The best bitcoin mining software

Best Bitcoin Mining Software

Now that you already know about the best Bitcoin mining hardware, we’re going to talk about Bitcoin mining software.

What is Bitcoin Mining Software?

Bitcoin mining hardware handles the actual Bitcoin mining process, but:

Bitcoin mining software is equally as important.

• If you are a solo miner: the mining software connects your Bitcoin miner to the blockchain.
• If you mine with a pool: the software will connect you to your mining pool.
• If you are cloud mining: you do not need mining software.

Mining Software Compared

Software	Category	Pricing	Best Feature
	Braiins OS+	Best Overall	1-2% depending on pool	A ton of security features Stratum V2 Bulk device installation
	Hive OS	Best For MacOS	$2/month per device	Amazing mobile app

Quick Tip

Mining is not the fastest way to get bitcoins.

Buying bitcoin is the fastest way.

Importance of Bitcoin Mining Software

The main job of the software is to deliver the mining hardware’s work to the rest of the Bitcoin network and to receive the completed work from other miners on the network.

Bitcoin mining software monitors this input and output of your miner while also displaying statistics such as the speed of your miner, hashrate, fan speed and the temperature.

You may also need Bitcoin tax software in order to calculate your taxes owed. Just as an example, we have a great guide on how that software works to pay taxes on Coinbase buys.

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Bitcoin Wallets

One of the most important things you will need before using any kind of Bitcoin mining software is a wallet.

This is because all Bitcoin mining software will ask you for a Bitcoin address that will be used to send your mining rewards and payouts. Once you create or download a wallet you will be able to get a Bitcoin address from your wallet.

Check out our guide on how to add funds to your wallet.

There are many Bitcoin wallets, but these are the ones we recommend if you are just starting out:

• Ledger Nano X – Secure Bitcoin hardware wallet for all platforms.
• iOS Wallets – The most popular Bitcoin wallets for iOS.
• Android Wallets – The most popular Bitcoin wallets on Android.
• Desktop Wallets – The most popular Bitcoin wallets for desktop.

Now that we understand mining software and how it helps in the mining process, and you have your Bitcoin wallet and address, let’s look at different software on different operating systems.

Disclaimer: Mining Bitcoin is NOT the best way to get bitcoins. Buying Bitcoin is.

To buy bitcoin in your country, check our country guides:

…or visit our exchange finder if your country is not listed above.

Mining Software Overviews

Find the Right Software for You

So which software should you choose?

Let’s go over all the most important info for each mining software.

By the end, you should be able to pick the best bitcoin mining software for you.

Braiins OS+ Overview

Best Bitcoin Mining Software For Windows

Braiins OS is part of Satoshi Labs and is the creation of the original inventor of mining pools, Marek “Slush” Palatinus. You may also know Marek for his invention of the Trezor, the world’s first hardware wallet.

Unlike many other mining software and operating systems, Braiins is completely free. Satoshi Labs makes money off of Braiins OS by offering you incentives to join their Slush mining pool, although this is not required to use their software.

Supported Hardware

Braains OS+ currently supports Antminer S9, S9i and S9j. Support for Antminer S17 and T17 are coming soon. Thankfully, Braiins OS+ makes the S9 family so much more efficient, that it can extend the life of your Antminer S9 ASICs. It achieves this life increase through better mining efficiency, which we will cover next.

Performance

With Braiins OS, you can increase the hashrate of your S9 up to 17+ Terrahashes per second.

Braiins OS+ can also take an S9 on low power mode and deliver 20% better performance than even an S9i.

For aging hardware like the S9 family, this is a crazy performance boost, so we can’t wait to see what Braiin’s will be able to do once they launch support for next gen Antminers like the S17 and T17.

While there is no up front cost to buying the software, you will need to pay Slushpool dev fees by directing 2% of your hashing power to their pool regardless of which pool you end up mining on. However, if you choose to mine with Slushpool for all 100% of your hashing power, that rate drops to 1%.

