Bitcoin lowest transaction fees

Explaining bitcoin transaction fees

Every bitcoin transaction must be added to the blockchain, the official public ledger of all bitcoin transactions, in order to be considered successfully completed or valid. The work of validating transactions and adding them to the blockchain is done by miners, powerful computers that make up and connect to the network. Miners spend vast amounts of computing power and energy doing this for a financial reward: with every block (a collection of transactions not exceeding 1 MB in size) added to the blockchain comes a bounty called a block reward (currently 6.25 BTC), as well as all fees sent with the transactions that were included in the block.

For this reason, miners have a financial incentive to prioritize the validation of transactions that include a higher fee. For someone looking to send funds and get a quick confirmation, the appropriate fee to include can vary greatly, depending on a number of factors. While the fee does not depend on the amount you’re sending, it does depend on network conditions at the time and the data size of your transaction.

Because a block on the bitcoin blockchain can only contain up to 1 MB of information, there is a limited number of transactions that can be included in any given block. During times of congestion, when a large number of users are sending funds, there can be more transactions awaiting confirmation than there is space in a block.

When a user decides to send funds and the transaction is broadcast, it initially goes into what is called the memory pool (mempool for short) before being included into a block. It is from this mempool that miners choose which transactions to include, prioritizing the ones with higher fees. If the mempool is full, the fee market may turn into a competition: users will compete to get their transactions into the next block by including higher and higher fees. Eventually, the market will reach a maximum equilibrium fee that users are willing to pay and the miners will work through the entire mempool in order. At this point, once traffic has decreased, the equilibrium fee will go back down.

Again due to the fact that a block on the bitcoin blockchain can contain no more than 1 MB of information, transaction size is an important consideration for miners. Smaller transactions are easier to validate; larger transactions take more work, and take up more space in the block. For this reason, miners prefer to include smaller transactions. A larger transaction will require a larger fee to be included in the next block.

There is no simple way to calculate a transaction size by hand. Your Blockchain.com Wallet will automatically do this for you, and suggest an appropriate fee.

Fees in the Blockchain.com Wallet

Blockchain.com Wallet users will always have options when it comes to bitcoin transaction fees. Our wallet uses dynamic fees , meaning that the wallet will calculate the appropriate fee for your transaction taking into account current network conditions and transaction size.

You can choose between a Priority fee and a Regular fee. The Priority fee is calculated to get your transaction included in a block within the hour. The Regular fee is lower, and is for users who can afford to be a bit more patient; a confirmation for a transaction that includes a Regular fee will typically take a bit more than an hour.

Advanced users can set custom fees for their transaction in units of satoshi per byte (sat/b) by pressing Customize Fee and entering an amount. Please note that setting too low a fee may cause your transaction to remain unconfirmed for a long time and possibly be rejected. Customize your transaction fee at your own risk.

If you want to take a deeper dive into bitcoin transaction fees, this blog post provides a comprehensive overview of what fees are and how they work, and this one elaborates on some frequently asked questions. If you have an unconfirmed transaction, you can learn more about what this means here .

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Crypto fee comparison — what is the lowest fee cryptocurrency?

With the recent increase in fees for both Bitcoin and Ethereum, this is a question coming by more recently. So let’s dive right in.

To first cross off the top cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin’s average transaction fee is $25.47 as of writing, with a “near finality time” of 58 minutes before your transaction is considered fully confirmed. Ethereum fares slightly better with a $24.48 average transaction fee, and a 6 minute near finality time.

So with these two out of the running, let’s look at what the actual lowest fee cryptocurrencies are.

# 1. Nano: $0 fees, 0.14 seconds for confirmation

As no one who is in crypto will be surprised to hear, Nano takes the cake here. Nano is a cryptocurrency with zero fees, relying on Open Representative Voting for consensus and security. To be clear, the zero fees are not due to some temporary subsidy — zero fees are built into the protocol. In addition to having the lowest fees, Nano also wins out in the time it takes to confirm a transaction clocking in at 0.14 seconds. Yes, that’s sub-second, for irreversible, full confirmation by a decentralised network. Because transactions can never be reversed in Nano and because its consensus mechanism is so secure, even exchanges consider it confirmed after that first second. To top it off, Nano has no inflation, so your holdings aren’t being constantly diluted as in many other cryptocurrencies.

