Ethereum gas tracker
Gas prices read directly from an Ethereum node with eth_feeHistory — the same data
your wallet uses, with no third-party API in between.
What each action costs right now
| Action | Gas units | Slow | Standard | Fast |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Send ETH A plain transfer. Always exactly 21,000. | 21,000 | $0.02 | $0.04 | $0.2 |
| Send an ERC-20 token Varies by token; USDT is heavier than most. | 65,000 | $0.07 | $0.12 | $0.62 |
| Approve a token One-off per token per contract. | 46,000 | $0.05 | $0.09 | $0.44 |
| Uniswap swap A simple V3 single-hop swap. | 150,000 | $0.16 | $0.29 | $1.42 |
| Add DEX liquidity Two token transfers plus position minting. | 200,000 | $0.21 | $0.38 | $1.89 |
| NFT mint Highly variable — some collections use far more. | 150,000 | $0.16 | $0.29 | $1.42 |
| Bridge to an L2 Deposit side only; the L2 side is cheap. | 120,000 | $0.13 | $0.23 | $1.14 |
Base fee, last 20 blocks
How Ethereum fees work
Since EIP-1559 every transaction pays two things. The base fee is set by the
protocol from how full recent blocks were and is burned, not paid to anyone. The
priority fee, or tip, is what you add on top to get picked up sooner. Your total
is (base fee + tip) × gas units, denominated in gwei, where 1 gwei is one billionth
of an ETH.
The base fee moves up to 12.5% per block, so it can double in under a minute when demand spikes and fall just as fast. Gas units depend only on what the transaction does — a plain ETH transfer is always 21,000, no matter the price.
Paying less
- Use an L2. The same swap on Arbitrum or Base typically costs cents rather than dollars.
- Time it. Weekend mornings UTC are consistently the cheapest window; weekday US afternoons the most expensive.
- Do not over-tip. If nothing breaks when your transaction lands a minute later, the slow tier does the same job.
- Mind unlimited approvals. Re-approving a token every time costs more over a year than one approval — but an unlimited approval is a standing risk. Review them periodically.
Source: public Ethereum RPC (publicnode.com), eth_feeHistory over the last 20 blocks;
ETH price from CoinGecko. Gas-unit figures are typical values, not guarantees — the real number
depends on the contract you call.