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TRANSACTION FEES

Sending Bitcoin is cheap right now,
about $0.34 a transaction

What a typical transaction costs to send right now, and what that says about how busy the network is.

Average cost per Bitcoin transaction

Usually daily
Average cost to send a Bitcoin transaction over time chartmaketomaketo.com/indicator/tx-fees$0$0$0.01$0.1$1$10$100201020132016201920222025TODAY$0.34

What an average transaction has cost to send since 2010, on a log scale. The raw daily line is jumpy, so use the smoothing buttons to see the trend.

Latest displayed reading: $0.3371 on Aug 4, 2026. This view shows 1,030 dated readings from Aug 16, 2010 to Aug 4, 2026. The latest displayed reading is higher than the first. The displayed low is $0.0001 on Aug 16, 2010. The displayed high is $126.78 on Apr 20, 2024.

Inspect a chart date

Arrow keys move one plotted point. Home and End jump to the first and latest points.

  • Cost per transaction (selected): $0.3371

  1. How much does it cost to send Bitcoin right now?

    Cheap

    Bitcoin's base layer has plenty of room today, so you can send a transaction for pocket change. Cheap fees are good news if you want to transact, though they mean leaner times for miners.

    About $0.34 per transaction

  2. How does today compare to its own history?

    Across its whole history since 2010, the cost to send a transaction has ranged from a fraction of a cent to tens of dollars during congestion. Today it sits in the middle of that range.

    <$0.01$127

    Cost per transaction, against its whole history since 2010

    $0.34 to send a transaction today<$0.01 cheapest it has ever been

  3. What does this mean for you?

    Sending Bitcoin is cheap right now. That is good news if you want to transact, and it usually means the network has spare room. It does not tell you where the price is going; it just means demand for blockspace is light at the moment.

    A few things to keep in mind
    • Price effect on USD fees. The same fee in bitcoin terms is worth more in dollars when the Bitcoin price rises. A higher USD fee total can happen without any change in actual network congestion.
    • Inscriptions and runes. These can dominate fee revenue for weeks at a time. Fee spikes from them are not always a sign of healthy demand for payments; they are demand for embedding data on Bitcoin.
    • Newer transaction formats. Over the years, protocol upgrades like SegWit and Taproot have let more transactions fit in each block. This tends to lower per-transaction fees during normal times, shifting the historical baseline.
    • Mempool dynamics. Fees can spike briefly when the backlog builds up (for example after a slow block), then fall quickly. Daily fee totals can be distorted by a few hours of extreme conditions.
    • Lightning offload. Small payments increasingly go through the Lightning Network, which does not contribute to on-chain fees. Lower on-chain fees do not necessarily mean less Bitcoin usage.

Understanding Transaction Fees

What fees tell you. Every Bitcoin transaction pays a fee to get confirmed, and those fees go to the miners. The cost to send one transaction, and the total everyone pays in a day, are two of the clearest signals of how much demand there is for space on the blockchain.

What high and low fees mean. High fees usually mean space on the blockchain is scarce, so users bid each other up to get confirmed. 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; the context around the reading matters as much as the number.

Why spikes happen. Fees can jump on a sudden surge in demand: an inscription or runes event, a big price move that makes people rush to move coins, or a backlog after a slow block. A spike that fades without a lasting rise was event-driven, not a real change in trend.