# 2. Digibyte: $0.0005 fee, 5 minutes to confirm

Clocking in as a good second is Digibyte (DGB). Digibyte is a PoW coin, but uses a combination of 5 different mining algorithms compared to Bitcoin’s one. This helps avoid centralization in mining. Its fees are quite low, while its confirmation time is relatively long on the exchanges where it’s listed because while a new block is mined every 15 seconds in DGB, exchanges require 20 confirmations before considering it settled. That being said, DGB does still have 8% inflation, meaning that while fees are low, your holdings will become worth less over time.

# 3. Bitcoin SV: $0.00055 fee, 7 days to confirm.

Bitcoin SV (BSV) is a bit of an odd one out. Being a fork of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV increased the block size to be able to process more transactions. In terms of fees, this seems to have worked out since a $0.00055 fee is relatively low. However, the chain is seen as so insecure and open to being 51% attacked that many exchanges have delisted it. Before delisting, it required a whopping 1008 confirmations at 10 minutes per block, for a settlement time of 7 full days. There’s also about 3% inflation to contend with, diluting your BSV holdings.

# 4. XRP: $0.00078 fee, 4 seconds to confirm.

XRP is the coin that everyone loves to hate. The wider crypto community sees it as a centralized coin, and it’s currently charged by the SEC with conducting an unregistered securities offering. All that being said, it does offer a low-fee option at an average $0.00078 fee, and takes only 4 seconds to be considered confirmed by an exchange. The worst aspect of XRP is that its supply is still being diluted massively, with about half of all XRP still in escrow to be distributed by a for-profit company.

# 5. Bitcoin Cash: $0.0024 fee, 2.5 hours to confirm.

A fork of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) aims to be the true vision of Bitcoin, being peer to peer digital cash. Fees on BCH are obviously much lower than on Bitcoin, owing to BCH being able to handle more transactions in a single block. BCH accomplishes this by having larger, variable blocks (starting at 8MB, versus BTC’s fixed 1MB). Bitcoin Cash’s downside is that the security of the chain is seen as low. Kraken requires 15 confirmations or 150 minutes to consider a deposit confirmed, while Crypto51 sees the 51% attack cost for BCH as just $8500 an hour.

# 6. Stellar: $0.004 fee, 4 seconds to confirm.

Stellar is like XRP in many ways. Transactions are cheap and fast, though costs will go up if Stellar’s price increases. Stellar is more of a platform, allowing, for example, stablecoins to be used on the network. There are some worries over its supply, with approximately 20 billion “Lumens” still in the hands of the Stellar Development Foundation, and over the low amount of validators (nodes) being run. All that being said, Stellar is one of the few cryptos that Kraken accepts with a single confirmation.

# 7. Dash: $0.0043 fee, 15 minutes to confirm.

Dash is yet another coin in this list that is a fork of Bitcoin. Started as a privacy coin, Dash nowadays positions itself more as a general medium of exchange. As opposed to Bitcoin’s proof of work protocol, Dash uses proof of stake with “Masternodes” and a treasury, causing people to be worried that the early movers get most of the mining rewards, leading to further centralization overtime. However, Dash’s fees are quite low at $0.0043 on average, though it does take 15 minutes to be considered confirmed by Kraken.

# 8. Litecoin: $0.041 fee, 30 minutes to confirm.

Yet another fork of Bitcoin, Litecoin was one of the first cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin. Its biggest change was 2.5 minute blocks (compared to Bitcoin’s 10 minute blocks) allowing it to scale slightly better, and to keep fees lower. At $0.041 average fee it’s still not exactly cheap though, and Kraken requires 12 confirmations (30 minutes) before they feel safe enough to accept your deposit.

# 9. Monero: $0.0696 fee, 30 minutes to confirm.

An odd coin, Monero doesn’t focus on being a regular cryptocurrency, but focuses on privacy. The community has the cypherpunk ethos of full privacy for everyone, and is okay with sacrificing some speed and fees to accomplish this, meaning you’ll have to wait at least 30 minutes for Kraken to accept your deposit. The focus on privacy has some clear advantages, but has also caused some exchanges to delist Monero. It’s an exciting project, but no one would use it as the lowest fee option.

