ETH Gas Price Today

How today's gas price is actually set

Since EIP-1559 (the London upgrade, August 2021), the Gwei number you see today isn't picked by a marketplace of bidders — it's set algorithmically by the protocol itself. Every block has a target size of 15 million gas and a hard cap of 30 million. The network looks at how full the previous block was and adjusts the base fee for the next one:

• Block over 50% full → base fee rises by up to 12.5% for the next block.
• Block under 50% full → base fee falls by up to 12.5%.

That ±12.5%-per-block feedback loop is why gas can't spike 10x in one block but can climb fast over a couple of minutes when demand is sustained — and why it collapses just as quickly once a mint or sell-off ends. The base fee is burned (removed from supply, not paid to anyone). On top of it you add a priority fee — a tip to the validator, usually 1-2 Gwei, which is the only part that's a genuine bid for faster inclusion. So:

total fee = (base fee + priority fee) × gas units used

What that costs today — by transaction

The Gwei number is only half the bill. The other half is how many gas units your transaction burns, which is fixed by what the transaction does. Here's the math at three gas levels — a quiet night (5 Gwei), a normal day (20 Gwei), and a busy mint hour (80 Gwei) — assuming ETH ≈ $3,000. Scale every number linearly with the live ETH price in the card above.

The takeaway: at the same Gwei, a Uniswap swap costs ~7x an ETH transfer because it burns ~7x the gas units. Watching the Gwei number alone undersells how much a complex transaction will cost. (ERC-20 gas varies by token — a generic transfer lands around 65,000, while USDC is ~55,000 and USDT ~63,000.) To convert any live figure yourself, use the Gwei-to-USD calculator.

Why your wallet charges more than the number above

People regularly see a scary fee estimate in MetaMask that's well above today's quoted Gwei and assume the tracker is wrong. It usually isn't. Four things sit between the headline gas price and your final bill:

• The max fee buffer. Your wallet sets a max fee well above the current base fee so the transaction still goes through if gas rises before it's mined. You're shown the worst case — but you only pay the actual base fee at inclusion, and the difference is refunded.
• Approvals are a second transaction. Before your first swap of a given token, you pay a separate ERC-20 approve transaction. That's two fees on your first interaction, not one.
• Failed transactions still cost gas. If a swap reverts (slippage, a sold-out mint, a front-run), you pay for every gas unit burned up to the revert — with no refund. This is the one case where you pay real money for nothing.
• Gas limit ≠ gas used. Wallets pad the gas limit as a safety margin. Unused units are refunded on a successful transaction, so the estimate again overstates the real cost.

Net effect: for successful transactions you almost always pay less than the wallet estimate. For failed ones you can pay the full estimate for zero result — which is why checking the live price before confirming during a volatile window genuinely matters. See the failed transaction cost estimator for what a revert would cost you right now.

When are gas fees lowest today?

The 24-hour heatmap above shows today's low and high windows. In general, expect the cheapest stretches at:

• • Late night UTC (US east coast asleep, EU closed)
• • Early morning UTC on weekdays
• • Most of Saturday and Sunday
• • Right after a congestion spike — base fee drops ~12.5% per block until demand clears

For tomorrow and the rest of the week, see the gas fee forecast or browse cheap gas times by day.

How to reduce your gas fee today

• Match the tier to the urgency. Standard is fine for most transactions — the priority fee is the only part that buys speed.
• Wait for the low band. The heatmap above flags it. A few hours can mean 50% off.
• Move to a Layer 2. Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base run cents-per-tx instead of dollars — see all four in the L2 fees comparison.
• Skip mint days. Major NFT mints push the base fee far above today's normal range within minutes.
• Get notified instead of watching. Set a gas alert at your target Gwei.

Full breakdown: how to reduce gas fees on Ethereum.

Frequently asked questions