This is how Satoshi Labs makes money off of Braiins OS.

Features

Braiins OS boasts many features, such as:

• Unlocked SSH
• Automatic Updates to the OS firmware
• Device installation on all your devices at once
• Super Fast boot up speeds
• Pre-heating to get mining faster
• Complete fan control

Command Line

For the more traditional, tech-savvy users, Braiins offers a simple but robust command line interface for their mining software in addition to the more common graphical user interface that most people are used to. Both have their advantages, but many are more comfortable issuing commands with a keyboard instead of mouse clicks.

Two-Factor Authentication

According to Slushpool,

Every important change made to a user account requires email verification. We furthermore recommend enabling two-factor authentication using either TOTP mobile app or a hardware token (U2F). For even better protection, there is a possibility to lock your payout address so it can be only changed in future by a signed message from said address.

Slushpool takes the security of your earnings very seriously, which means a robust set of two-factor authentication options are at your disposal.

Technical Support

Braiin’s OS comes with some of the best documentation of all the mining software. If that doesn’t answer you questions you can reach out to Braiins for help or join their telegram.

Implementation of Stratum V2

Braiins OS+ has also implemented its Stratum V2 communication protocol. This protocol offers truly advanced features for power miners such as bandwidth load reductions, hash rate variance control, and hash rate hijacking protection.

It also comes with a nifty Proxy so that you can still use Stratum on other pools even if it isn’t supported by them.

Should You Use Braiins OS?

There is no one more experienced in mining software than Satoshi Labs, so you really can’t go wrong. These guys are constantly innovating, so even if you are running Linux, you won’t be disappointed in choosing Braiins.

That being said, if you don’t plan to start mining with Slushpool, be aware that you will essentially pay a 2% fee to Slushpool (in the form of redirecting 2% of your hashing power to them). By mining with Slushpool, that cuts in half and becomes very attractive.

For more info on mining pools and how to pick one, see our complete guide on mining pools.

Hive OS Overview

Best Bitcoin Mining Software For MacOS

Hive OS is a dashboard which allows miners to monitor and control all of their ASIC mining and GPUs from one centralized location. Doesn’t matter if they are made by Avalon or Nvidia — Hive OS has you covered.

Centralization is a scary word in crypto but in this case it’s great. Instead of having to monitor miners with different programs, it’s now possible to keep track of everything using Hive’s beautiful, one-stop dashboard.

Hive OS supports Bitcoin (BTC), Eth (ETH), Bcash (BCH), (XMR) and many other coins.

Whether you have three rigs or a thousand, Hive OS can easily integrate with all of them. Installation is easy as Hive OS automatically detects mining rigs and adds them to the dashboard.

HEADS UP!

Mining or buying bitcoins? You can’t do either without a Bitcoin wallet.

Our guide on the best bitcoin wallets will help you pick one.

Tracking Metrics with Hive OS

As a full feature dashboard Hive OS allows miners to track a number of different metrics. That includes but is not limited to,

• Hash rate
• Online status
• GPU errors
• Pool configuration
• Electricity usage
• Team activity

What’s great about Hive is that all of this information can be accessed from anywhere in the world. That means that you can manage a mining operation from anywhere, you don’t have to be physically connected to the miners. You can even use Hive OS to update ASICs (all at one time, it’s not necessary to update them individually) or restart a GPU if it has frozen.

Quick Tip

Mining is not the fastest way to get bitcoins.

Buying bitcoin is the fastest way.

Besides updating their rigs Hive OS allows miners to do the following,

• Change which coins are being mined. Bitcoin or BCH, Litecoin, Ethereum or Ethereum Classic, you can switch on the go if one coin becomes more profitable than another. You can use our profitability calculator as well.
• Change miner configurations all at once, there’s no need to painstakingly change individual settings.
• Change mining pools.

No matter what coins you’d like to mine Hive OS has you covered. They support more than 500 different currencies as well as 85 different mining rigs. To increase the efficiency of your miners Hive OS has firmware that can boost hash rates as well as cut down on energy usage by as much as 25%.

