NFT gas fees are the transaction costs you pay to the blockchain network — most often Ethereum — to mint, buy, sell, or transfer an NFT. Gas is not a fee charged by the marketplace; it is the payment that compensates the network for processing and securing your transaction. On Ethereum, gas is paid in ETH. In 2025–26 typical mainnet fees have been far lower than during the 2021–22 NFT boom, often well under a dollar for simple actions, but they still jump during hyped mints and market spikes, and NFT actions cost more than plain transfers. This guide explains why gas exists, what makes it spike, and the practical ways to reduce it — from timing your transactions to using Layer 2 networks and lazy minting.
Key takeaways
- Gas fees are network charges (paid in the chain’s coin, e.g. ETH) for processing your transaction — not a marketplace commission.
- Fees rise when the network is congested, because users bid for limited block space.
- The biggest lever is the network: Ethereum mainnet is usually the priciest option, while Layer 2s and chains like Solana are far cheaper.
- Ethereum fees fell sharply in 2024–26 thanks to the Dencun upgrade, higher gas limits and the December 2025 Fusaka upgrade, but spikes still happen.
- Timing transactions for low-activity periods and using lazy minting can meaningfully cut costs.
- Gas is required and non-refundable even if a transaction fails, so understand it before you click confirm.
What are gas fees?
Every action on a blockchain — sending tokens, minting an NFT, accepting an offer — requires computation that nodes across the network must execute and record. “Gas” is the unit that measures how much computational work a transaction needs. You pay for that work with the network’s native currency. On Ethereum that is ETH; on Solana it is SOL.
Demand from a single popular NFT app can push fees up for everyone; our history of CryptoKitties, the game that congested Ethereum shows how.
The total fee is roughly the amount of gas a transaction uses multiplied by the gas price you are willing to pay per unit. Because gas is paid to the network rather than to the platform you are using, you owe it regardless of which marketplace or wallet you transact through. If you are setting up to interact with NFTs, our guides on how to use MetaMask and the broader crypto wallet guide cover the wallet side of this.
Why NFT transactions cost gas
NFT activity tends to be gas-heavy for a few reasons:
Minting is one of the main reasons people pay gas; our guide to how NFT minting works explains what is written to the blockchain when you mint.
- Smart contracts are complex. Minting and trading NFTs run smart-contract code, which uses more gas than a simple coin transfer.
- Multiple steps. Buying often involves separate actions — approving a marketplace to access your tokens, then the purchase itself — each with its own gas cost.
- Demand for block space. Blocks hold a limited amount of computation. When many people transact at once, they effectively bid against each other, pushing the gas price up.
What drives gas prices up and down
Gas prices are dynamic and depend almost entirely on network congestion. A hyped NFT mint, a busy DeFi day, or general market volatility can spike fees within minutes. When the network is quiet, the same transaction can cost a fraction as much. This is why two people doing identical actions can pay very different amounts depending only on timing.
What changed in 2025–26
Older guides (including earlier versions of this one) describe Ethereum NFT gas as costing anywhere from a few dollars to over a hundred. That reflected 2021–22, when mainnet was congested and most activity happened there. Several changes have since lowered typical costs:
- Dencun (March 2024) introduced “blobs,” a cheaper data lane for Layer 2 rollups. This cut L2 fees dramatically and pulled much everyday activity off mainnet.
- Higher gas limits (2025): validators raised Ethereum’s block gas limit in steps during 2025, so each block can hold more transactions. More space means less bidding pressure in normal conditions.
- Fusaka (3 December 2025) added PeerDAS, which lets nodes verify blob data by sampling, and paved the way for staged blob-capacity increases, alongside a default gas limit of about 60 million.
The result: through much of 2025 and 2026 mainnet base fees have sat at low levels, and the Ethereum Foundation has reported average gas prices well below 1 gwei for long stretches. That does not mean gas is always cheap. Popular mints and memecoin frenzies can still push the base fee up many times over for hours, and contract deployment or complex mints use far more gas than a simple transfer. The practical rule is unchanged: check your wallet’s estimate or a gas tracker (such as Etherscan’s) at the moment you transact rather than relying on any figure in an article. For more on NFTs generally, see our NFT hub.
How gas fees are calculated on Ethereum
Since Ethereum’s fee-market upgrade, each transaction’s fee has two main parts:
For transactions beyond NFTs, how to check current Ethereum gas fees in gwei covers what common actions cost and why fees fell after the 2024 upgrades.
- Base fee. A network-set price per unit of gas that rises and falls with demand. The base fee is burned (removed from supply).
- Priority fee (tip). An optional extra you add to incentivize faster inclusion. Higher tips get you processed sooner when the network is busy.
