| $1.34 | $454,814 | $0.53 | |
| $1.39 | $422,320 | $0.35 | |
| $1.77 | $622,250 | $0.66 | |
| $1.27 | $407,630 | $0.23 | |
| $1.39 | $538,268 | $1.08 | |
| $1.53 | $521,841 | $0.74 | |
| $1.77 | $554,146 | $0.66 | |
| $1.53 | $978,918 | $0.81 | |
| $8.44 | $4,747,365 | $0.40 | |
| $0.79 | $469,128 | $0.42 |
Source: Maketo's daily record of Bitcoin transaction fees. Reading for .