Pricing

Hive OS is surprisingly affordable at $2 per month per ASIC. For larger operations Hive offers discounts to any business with more than 500 miners. It’s also possible to receive Hive for free if you purchase the Hive firmware upgrade for your rigs.

There are a couple of other discounts available. If you deposit three months worth of funds into your account Hive will give you a 30% bonus on your purchase. You have to make the deposit all at once but otherwise there are few restriction on what it takes to qualify. There is also an additional 3% bonus if you make the deposit using a stablecoin like USDT or TUSD.

Easy Install

Setup is super simple with HIVE OS. All you have to do is download the software and it will automatically detect your rig and add them to the management dashboard.

ETH Mining Pool

For Ethereum miners Hive hosts its own mining pool which they claim is one of the most profitable anywhere. Hive mentions that due to their worldwide servers their pool is secure, efficient and also has a high payout. As of publication the expected daily earnings are $1.35 (0.00794 ETH) per 100 MH/s.

The minimum payout for the pool is 0.1 ETH and currently the pool charges no commission fee. There are three servers available. One in Russia, one in Europe and one in North America.

Quick Tip

Using mining software is not the fastest way to get bitcoins.

Try an exchange below for the fastest way to get bitcoins.

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Best Bitcoin Mining Software

Where to Mine Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is one of the most popular and well-known types of cryptocurrency. But how do you get Bitcoin? You can either purchase Bitcoin or you can «mine» it.

The mining process involves using dedicated hardware (e.g., ASICs, FPGAs) that use processing power, as well as software applications, to manage these rigs. If you’ve decided to get into cryptocurrency mining, here is some of the best Bitcoin mining software to start with.

Best Bitcoin Mining Software of 2021

• Best Overall:CGMiner
• Best for Customization:BFGMiner
• Best GUI Front-End for Multiple Tools:Easyminer
• Best for Centralized Mining Management:Awesome Miner

Best Overall : CGMiner

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CGMiner has been around for a while and is still going strong. With a plethora of features and active community support, it’s easily the best Bitcoin mining software out there.

Written in C, CGMiner is a cross-platform Bitcoin miner that supports Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and many other platforms. Compatible with both FPGA and ASIC hardware, CGMiner is a command-line application that has full monitoring, fan speed control, and remote interface capabilities.

It comes with a scalable networking scheduler that can scale to hash rate of any size without network delays. CGMiner prevents stale work submission on new blocks and supports multiple pools with intelligent failover mechanisms. There’s a menu for on-the-fly management of most settings and self-detection of new blocks with a mini database for slow/failing longpoll scenarios. Submissions can also be cached during transient network outages.

From Hexfury and BlackArrow to Cointerra and Minion, CGMiner supports a wide variety of ASIC mining hardware.

Best for Customization : BFGMiner

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If you have a thing for tinkering and are looking for a customizable Bitcoin mining software, look no further than BFGMiner. Written in C, it’s a modular FPGA/ASIC miner that has dynamic clocking, monitoring, and remote interface capabilities.

BFGMiner features built-in stratum and getwork proxy server, and its heavily threaded code hands out work retrieval and work submission to separate threads, so that working services are not hindered. The program supports «getblocktemplate» decentralized mining protocol (without proxy), and can preemptively generate work prior to the completion of existing work.

BFGMiner comes with a watchog thread that can restart idle threads but doesn’t crash the machine if they fail to respond. It displays summarized and discrete data statistics of requests, accepts, rejects, hw errors, and efficiency and utility. If there is hardware support, the program can monitor device temperature.

BFGMiner has numerous device drivers for Bitcoin, including Drillbit Thumb and Eight, Twinfury USB stick miner, and Ztex’s FPGA boards. There are also device drivers for scrypt, such as GAW War Machine and ZeusMiner units.

