⛽ Ethereum Gas Fee & Gwei Tracker
Estimate real-time Ethereum network gas fees in Gwei and USD for ETH transfers, ERC-20 token sends, Uniswap swaps, and NFT minting. 100% free.
Defaults are a dated reference from 11 September 2026 — the median base fee across 128 blocks, and the ETH spot price that day. This is not a live feed. Paste the current base fee from a block explorer before relying on any figure below.
Around the median tip paid on recent blocks. Tips are presets from the observed distribution, not predictions — how fast a transaction is included depends on what everyone else is bidding in that block. The base fee portion is burned; only the tip reaches the validator.
Cost at 0.1390 Gwei, ETH = $2,454
What Ethereum Gas Fee & Gwei Tracker Does
This tool converts a base fee, a priority fee and an ETH price into the actual cost of a transaction, for the gas amounts that common operations consume. Enter the current base fee from a block explorer and it does the arithmetic.
Since EIP-1559 an Ethereum fee has two parts that behave completely differently. The base fee is set by the protocol, is identical for everyone in a given block, and is destroyed — it does not go to the validator or to anyone else. The priority fee, or tip, is the only part you choose and the only part anyone receives. Understanding that split is most of what there is to understand about gas.
One thing worth stating plainly, because most calculators on this topic have not been updated for it: fees are not what they were. Across 128 consecutive blocks measured on 11 September 2026, the base fee ranged from 0.0533 to 0.1207 Gwei. That is roughly two hundred times lower than the levels that shaped how people talk about Ethereum fees, and it makes a simple transfer cost well under one cent.
How to Use Ethereum Gas Fee & Gwei Tracker
- Compare Slow, Standard, and Fast priority Gwei gas rates
- Inspect estimated USD transaction costs for ETH transfers, ERC-20 tokens, and DEX swaps
Formula Used by Ethereum Gas Fee & Gwei Tracker
What a transaction actually costs
fee in ETH = gas used × (base fee + priority fee) × 10⁻⁹
- gas used
- Computational units the transaction consumes — 21,000 for a plain ETH transfer
- base fee
- Gwei per gas, set by the protocol and burned
- priority fee
- Gwei per gas you add as a tip; the validator keeps this
- 10⁻⁹
- Gwei to ETH — one Gwei is a billionth of an ETH
Worked example
An ETH transfer at the measured median: base fee 0.089 Gwei, a median tip of 0.05 Gwei, ETH at $2,454.
- Effective gas price: 0.089 + 0.05 = 0.139 Gwei
- Total gas: 21,000 × 0.139 = 2,919 Gwei
- In ETH: 2,919 × 10⁻⁹ = 0.000002919 ETH
- In dollars: 0.000002919 × 2,454 = $0.0072
Result: About seven tenths of a cent. Of that, 0.089/0.139 — roughly 64% — is burned and never reaches anybody.
How fast the base fee can climb
base fee change per block ≤ ±1 / BASE_FEE_MAX_CHANGE_DENOMINATOR = ±12.5%
- BASE_FEE_MAX_CHANGE_DENOMINATOR
- Protocol constant, fixed at 8 by EIP-1559
- direction
- Up when the parent block was above the gas target, down when below
Worked example
Sustained full blocks, so the base fee rises the maximum 12.5% every block. Measured block time is 12.05 seconds.
- Doubling: 1.125ⁿ ≥ 2 first holds at n = 6 (1.125⁶ = 2.03)
- 6 blocks × 12.05 s ≈ 72 seconds
- Tenfold: 1.125ⁿ ≥ 10 first holds at n = 20 (1.125²⁰ = 10.5)
- 20 blocks × 12.05 s ≈ 4 minutes
Result: The base fee can multiply by ten in about four minutes, and fall just as fast. This is why a quoted gas figure has a short shelf life, and why setting a maxFeePerGas well above the current base fee is sensible — you are only ever charged the actual base fee plus your tip.
Where the gas target comes from
gas target = block gas limit ÷ ELASTICITY_MULTIPLIER
- block gas limit
- 60,000,000, measured on chain at blocks 25,948,706 and 25,955,906
- ELASTICITY_MULTIPLIER
- Protocol constant, fixed at 2 by EIP-1559
Worked example
The measured limit and the protocol constant.
- Target: 60,000,000 ÷ 2 = 30,000,000 gas
- Median gas used across the 128-block sample: 51% of the limit
- 51% of 60,000,000 = 30,600,000 gas
Result: Blocks are landing within about 2% of target, which is exactly the equilibrium the mechanism is designed to find. A block can go to 100% when demand spikes — that is the elasticity — but doing so pushes the next block's base fee up 12.5%.