# 10. Doge: $0.239 fee, 20 minutes to confirm.

Many fees, much wow. Despite being a great meme, Doge clearly isn’t meant to be an actual payment cryptocurrency. It’s $0.239 average fees put it at the higher end of transaction fees, while it would also take 20 minutes before an exchange feels secure enough to consider your deposit valid. This was never the point of Doge though, with its 10% inflation indefinitely it was always meant to be a joke coin. At that, it has succeeded brilliantly, with the Shiba Inu as its very recognizable prime barker.

Honorary mention but excluded:

Avalanche. At the time of writing, Avalanche was having problems on its mainnet causing it to stop completely. As I write this, there hasn’t been a transaction validated in 6 hours. Supposedly it’s very fast, but right now there are still issues.

IOTA. While IOTA promises feeless (though this is unclear lately) and quick transactions, up to now IOTA can only function using a central coordinator. It is not yet a decentralised network, and it’s hard to test its true speed. It has a 79% confirmation rate within 10 minutes, with transactions dropped occasionally.

Final thoughts

In the end, my comparison confirmed what I had expected beforehand, which is that Nano is both the fastest cryptocurrency, and has the lowest fees. I’ve written an article about Nano earlier, so if you want to confirm for yourself that it really is that fast, head over there to see people using it and to see how you can try it out for free yourself.

Thanks for reading, comments and feedback much welcome.

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Best 5 Bitcoin Exchanges with the lowest fees

When purchasing or trading bitcoin one of the main factors many users consider is the fee an exchange platform charges. There are a couple of fees you have to take into considerations when you are looking for a low fee exchange to buy bitcoin. The most common type of fees includes deposit and withdrawal fees, trading fees, trading spreads, and margin fees.

Overall cheapest bitcoin exchanges are those which do not have any deposit or withdrawal fee so you can send your bitcoins to and from the exchange without being charged. The no trading fee model can make the regular trading activity cheaper if the spread is tight enough for the bid and ask prices on bitcoin.

Although you might want to minimize all of these fees, the reality is that you need to consider your unique situation when buying or trading bitcoin as each of the exchange has its own benefits and drawbacks in terms of the fees.

Top Bitcoin exchanges with the lowest fees to buy and sell bitcoin

If you are looking for an exchange where you would like to buy or sell bitcoin at a low fee, your choice will depend on your preferred payment method. Nowadays when you buy bitcoin you have a myriad of payment methods you can choose from: you can pay with credit or debit card, with bank wire (both SEPA, SWIFT, or ACH) and even with some alternative payment provider like PayPal, Skrill or Netteller.

If you want to minimalize your costs, look for an exchange with the lowest deposit fees. Generally speaking buying bitcoin with bank wire transfer is usually considered the cheapest payment method. Next come those exchanges which offer alternative payment services and finally, the most expensive payment method is buying bitcoin with credit card and PayPal. The reason for this is that credit card companies and PayPal offer buyer protection in the form of chargebacks, while on the other side, bitcoin transactions are irreversible.

These exchanges are the best for only a handful of transactions. If you want to buy and sell bitcoin to profit from the changing price on a regular basis, head to the next section about trading with bitcoin at low fees.

Binance (best overall exchange) is “the amazon of crypto” and offers not only bitcoin, ethereum and hundreds of other cryptocurrencies to buy and sell with many fiat currencies with bank wire, credit card and many other options. Binance also offers staking of many coins ( earning interest on your crypto deposits) as well as margin trading. Binance is our recommendation for most users as they offer the best overall service and experience on the market today. The fees are probably the lowest you can get on the market with 0.1%. When you pay your trading fees with their own coin BNB, it gets even cheaper.

Cex.io ( good for newcomers ) – If you are new to bitcoin, probably Cex.io is the best place to start. They have a very intuitive user interface and they do not charge deposit or withdrawal fees. The exchange rate is fair compared to other platforms and you also have an instant buy option to purchase bitcoin with a credit card. Bear in mind that purchasing bitcoin with credit cards can cost you up to 7% in fees on Cex.io, but on the other hand, you will get your bitcoins instantly. In the case of bank wire transfers, there are no deposit fees, you have to wait until the deposit is going through the banking system, that can take 3-5 days in case of international transfers.