Best GUI Front-End for Multiple Tools : Easyminer

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Different cryptocurrencies have different command line mining tools, and this makes managing them a chore. This is where Easyminer comes into the picture, making things easier.

Easyminer is a graphical, open-source mining software that lets you mine Bitcoin, Litecoin, and other cryptocurrencies. It supports minerd, cudaminer, ccminer, cgminer, and ASIC mining for Bitcoin. Easyminer comes with a dedicated «Moneymaker» mode, which is dedicated to the mining of LTC on its own stratum pool. There’s also a «Solo» mode, which allows users to choose a pool of their own, as well as a custom hash algorithm corresponding to the coin they want to mine. Easyminer uses the NHIL (Network Hardware ID Layer) protocol to provide an extra layer of security for the pool stratum and wallet architecture.

It’s worth mentioning that Easyminer only works on Windows.

Best for Centralized Mining Management : Awesome Miner

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The above-discussed software works great if you just have one mining rig to work with. But if you want to manage multiple mining rigs, and of different types (e.g., ASICs, FPGAs), you need something a bit more robust. Enter Awesome Miner.

Having powerful centralized mining management features, Awesome Miner supports more than 50 mining engines, such as Ccminer, Bminer, XMRig AMD Miner, SRBminer, and SgMiner. It’s also compatible with all popular mining algorithms, such as SHA-256, Scrypt, X11, Ethereum, and Zcash. You can add, switch, and manage pools for multiple miners in a single operation. Awesome Miner’s comprehensive dashboard lets you monitor the status and temperature of all ASIC and FPGA devices from one location. There’s also a built-in C# script engine, which can be used to create customized triggers and actions. You can use the program to set up privileged API access and configure default pools for all Bitmain Antminer ASICs in a single operation.

Awesome Miner works on Windows and Linux, but also offers a web front-end that can be accessed from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.

What Is Bitcoin Mining Software?

Bitcoin mining software is used to keep the decentralized digital cryptocurrency secure. Miners are rewarded with Bitcoin for tracking and securing transactions known as blockchains. Mining is a way to earn bitcoin without paying for it, making a trade for it, or putting any money up front—and software helps you do this.

The Bitcoin mining software works in conjunction with Bitcoin mining hardware, which are specialized computers built to mine cryptocurrency. The software is how you connect your hardware with your mining pool. The mining pool is essentially mining together to find the bitcoin and then splitting the payout with everyone in the pool.

How Does Bitcoin Mining Software Work?

Bitcoin mining software is quite complex and is typically used by those who are tech-savvy, have experience mining cryptocurrency, and have the time and interest to do so. The software’s goal is to help you receive bitcoin as a payout. The Bitcoin mining software is usually a desktop app, and there are many different versions, some for beginners and the rest for more advanced users.

It guides you through the mining process, helps you set up a wallet where you store your bitcoin rewards, and helps you choose a pool where you mine the Bitcoin. The software is typically compatible with other mining devices. Some software can be completely customized, and some can also mine other types of cryptocurrency.

How Much Does Bitcoin Mining Software Cost?

Bitcoin mining software costs vary. Typically, they can range anywhere from having a free version to just a few dollars per month per Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to the software charging 1% to 2% of your hashing power, which is created using an algorithm. Keep in mind that you may also need to purchase Bitcoin hardware and a special wallet.

How Do You Make Money Mining Bitcoin?

You can make money mining Bitcoin by completing blocks of verified transactions added to the blockchain, which secures the Bitcoin transactions. In exchange for mining, you receive Bitcoin as a reward. Overall, hash rates are high, which means that it isn’t easy to profit from mining Bitcoin. It can be a fun hobby, but it can also be difficult to make any substantial profit.

How We Chose the Best Bitcoin Mining Software

We chose the four best Bitcoin mining software options by first reviewing and researching multiple Bitcoin mining software options and then selecting the top contenders. We made these Bitcoin mining software options our top choices based on how easy they were to use, the features and tools they offer, how customizable they are, if you can mine other cryptocurrencies, and more.

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