Measured Fee Levels, 11 September 2026
From eth_feeHistory over 128 consecutive blocks ending at 25,953,808, on a public Ethereum node. Priority fee rows are the median of each per-block percentile across the sample.
| Measure | Value (Gwei) |
|---|---|
| Base fee, minimum | 0.0533 |
| Base fee, median | 0.0892 |
| Base fee, maximum | 0.1207 |
| Priority fee, 10th percentile | 0.0001 |
| Priority fee, 50th percentile | 0.0500 |
| Priority fee, 90th percentile | 1.3278 |
Gas Consumed by Common Operations
Only the 21,000 for a plain transfer is fixed by the protocol. Everything else depends on the contract and on what storage it touches, so treat these as typical rather than exact.
| Operation | Typical gas | Why it varies |
|---|---|---|
| ETH transfer | 21,000 | Fixed intrinsic cost — it cannot be lower |
| ERC-20 token transfer | 45,000–65,000 | Cheaper when the recipient already holds a nonzero balance |
| Token approval | 25,000–46,000 | Cheaper when overwriting an existing allowance |
| Uniswap V3 swap | 120,000–250,000 | Depends on how many pools the route crosses |
| NFT mint | 50,000–200,000+ | Entirely up to the contract |
| Contract deployment | 200,000–3,000,000+ | Scales with the size of the deployed bytecode |
The Three Fee Fields in a Wallet
Modern wallets set these for you. This is what each one does when you override it.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| maxFeePerGas | The ceiling you accept. Unused portion is refunded, so a high value costs nothing extra |
| maxPriorityFeePerGas | Your tip. The only part a validator receives, and the only lever on inclusion speed |
| gas limit | Maximum units you authorize. Set too low, the transaction reverts and you still pay for the gas burned |
How to Read Your Result
Raising your max fee does not cost you more
This is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding about EIP-1559. maxFeePerGas is a ceiling, not a price. You are charged the base fee that actually applied in the block that included you, plus your priority fee, and the difference is refunded. Setting a max fee of 5 Gwei when the base fee is 0.089 does not cost 5 Gwei — it costs 0.089 plus your tip, and it protects you from failing when the base fee doubles in the seventy seconds between signing and inclusion. The field that genuinely changes what you pay is the priority fee.
A failed transaction still costs money
If a transaction runs out of gas, or reverts because a contract rejected it, the work the network already performed is not refunded. You pay for the gas consumed up to the failure point and get nothing. This is why the gas limit is a limit rather than an estimate: wallets pad their estimate deliberately, and manually lowering it to save money is a reliable way to pay for a transaction that does not happen. Unused gas below the limit is always returned, so there is no saving to be had by trimming it.
The burn is real and it is large relative to issuance
The base fee portion is destroyed. Working from the sample above: roughly 30.6 million gas per block at a 0.0892 Gwei base fee is about 0.0027 ETH burned per block, and at a measured 12.05-second block time that is roughly 7,170 blocks a day, so a little under 20 ETH a day at these fee levels. That is modest compared with the periods when the burn exceeded issuance and total supply fell. The point is not the headline number, which moves with demand, but the structure: heavy network use destroys ETH rather than paying it to validators, so activity and supply are linked.
If the fee still matters to you, you are probably on the wrong layer
At a sub-cent transfer cost, fee optimization on Ethereum mainnet has largely stopped being a real problem for ordinary transfers. Where costs remain meaningful is complex contract interaction during demand spikes, when the base fee can rise tenfold in minutes. The structural answer to that has not changed: rollups execute transactions off mainnet and post compressed data back, which is why almost all high-frequency activity has moved there. Comparing a mainnet fee to an L2 fee is comparing different products, not different prices.
Limitations & Accuracy Notes
- Not a live feed. The defaults are a dated reference from 11 September 2026 and gas can move an order of magnitude within minutes — paste the current base fee from a block explorer.
- Gas amounts for anything other than a plain ETH transfer are typical values. Actual consumption depends on the contract and on which storage slots the transaction touches.
- The three tip presets come from the observed percentile distribution on one day. They are presets, not predictions, and confer no guarantee about inclusion time.
- Ethereum mainnet only. Layer 2 fees are calculated differently, with an execution component and a data-availability component.
- No mempool visibility, so it cannot tell you what is currently being bid or how deep the queue is.
- Does not account for MEV, private transaction relays, or bundled transactions, all of which change effective pricing.
- The ETH price is entered by hand, so a dollar figure is only as current as the number you typed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Gwei in Ethereum gas fees?
Why do gas fees fluctuate?
Why are gas fees so much lower than I expected?
Does raising maxFeePerGas cost me more?
Where does the base fee go?
How fast can the base fee change?
Do I still pay if my transaction fails?
Are these numbers live?
References & Further Reading
- EIP-1559: Fee market change for ETH 1.0 chain — Source of the fee formula and of both protocol constants used above — BASE_FEE_MAX_CHANGE_DENOMINATOR = 8 giving the 12.5% per-block cap, and ELASTICITY_MULTIPLIER = 2 giving the gas target as half the block limit. Also the statement that the base fee per gas is burned
- Ethereum.org — Gas and fees — Reference for gas units, the 21,000 intrinsic transfer cost, and how maxFeePerGas, maxPriorityFeePerGas and the gas limit interact
- Etherscan Gas Tracker — Live base fee and tip levels. Use this for the current number before entering anything above