Bitcoin fees right now

Right now about 8 blocks worth of transactions are waiting to be confirmed. The next block's median fee is 2.6 sat/vB.

What a typical transaction costs

The USD figures assume a typical wallet-to-wallet send with one input and two outputs (payment plus change) on a native segwit address. That is about 141 vbytes. The cost is the fee rate times 141, converted at the current BTC price. A transaction with more inputs is larger and costs proportionally more.

How to pick a fee

• Fastest is the rate that targets the next block, about ten minutes. Use it when the payment is time-sensitive.
• Half hour and one hour suit most payments. They usually cost a fraction of the fastest rate when the mempool is busy.
• Economy is the cheapest rate likely to confirm at all. It can take hours or longer if demand rises, so use it for transfers that can wait, such as moving coins to cold storage. A hardware wallet like Ledger lets you set the rate yourself before you sign.

Why Bitcoin fees change

Each block has limited space, roughly 1 million vbytes. Transactions compete for it by paying a fee per vbyte, and miners take the highest-paying ones first. When many people send at once, such as during a price swing or a token mint, the fee needed to get into the next block rises. When the backlog clears, fees fall back toward the 1 sat/vB minimum. Fees depend on the size of your transaction in vbytes, not on the amount of bitcoin you send.

Looking for the next supply event instead? See the Bitcoin halving countdown.