Kraken (good for bank wire) is one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchange, being on the market since 2011, their low fees and high liquidity is a great place for USD and EUR bitcoin markets. They also offer margin trading options for those who are looking for more than buying and holding bitcoins. Depositing with USD, CAD, and EUR SEPA is free of charge and only takes 1-2 days to be added to your account. The bitcoin price is one of the best on the market you can get. The only drawback of using Kraken that you cannot pay with credit or debit cards, only in Canada.

Paxful (best for cash) – If you want to buy bitcoin for cash, you can rely on other fellow bitcoiners on Paxful. On the peer-to-peer exchange, you can buy and sell bitcoin from other individuals with as low as 0% fees. Paxful charges 1% service fee but it is payable by the seller. Withdrawal fees are fixed at 0.0005 BTC covering the bitcoin network transaction fees. While Paxful overall is a safe place to buy bitcoin, the transaction can be as safe as the other counterparty you deal with. Make sure you do your own due diligence and find a reputable trader in your area to avoid scams and frauds.

Paybis (best for alternative payments) – Beyond credit cards, bank wire transfer, and cash you also have a lot of alternative payment providers you can turn to when purchasing bitcoin. Although buying bitcoin with PayPal is not advisable as it is against PayPal’s terms and conditions and your account can be locked, there are still a lot of other options you can use. Paybis offers buying bitcoin with Skrill, Neteller, and Payeer at very competitive fees. With the current promotion, your first transaction is fee of charge completely on Paybis.

Coinbase (best for credit card) is one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges where you can buy and sell bitcoin and other altcoins. There is very high liquidity on their platform and user can appreciate the smooth process of buying bitcoin and going through the verifications. Buying bitcoin with credit cards on Coinbase cost 3.99% transaction fee and a fixed cost of $0.99-$2.99 depending on the amount of bitcoin you buy. SEPA and ACH transfers are free of charge on Coinbase, but in this case, you need to wait for your deposit to be credited to your account.

Top Bitcoin exchanges with the lowest fees to trade bitcoin

Those who are looking for profiting the changing bitcoin price, exchanges might not be the best options due to the higher fees. Trading site are specially designed to offer low trading fees to attract frequent trading to their platforms. Lower fees however also come with a more complex trading platform and with different order types, so make sure you understand how the trading system works before engaging in a trade.

On a trading platform, the deposit and withdrawal fees are usually low and in many cases, it is restricted to crypto only. This means you can only deposit bitcoin to the platform and cannot pay with a credit card or bank wire transfer. Once you have money on your account, you can convert it to USD and other fiat currencies, but in the end, you need to convert is back to crypto if you want to withdraw from the platform.

When trading bitcoin you need to consider the following fees. The trading fees are usually expressed in a maker-taker fee model. This means that if you provide liquidity to the platform (you are a liquidity maker) you add orders to the order book in the form of limit orders, that stays on the order book until some other trader accepts your order on the other side (they are the liquidity takers) with a limit or market order. Makers’ fees are usually lower compared to taker fees and many trading platforms also use a volume leveled discount schedule which offers significant discounts to those traders who use a platform frequently with high volumes on a monthly basis. Beyond the trading fees, you have to consider the bid-ask spreads, which is the price the platform quotes for being on the buyer or on the seller side. The higher the bid-ask spread the more the exchange makes on a specific transaction even if the transaction fees are low and the market needs to move more in favor of your trading strategy to be able to close your trade in this case with profit. And finally, the last fee is the margin fee applicable you need to be aware if you are trading with leverage. Opening margin trades, holding them over a certain period and closing margin trades can all cost different fees depending on the platform you choose.

Binance (best overall exchange) also here, Binance is our recommedation. Be sure to buy some of their platform coin BNB – because when you pay your trading fees with BNB instead of Bitcoin, you get a generous discount on their fees. Apart from that, Binance has very low fees in general – and fantastic liquidity. No matter how big your position is – you can easily go in an out of large positions because Binance has one of the highes trading volumes in the crypto space. Additionally, Binance does offer Futures and Margin trading as well as coin staking and pretty much everything you want from a reliable Bitcoin exchange.

