We Run Full Nodes on 5 Chains. Here's What a Payment Really Costs on Each — Measured, Not Quoted

The short answer: on the day of measurement, a standard stablecoin transfer cost $0.0005 on Solana, $0.001 on Base, $0.002 on BNB Chain, $0.004 on Robinhood Chain, and $0.021 on Ethereum — a 44× spread between the cheapest and the most expensive rail. Every number below comes from the full nodes we operate in production — queried directly, methodology published, no fee-tracker screenshots. This is a living page: we re-measure and update it, and the lastModified date only changes when the data does.

Measurement snapshot: 2026-08-26, 16:20 UTC, all five nodes in production sync. Prices used: ETH $2,449 · BNB $697 · SOL $95.80 (spot at measurement).

The headline table: what a customer pays to pay you

Cost of a single stablecoin transfer (USDC/USDT-class token), per chain:

And for native-coin transfers (21,000 gas on EVM chains; one signature on Solana):

† Base, as an Ethereum L2, adds a small L1 data fee on top of the execution fee shown; in the blob era it is typically well under a tenth of a cent and does not change the ranking.

The methodology (so you can check us)

Numbers you can't audit are marketing, so here is exactly what we did:

• Gas prices are each node's live eth_gasPrice at the measurement moment — the same suggestion a wallet would receive from our infrastructure.
• Block intervals (used in the companion speed article) are computed from the timestamps of the latest 120 blocks on each chain — measured cadence, not documentation values.
• Gas usage assumptions: 21,000 gas for a native transfer (protocol constant); 65,000 gas for a stablecoin (ERC-20) transfer — a deliberately conservative ceiling; typical USDC/USDT transfers land between 40,000 and 65,000 depending on recipient state, so real costs skew lower than our table.
• Solana: the base fee is a protocol constant of 5,000 lamports per signature; a standard SPL transfer needs one. We add the median priority fee observed on-chain at measurement — which was zero: half or more of recent Solana transactions attached no priority fee at all. (An aggressive-priority payment would add fractions of a cent.)
• USD conversion at spot prices listed above. Fee ratios between chains are robust to price moves; absolute dollar figures move with markets, which is one reason this page is a living page.
• Source: our own production full nodes — the same machines that detect your payments. No third-party RPC, no fee-tracker aggregation.

What the numbers actually mean for a merchant

1. On four of five chains, the network fee is noise. Below a quarter of a cent, the customer's transfer fee is invisible next to any payment method's costs — the real merchant-side comparison is the gateway layer, where a flat 1% against cards' 2.9% + $0.30 does the heavy lifting.

2. Ethereum's premium is a routing question, not a verdict. At ~2 cents per transfer, Ethereum is 44× Solana — and still cheaper than a single card fixed fee. The practical read: let customers pay where their funds live; keep Ethereum on for the large invoices where deep liquidity matters and 2 cents is nothing, and let small-ticket traffic default to Solana or Base.

3. The "crypto is expensive" era ended and the news hasn't spread. The $50-gas memories are from a different epoch of Ethereum and a world before L2s and Solana's fee market matured. Today's measured reality: a dollar covers roughly 2,000 stablecoin transfers on Solana. Merchants pricing crypto acceptance on 2021 folklore are declining free money.

4. Zero median priority fee on Solana is the quiet headline. It means the network is running below congestion pricing — payments clear at the 5,000-lamport floor without bidding. Combined with sub-second detection, this is what "feels like tapping a card" costs: about a twentieth of a cent.

How this interacts with what you pay

To be precise about who pays what: the fees above are the customer's side — attached to their transfer, whoever initiates it (exchange withdrawals carry the exchange's own withdrawal fee instead). The merchant's cost on Finality is the flat 1%, carved out on-chain at settlement — network costs of settlement itself are absorbed in it, auditable per sale. No chain choice changes your rate.

FAQ

Why do your numbers differ from fee trackers?

Snapshot timing and assumptions. We publish ours — 65,000-gas stablecoin ceiling, live node gas prices, spot conversion — so differences are explainable rather than mysterious. Most trackers also quote average historical fees; we quote what our nodes would charge right now.

Will you keep this updated?

Yes — that's what a living page means: re-measured on a schedule, lastModified changed only when data changes, per our data-content rules.

Which chain should my checkout default to?

Stablecoins on Solana or Base for small tickets; keep all five on and let the customer choose — multi-chain acceptance costs you nothing extra.

Does the customer actually notice these fees?

Below a cent: never. Ethereum's ~2 cents: occasionally, on principle. What customers notice is confirmation time — the companion piece measures that.

What's the cheapest chain to send crypto on?

In our measurements: Solana, at fractions of a cent per stablecoin transfer — with Base and BNB Chain in the same practical class. "Cheapest" between sub-cent options is a tie for every real purpose.

How much does it cost to send USDT or USDC?

The token doesn't set the price; the chain does — same dollar, different roads. Our measured range: fractions of a cent (Solana) to about two cents (Ethereum) for the identical transfer.

Why is Ethereum gas more expensive than Solana?

Different fee markets: Ethereum prices global blockspace by auction; Solana's fee floor plus local priority markets keeps routine transfers at the minimum. Note the scale, though — today's "expensive" Ethereum is cents, not the $50 folklore.

What is the Solana transaction fee exactly?

The base signature fee is 5,000 lamports — small fractions of a cent — and our measured median priority fee was zero: routine payments clear at the floor without bidding.

Are gas fees higher than card processing fees?

Not in the same universe: the largest network fee we measured (~2 cents) is a fraction of one card transaction's fixed fee alone — the full comparison is merchant-rate versus merchant-rate, where 1% flat meets 2.9% + $0.30.

Do merchants pay gas fees on incoming payments?

No — the transfer fee belongs to the sender's transaction. The merchant side is the gateway's flat 1% at settlement, with settlement's own network costs absorbed in it.

Do these fees spike during congestion?

They can move — that's why this is a living page with published methodology, not a brochure number. The structural point survives any snapshot: four of five chains sit so far below a cent that even a 10× spike stays invisible.

Why isn't TRON in the measurement table?

We measure on our own production nodes, and we run five chains — publishing numbers for infrastructure we don't operate would break the page's one rule. TRON's fee model is covered honestly in the USDT fee guide.

How do you convert gas to dollar costs?

Live node gas price × 65,000-gas stablecoin ceiling × spot token price, rounded conservatively — the same three inputs anyone can check against our nodes with one curl.

Does the payment amount change the fee?

No — transfer fees price computation, not value: moving $10,000 costs the same fraction of a cent as moving $10. That flat-fee physics is what makes micro-tickets viable on fast chains.

The dataset behind this page is one curl away from any of our nodes — and your own rehearsal is nearly as cheap: create a sandbox payment, pick a chain, and watch what settlement actually costs. Measured beats quoted, every time.