Solana fees explained: the base fee, priority fees and failed transactions
A Solana transaction costs 0.000005 SOL per signature, plus an optional priority fee to get in faster during busy times. New accounts also need rent, which comes back later. A transaction that lands but fails still pays its fee.
The base fee
Every Solana transaction pays a base fee of 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature. Most transactions have one signature, so most cost 0.000005 SOL. A transaction signed by three wallets pays three times that.
The fee is paid by the transaction’s fee payer, usually the wallet sending, but any wallet that signs can pay for the others.
Priority fees
When the network is busy, validators fill blocks with the transactions that pay the most per unit of work. A priority fee is that extra payment:
priority fee = compute units requested × price per compute unitCompute units measure the work a transaction asks for: a plain SOL transfer needs a few hundred, a swap through several pools can need hundreds of thousands. The price is set in micro-lamports (millionths of a lamport) per unit. Wallets set it for you, often with a slow, normal and fast choice.
| Transaction | Base fee | A typical priority fee on a busy day |
|---|---|---|
| Send SOL | 0.000005 SOL | Often none needed |
| Send a coin | 0.000005 SOL | Small |
| Swap | 0.000005 SOL | Larger; it does more work |
Rent is not a fee
A transaction that creates a new account, such as a token account the first time you receive a coin, also moves rent into that account: 0.00149 SOL for a token account today. It is a deposit, not a fee, and it comes back when the account closes. See Solana rent explained.
Why transactions fail
| Message or cause | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Blockhash expired / block height exceeded | It was not picked up in time, about a minute | Send it again, with a higher priority fee if busy |
| Insufficient funds | Not enough SOL for the fee, or a send that would leave less than the 0.00065 SOL minimum | Leave the minimum, or send everything to zero |
| Slippage tolerance exceeded | The price moved before the swap landed | Retry, or allow a little more slippage |
| Simulation failed | The wallet’s test run showed it would fail | Read the reason before forcing it |
| Exceeded compute units | It needed more work than it asked for | Retry; the wallet should ask for more |
A transaction that never lands costs nothing. One that lands and then fails still pays its fees, because validators did the work.
Fees apps add
The network fee is tiny next to what some apps charge on top for swaps, from 0% to about 1%. See Solana swap fees compared. Sending SOL costs only the network fee in every major wallet.
Questions
How much does it cost to send SOL?
0.000005 SOL for a normal send, plus a priority fee if you add one.
Why did I pay a fee for a failed transaction?
It landed on chain and then failed, so the network did the work. Transactions that never land cost nothing.
What is a compute unit?
A measure of the work a transaction asks validators to do. Priority fees are priced per compute unit.
Sources
Raven shows every fee and every lamport of rent in the review before you sign.
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