Bitcoin network data
Bitcoin transaction fees
What it costs to send a transaction right now — and how fees work.
Fastest
next block
— sat/vB
Fast
about 30 minutes
— sat/vB
Standard
about an hour
— sat/vB
Economy
no hurry
— sat/vB
Connecting to network data…
Approximate cost for a typical transaction of about 140 vB. Your wallet shows the exact fee before you send.
What is a transaction fee?
Every Bitcoin transaction includes a small fee. The fee does not go to any company or to this website: it is collected by the miner who includes your transaction in a block. Fees reward miners for securing the network, and they act as the price of space in the next block, which is limited.
Why fees change
Block space is roughly constant, but the number of people trying to transact is not. When many transactions compete at once, fees rise; when the network is quiet, fees fall. The same transaction can cost noticeably more on a busy day than on a calm one. Nothing is wrong in either case — the fee market is simply doing its job of deciding whose transactions go first.
How fees are measured: sat/vB
Fees are quoted in satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB). You pay for the size of your transaction in the block, not for the amount of bitcoin you send: moving a small payment and moving a fortune can cost the same fee if the transactions are the same size. A satoshi is the smallest unit of bitcoin (100,000,000 satoshis = 1 BTC). A simple payment — one input, two outputs — takes up around 140 virtual bytes; transactions with more inputs and outputs are larger.
Choosing a fee
Most wallets estimate fees for you and let you choose between speed and economy: a higher rate aims for the next block, a lower rate waits until the network is quieter. Different wallets can suggest different numbers for the same moment — fee estimation is a prediction, not an exact science. If your payment is not urgent, choosing a lower fee and waiting is a perfectly good strategy.
If your transaction seems stuck
A transaction with a low fee during a busy period is not lost — it is waiting in a queue (the mempool) until space is available. It may confirm once demand for block space falls. Many wallets can also speed up a waiting transaction by increasing its fee (a feature called Replace-by-Fee), or you can simply wait: an unconfirmed transaction either confirms or is eventually dropped by the network — and in that case the funds simply remain spendable in your wallet, because they never actually left it.
Small and everyday payments
For small or frequent payments, the Lightning Network offers near-instant transfers with fees that are typically a tiny fraction of a cent. It works on top of Bitcoin and is supported by a growing number of wallets and merchants — see Spend Bitcoin for places that accept it.
Live estimates from mempool.space, with blockstream.info as a fallback, fetched directly in your browser. This page never handles your funds.