Bitfinex (best for advanced orders) is offering several advanced order options for trading both bitcoins and several other altcoins. The advanced order types can help you to tailor your trading strategy to take advantage of any market situations. The order execution cost 0-0.2% depending on monthly volumes and being on the taker or maker side of the deals. You can get up to 25% rebates on your trading fees if you use the platform’s own token, USDT LEO to pay the fees.

SimpleFX (best for bitcoin CFD trading) is a forex broker that has been offering bitcoin trading options for several years by now beside trading with fiat currencies and indices. Note, this is a CFD, a contract for difference platform, where the price of bitcoin is quoted by SimpleFX based on market indices, you are not trading directly with bitcoin. You can access with MetaTrader 4 and trade up to 500x leverage on certain currencies. SimpleFX is a completely commission-free trading platform meaning there are no trading fees, the platforms are profiting from the bid-ask spreads they offer.

BaseFEX (best for high bitcoin leverage) is a relatively new platform offering bitcoin futures and leveraged trading up to 100x margin. The trading fees are as low as 0.02-0.07% based on the maker-taker fee model and they only accept bitcoin deposits.

Deribit (best for bitcoin options) is a bitcoin derivative trading platform, the biggest on the market at the moment based on open interest and daily volume. Deribit offers physically-settled bitcoin and ethereum options and futures contracts with various settlement dates and high liquidity. The trading fees start at 0.5%.

Top Bitcoin exchanges with the lowest fees to trade altcoins

There are several exchanges now where you can buy, sell and trade altcoins beyond bitcoin. If you are looking for an exchange to trade altcoins with low fees, you need to consider those aspects discussed above on bitcoin exchanges. However, in the case of altcoin exchanges, the deposit and withdrawal fees can vary coin by coins depending on the miner fees of each blockchain. Make sure you check the fee schedule before depositing a certain coin to an exchange.

Additionally, in the case of altcoins with less liquid markets, some exchanges penalize small deposits with using higher fees for small amounts compared to lower fees for bigger deposits.

Binance (best for altcoins) is the no. 1 stop in altcoin trading. Their platform offers hundreds of different coins with no or very low deposit thresholds. The fees are probably the lowest you can get on the market with 0.1%. Just make sure you use the domain specific to your region as Binance uses different platforms for the US, Europe, and Asia depending on the local regulations.

Kucoin (best for trading altcoins) offers hundreds of altcoins to trade with competitive prices. Trading fees start at 0.1% and withdrawals are only charged at 0.0005 BTC. There is no KYC verification process on Kucoin as it is a crypto only trading platform.

BitMax (best for margin trading for lesser-known coins) – If you are looking for a platform where you can trade with margin on lesser-known coins, BitMax will be your place. Bitmax offers margin trading beyond bitcoin and ethereum and you can trade up to 3-5-10x margin with altcoins against USDT or bitcoin. The trading fees are super competitive, as they start at 0.04%, however, currently they do not accept users from the United States.

LocalCoinSwap (best for peer to peer option for trading altcoins) is a peer-to-peer market place similar to Paxful or Localbitcoins but they are specialized in trading altcoins. There are a lot of payment methods listed for each seller and the prices are fairly good if you manage to find a reputable trader. They charge 0.7-1% fee on altcoin transactions, however partially these fees are shared with the community.

Changelly (best for fast execution) – If you are in a hurry and need altcoin right now, Changelly will be your best help. There is no KYC for crypto to crypto conversions but you can also buy altcoins with credit cards at a reasonable price after verification. There are over 140 different cryptocurrencies you can purchase on Changelly with trading fees of 0.5%.

Coinbase is too expensive. To buy $100 of crypto using a credit or debit card (to have instant access) will cost you about $4.50 to deposit the funds and then another $5 in trading fees. So about $10 or 10%. If you use a bank account it is slight cheaper for the deposit fee, but then anything you buy is subject to a 5-7 day holding period. Not good if you want to buy crypto for an instant transaction.

Wirex wanted to charge me 27.22 GBP to send 180 GBP from my Wirex wallet to my Binance wallet.

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