Every action on Ethereum, from sending ether to swapping one token for another, costs a fee called gas, paid in ETH to the network itself rather than to the app being used. The fee is not a flat price. It depends on how much computing work a transaction needs and on how crowded the network is at that moment, which is why the same transfer can cost a fraction of a cent one evening and several dollars an hour later. This guide explains gas units and gas prices, the base fee and tip system that EIP-1559 introduced, worked costs measured from Ethereum blocks on November 2, 2026, why fees can multiply thousands of times in under an hour, and how other networks charge. The crypto hub covers the wider market.
What are gas fees?
Gas fees are what you pay to have a transaction processed on Ethereum: the gas it uses multiplied by a price per unit of gas, paid in ETH.
Gas measures computing work. Every operation a transaction triggers has a gas cost fixed by the protocol, so the total depends on what the transaction does, not on how much money it moves. Sending 0.01 ETH and sending 1,000 ETH both use exactly 21,000 gas. Calling a smart contract uses more, because the network has to run the contract's code and update the balances it stores.
Measured across 31 blocks on the morning of November 2, 2026, a USDC transfer used a median of 45,160 gas, and a token swap sent through a widely used decentralized exchange router used a median of 123,135. Sending a token to an address that has never held it costs about 17,100 gas more, roughly 62,000 in all, because the token contract has to create a new balance entry instead of updating an existing one.
Two settings turn gas into a bill:
- Gas price. Quoted in gwei, short for gigawei. One gwei is a billionth of an ETH, or 0.000000001 ETH.
- Gas limit. The most gas the sender lets the transaction use. Wallets estimate it, and gas left unused is not charged.
If the work runs past the gas limit, the transaction fails, its changes are reversed and the gas used up to that point is still paid. Each block also has a limit on the total gas of all its transactions, which is what makes block space scarce when demand jumps.
How do the base fee and priority fee work?
Since August 2021, each unit of gas costs a protocol-set base fee plus an optional priority fee, or tip, that the sender chooses.
That design came from EIP-1559, switched on in the London upgrade at block 12,965,000 on August 5, 2021. Before it, every user bid a single gas price in an open auction and guessed at what would get included, and many overpaid.
Fee = Gas used × (Base fee + Priority fee)
The base fee follows a rule rather than a bidding war. Each block has a gas target equal to half its gas limit; with the limit at 60 million gas since late November 2025, the target is 30 million. When a block uses more than the target, the next block's base fee rises by up to 12.5%, and when it uses less, the base fee falls by up to 12.5%. A completely full block pushes it up by the full 12.5%, and an empty block cuts it by the same amount, so the fee tracks demand block by block, every 12 seconds.
The base fee is burned: that ETH is destroyed rather than paid to anyone, which offsets part of the new ETH issued to validators, a supply effect that what Ethereum is explains. The tip goes to the validator that proposes the block, and it is the only part of the fee a sender can raise to move ahead of others. When blocks are not full, a minimal tip is enough. In the 24 hours to 02:36 UTC on November 2, 2026, the median tip was 0.01 gwei and blocks averaged 50.7% full, almost exactly on target.
Wallets send this kind of transaction with two caps: a maximum fee per gas and a maximum tip. The transaction is included only if the max fee covers the base fee at that moment, and the sender is refunded the gap between the max fee and what was actually charged. A generous max fee therefore does not mean paying it. It means the transaction can still be included if the base fee rises while it waits.
How much does an Ethereum transaction cost?
At early November 2026 fee levels, a plain ETH transfer cost about a quarter of a cent and a token swap about 1.5 cents, with ETH at $2,300.
The figures below use a base fee of 0.044 gwei, the average over the 24 hours to 02:36 UTC on November 2, 2026, plus the 0.01 gwei median tip, so 0.054 gwei per unit of gas. Gas amounts are the medians measured that morning, and ETH is taken at $2,300, close to where it traded early that day. To price the result in today's dollars, multiply the ETH amount by ether's latest price, $2,287.65 (Nov 2, 2026), or use the crypto converter.
Worked example: A transfer and a swap on November 2, 2026
- Plain ETH transfer: 21,000 gas × 0.054 gwei = 1,134 gwei = 0.000001134 ETH, about $0.0026
- Of that, 21,000 × 0.044 = 924 gwei is burned and 21,000 × 0.01 = 210 gwei goes to the validator
- Token swap: 123,000 gas × 0.054 gwei = 6,642 gwei = 0.000006642 ETH, about $0.015
- Refund on the swap: with a 150,000 gas limit and a 0.1 gwei max fee, the wallet reserves 150,000 × 0.1 = 15,000 gwei, and the 15,000 − 6,642 = 8,358 gwei not charged is returned
The same transactions looked very different at the top of the October 29, 2026 surge, when the median price actually paid in block 26,301,016, base fee plus tip, was 254.75 gwei and ETH traded near $2,256.
| Transaction | Typical gas | November 2, 2026, at 0.054 gwei | October 29 peak, at 254.75 gwei |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain ETH transfer | 21,000 | $0.0026 | $12.07 |
| USDC transfer | 45,160 | $0.0056 | $25.95 |
| Token swap | 123,000 | $0.015 | $70.69 |
The swap row shows why complex transactions feel spikes hardest: it needs almost six times the gas of a transfer, so every jump in the gas price lands on it six times over.
Why do gas fees spike?
