Gas Fee Estimator
Track live, real-time blockchain gas fees for Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon networks.
Gas fees are the price of getting your transaction included in a block — and on Ethereum they can swing from a couple of dollars to over a hundred within the same hour. This tracker shows you live gas prices across Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Polygon, so you can time your transactions instead of overpaying by habit.
How gas actually works
Every operation on a blockchain costs a fixed amount of computational work, measured in gas units. A simple ETH transfer always costs exactly 21,000 gas. A token swap might cost 150,000. That part never changes. What changes is the gas price — how much you pay per unit, denominated in Gwei (one billionth of an ETH). This is set by an auction. When the network is busy, people bid higher to get in sooner, and prices spike. Your total fee is gas units multiplied by gas price. You cannot reduce the gas units a transaction needs, but you can absolutely choose when to send it — and that is where the savings are.
The formula
Transaction Fee = Gas Units × Gas Price (Gwei) ÷ 1,000,000,000
Standard transfer: 21,000 gas
Token swap: ~150,000 gas
NFT mint: ~85,000 gas
Example: 21,000 × 30 Gwei ÷ 1e9 = 0.00063 ETHSince the London upgrade (EIP-1559), Ethereum splits the gas price into a base fee that is burned and a priority tip that goes to validators. The base fee adjusts automatically based on network congestion.
Paying less for gas
- 1Weekends and early UTC mornings are consistently cheaper on Ethereum. US business hours are consistently the worst. The difference is frequently 3× or more.
- 2For anything that is not urgent, set a low gas price and wait. Your transaction will sit in the mempool until the base fee drops to your level, then confirm.
- 3Polygon and BNB Smart Chain cost pennies for the same operations. If your activity does not need to be on Ethereum mainnet, it probably should not be.
- 4Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum and Base offer Ethereum's security at a fraction of the cost. For most DeFi activity, they are the obvious choice now.
- 5Batch your operations. Approving a token and swapping it are two transactions. Some interfaces let you combine steps — every transaction avoided is gas saved.
Frequently asked questions
What is Gwei?
Gwei is a denomination of ETH, the same way a cent is a denomination of a dollar. One Gwei is one billionth of an ETH. Gas prices are quoted in Gwei because the numbers would be unreadable otherwise — 30 Gwei is easier than 0.00000003 ETH.
Why did my transaction fail but still cost gas?
Because validators performed the computation regardless of the outcome. A failed transaction still consumed real network resources, so the gas is still charged. Failures usually come from slippage limits being exceeded or an insufficient gas limit.
What is the difference between gas limit and gas price?
The gas limit is the maximum units you authorise for the transaction — a safety cap. The gas price is what you pay per unit. Raise the price to confirm faster; raise the limit only if a transaction fails with an 'out of gas' error.
Are these prices live?
Yes. They refresh automatically every 15 seconds from live network data. Gas prices move fast, so what you see is genuinely current, not a cached estimate from an hour ago.
Why is BNB Chain so much cheaper than Ethereum?
Fewer validators and a more centralized architecture mean lower costs and higher throughput. That is a real trade-off, not free lunch — you are accepting weaker decentralization guarantees in exchange for cheaper transactions.