Every Solana transaction pays a fee in SOL, whether you're swapping a token, sending an NFT or closing an old account. If you're coming from Ethereum, you'd call it gas. On Solana it has two parts, and neither of them is the rent deposit you get back when an account closes.
How much does a Solana transaction cost?
Every Solana transaction pays a base fee of 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature. An optional priority fee adds the compute unit price, in micro-lamports, times the compute unit limit, divided by 1,000,000; v1 transactions set it in lamports instead. Half the base fee is burned; validators keep the rest.
| Part | How it's calculated | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Base fee | 5,000 lamports for each signature | Half burned, half to the validator that produced the block |
| Priority fee (optional) | Compute unit price × compute unit limit ÷ 1,000,000, rounded up to a whole lamport (v1 transactions: a set lamport amount) | All of it to that validator |
A lamport is the smallest unit of SOL, and 1 SOL is 1,000,000,000 lamports. A simple transfer signed by one wallet, with no priority fee, costs 0.000005 SOL.
The fee comes out of the fee payer's SOL, normally your wallet's, before the transaction runs. It's always paid in SOL, even when the transaction only moves a token. That's why a wallet holding tokens but no SOL can't send anything on its own.
How is the priority fee calculated?
Solana measures the work a transaction does in compute units. Each transaction requests a compute unit limit, and the priority fee is a price per unit, set in micro-lamports (millionths of a lamport). You pay that price on the limit you request, not on the compute the transaction ends up using.
When a transaction doesn't set a limit, Solana gives it 200,000 compute units for each instruction that calls a deployed program and 3,000 for each built-in instruction, such as a System Program transfer, up to 1,400,000 per transaction. Pair a loose limit with a high price and you pay for compute that never runs.
We priced these example messages with the network's own getFeeForMessage method on October 7, 2026:
| Example transaction | Total fee |
|---|---|
| One signature, no priority fee | 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) |
| Two signatures, no priority fee | 10,000 lamports (0.00001 SOL) |
| One signature, 200,000-unit limit at 100,000 micro-lamports | 25,000 lamports (0.000025 SOL) |
| One signature, 50,000-unit limit at 1 micro-lamport | 5,001 lamports (the priority fee rounds up to 1 lamport) |
A higher price makes the current block producer more likely to schedule your transaction ahead of others competing for the same block, which is what you're paying for when the network is busy. Transactions in Solana's newer v1 format skip the multiplication and set the priority fee as a single lamport amount.
How much of each fee is burned?
Half of every base fee is burned, which removes that SOL from supply, and the other half goes to the validator that produced the block. Priority fees aren't burned at all. Since SIMD-0096 activated on February 12, 2025, validators keep all of them.
So the burned share of total fees changes from block to block with how much priority fee each one carries. Take one block: in slot 454,312,761 on October 7, 2026, 1,102 transactions with 1,127 signatures paid 0.014978319 SOL in fees. Exactly half of their base fees, 0.0028175 SOL, was burned, about 19% of everything paid in that block. The validator received the other 0.012160819 SOL.
Do failed transactions still pay a fee?
Yes. Once a transaction is processed in a block, its fee is charged even if an instruction fails and all its changes are reverted. In that same block, 216 of the 1,102 transactions failed and still paid 0.006108245 SOL between them.
A transaction that expires before it reaches a block is different: it's never processed, so nothing is charged, and you can try again. A charged fee is final. Our guide to claiming Solana transaction fees back covers what you can get back instead.
Transaction fees vs rent deposits
When a transaction creates an account and your wallet funds it, such as the token account for a coin you just bought, more SOL leaves your balance than the fee. That extra is a rent deposit: a refundable minimum balance the account must hold to stay on-chain. Closing the account pays out everything it holds, deposit included.
| Transaction fee | Rent deposit | |
|---|---|---|
| Pays for | Processing one transaction | Keeping an account's data on-chain |
| Size | 0.000005 SOL per signature, plus any priority fee | 0.00148844 SOL for a standard token account opened at today's rate, 0.00203928 SOL under the original rate |
| Comes back? | No | Yes, when the account is closed |
Rates were checked October 7, 2026; accounts opened between Solana's two September 2026 rent cuts hold an amount in between, and our rent calculator works out any size. Even at today's lower rate, one empty token account's deposit is worth nearly 300 one-signature base fees. That gap is why closing accounts you no longer use is worth the network fee.
What do network fees cost on Sol Incinerator?
We track the network fees our site's burn and cleanup transactions pay. In the 24 hours to 19:09 UTC on October 7, 2026, more than 63,000 burn and cleanup transactions we recorded paid an average of 0.0000094 SOL each, base fee included. A finished cleanup, which can take more than one transaction, averaged about 0.00002 SOL in network fees altogether. A single empty token account opened at today's rate holds about 75 times that.
Here's how we keep it low:
- Normal is the default. We set the priority fee for you and cap the amount we set at
0.00005 SOLper transaction. - You pay for very little idle compute. We simulate transactions and request only a little more compute than the simulation used. Over those same 24 hours, our transactions used about 95% of the compute they requested.
- You can choose. In Pro Mode, the Settings button on the confirmation screen offers Turbo and Ultra, which use a live network fee estimate at its High and Very High levels under the same cap, and Custom, where you set your own maximum in SOL.
Our own fee is separate from the network's: a 2% base fee on the SOL you recover, with minimum fees for token accounts and NFTs that raise the effective rate on newer accounts, Token-2022 accounts and NFT burns. Before you approve, the preview shows what's expected to reach your wallet after both.
No SOL for the fee?
Gasless Pay is automatic! Select what you want to clean up or burn, and we'll cover the upfront network fee when your transaction qualifies. Our sponsor wallet signs as the fee payer alongside your wallet, so a sponsored transaction carries two signatures and a 10,000-lamport base fee. The Gasless Pay charge comes out of the SOL that transaction recovers, together with the cleanup fee. Our Gasless Pay guide explains when a cleanup qualifies.
Sol Incinerator
Close the accounts you don't need and get their deposits back. See what reaches your wallet after fees before you approve.