Gas fees spike when more people want block space than blocks have room for, because the base fee compounds upward by up to 12.5% with every full block.
The compounding is fast. Ten full blocks in a row, two minutes of Ethereum time, multiply the base fee by 3.2, and sixty in a row multiply it by about 1,170. The climb stops only when the fee is high enough that some users decide to wait, letting blocks fall back below target.
Worked example: The October 29, 2026 surge, block by block
Block data read from an Ethereum node shows the sequence:
- Before 20:00 UTC: the base fee sat near 0.1 gwei
- From about 20:35 to 20:51 UTC: most blocks ran full and the base fee climbed from about 0.16 gwei to 125 gwei
- 21:14 UTC: it peaked at 252.75 gwei in block 26,301,016
- The arithmetic: 125 ÷ 0.16 ≈ 780, which takes about 57 consecutive full blocks at 12.5% each; the climb took 84 blocks because not every block was full
- October 31: the day's median base fee was back down to 0.058 gwei
The surge began about 15 minutes after funds started leaving Binance's hot wallets in the theft of more than $6 billion that the FBI attributed to North Korea, and as ether fell about 3.4% between 20:00 and 21:00 UTC. Chainalysis reported that the attacker swapped $325 million of stablecoins into ETH over nearly 20 minutes to stay ahead of freezes. Bursts like this happen whenever many users and trading bots try to act on the same news at once; token launches, popular NFT mints and sharp market falls have produced them before. Crowded blocks also fill the pending queue, so wallets raise their suggested tips, which adds to the cost on top of the base fee.
How can you pay lower gas fees?
The main levers are transacting when blocks are quieter, using a layer 2 network, and batching several steps into one transaction.
Quieter blocks. Because the base fee follows demand, a transaction that is not urgent costs less when fewer people are transacting. A wallet's estimate reflects the base fee of the moment; setting a lower max fee simply means the transaction waits until the base fee drops to that level. Surges are usually brief: over the month to November 2, 2026, the median block's base fee was 0.085 gwei, and only 4.3% of blocks, 9,752 out of 225,280, had a base fee above 1 gwei.
Layer 2 networks. Rollups such as Arbitrum One and Base run transactions on their own chains and post compressed data to Ethereum, so their median transaction cost was a small fraction of a cent on October 31, 2026, according to growthepie. Layer 2 networks explained covers how they work and what they trade away, including official withdrawals that take days.
Batching. Since the Pectra upgrade on May 7, 2025, EIP-7702 lets an ordinary address run smart-account code, so a wallet that supports it can bundle a token approval and a swap into a single transaction. Every Ethereum transaction starts with a fixed 21,000-gas charge, so folding two steps into one avoids paying it twice, although the one-time delegation step carries its own gas cost.
Fewer failures. A transaction that reverts still pays for the gas it used, so checking the network, the token and the amounts before signing saves money as well as mistakes.
What do other networks charge in fees?
Other networks price fees differently: Bitcoin by transaction size, Solana per signature plus an optional priority fee, and rollups by their own gas plus Ethereum data costs.
| Network | Fee unit | How the price is set | Fee level, early November 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | Gas, priced in gwei | Protocol base fee, burned, plus a tip | Median transaction $0.027 on October 31 (growthepie) |
| Ethereum rollups | Gas on the rollup plus a data fee | The rollup's own base fee plus its cost of posting data to Ethereum | Median transaction from under $0.00001 to about $0.013 on October 31, depending on the network (growthepie) |
| Bitcoin | Satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB) | Users bid for block space and miners take the highest fee rates first | 1 sat/vB suggested for every priority level on November 2 (mempool.space) |
| Solana | Lamports, a billionth of a SOL | 5,000 lamports per signature, half burned, plus an optional priority fee priced per compute unit | 0.000005 SOL for one signature, about $0.0005 |
Ethereum's median is higher than the transfer cost worked out above because the typical transaction is a contract call, not a plain transfer, and many senders tip more than the minimum. Bitcoin's fee market, and the busy periods when its fees jump, are covered in what bitcoin is, and what Solana is explains how its priority fees and validators work. However low a network's fees look, they are paid in a volatile coin, so their dollar cost moves with its price.
What are the risks when paying gas fees?
The main risks are paying surge prices by accident, losing gas on failed transactions and falling for fee-related scams, all on top of ether's own price swings.
- Overpaying in a surge. During a spike, a wallet's estimate can propose a max fee thousands of times the usual level. The max fee is only a ceiling, but a transaction included at the top of a surge pays that moment's base fee.
- Failed transactions. A swap that reverts, for example because the price moved past the trader's slippage limit, still pays for the gas it used; CEX vs DEX explains slippage.
- No ETH for gas. Tokens such as USDC cannot move on Ethereum or most rollups without a little ETH on the same network, and paying gas on the wrong chain is a common way funds get stranded; sending crypto to the wrong network covers recovery.
- Fake fee demands and delegation phishing. Fraudsters tell victims to pay a gas or release fee before a balance can be withdrawn, and since Pectra a single signature can hand an address over to someone else's code. Chainalysis said the Binance attacker used signed delegation authorizations to make a hot wallet run attacker-deployed code. Crypto scams lists the common patterns, and how to store crypto safely covers protecting the keys that sign.
- Price risk. Gas is paid in ETH, which is volatile and can lose most or all of its value, and the ether kept on hand for fees carries that risk too. The ether price page shows how far it has swung.