Your total cost is approximately: (base fee + priority fee) × gas used. Wallets usually estimate this for you and offer “slow / normal / fast” speed options that adjust the tip. The trade-off is simple: pay more to confirm faster, or pay less and wait.
How to minimize NFT gas fees
The fastest way to optimize NFT gas costs is to change where and when you transact: use a Layer 2 or low-fee chain, avoid peak congestion, and skip unnecessary approvals. On Ethereum NFTs specifically, timing and speed settings matter most, since you can’t change the network once a collection lives on mainnet. You cannot eliminate gas, but you can often cut it dramatically. Here are the most effective strategies.
Gas is only one part of the cost of trading, and our comparison of NFT platform and royalty fees breaks down the other charges.
1. Time your transactions
Because fees track congestion, transacting during quiet periods saves money. Network activity tends to follow waking hours in major markets, so late-night and weekend periods (in US/European time) are often cheaper. Gas trackers show current and historical fee levels — check one and, for non-urgent actions, simply wait for a lull instead of transacting during a spike or a hyped mint.
2. Use Layer 2 networks
Layer 2 (L2) networks such as optimistic and zero-knowledge rollups process transactions off Ethereum’s main chain and settle back to it in batches, which slashes per-transaction costs. Many NFT marketplaces and collections now operate on L2s such as Base and Arbitrum, where fees are typically a small fraction of mainnet’s, especially since the Dencun and Fusaka upgrades made rollup data cheaper. The trade-off is that you need to bridge assets to the L2 and that the NFT lives on that network; our guide to buying Ethereum helps with funding, and you will typically bridge ETH onto the L2 from there.
3. Consider lower-fee chains
Some blockchains were designed for low fees from the start. Solana, for example, has very cheap transactions, which is part of why it hosts an active NFT scene. Choosing where you transact is the single biggest factor in what you pay — far more impactful than tweaking tips on Ethereum mainnet. Solana fees have a small base fee plus optional priority fees, which can rise during busy launches, so they are not always negligible either. Marketplace choice follows chain choice: since March 2026 Magic Eden supports only Solana, and OpenSea added Solana NFTs in August 2026. Our best NFT marketplaces guide lists current options.
4. Use lazy minting
Lazy minting lets a creator list an NFT without writing it to the blockchain upfront. The NFT is only actually minted (and the gas paid) at the moment of the first sale, often shifting the cost to the buyer or rolling it into the purchase. For creators, this means you can list a collection without paying gas for items that may never sell. Many marketplaces support this for new creators.
5. Batch and plan your actions
Where supported, batching multiple actions into one transaction can be cheaper than doing them separately. Avoid redundant approvals, and revoke old token approvals periodically (both for cost hygiene and security). Planning ahead — rather than reacting during a frenzy — almost always lowers your average fee.
6. Set the right speed for the job
Not every transaction needs to be fast. For a routine transfer, choosing a lower-priority (slower) setting in your wallet reduces the tip you pay, since you are only adjusting how much you bid to be included sooner. Reserve high-priority settings for genuinely time-sensitive moments like a competitive mint, and for everything else let a normal or slow speed do the job. Over many transactions, this single habit can save a noticeable amount.
How to set gas fees for NFT minting
To set gas fees for an NFT mint, open the fee or “Edit gas” option in your wallet before confirming, then choose a speed preset or enter a custom max base fee and priority fee. Leave the gas limit alone unless you know what you are doing. In MetaMask and most Ethereum wallets, the settings work like this:
- Max base fee: the most you are willing to pay per unit of gas for the network’s base fee. You only pay the actual base fee at inclusion, so setting this a little above the current level protects you from a sudden rise without overpaying.
- Priority fee (tip): what you offer validators to include you sooner. For a normal mint, the wallet’s default is usually enough. For a competitive, time-limited mint, a higher tip improves your odds but raises your cost even if the mint sells out and your transaction fails.
- Gas limit: the maximum gas units the transaction may use. The wallet estimates this from the contract. Setting it too low makes the mint fail and you still lose the gas spent, so don’t trim it to save money.
To put the maths in context: a simple NFT mint on Ethereum often uses somewhere around 50,000–150,000 gas units, depending on the contract. At a base fee of 1 gwei, 100,000 gas costs 0.0001 ETH plus any tip. At 20 gwei during a hyped launch, it costs 0.002 ETH, twenty times as much. Multiply by the current ETH price for a dollar figure, and check your wallet’s live estimate, since contracts vary widely.
On Layer 2s and Solana, fee controls are simpler. Wallets usually set the fee automatically, and some let you add a priority fee for busy launches. If a mint page offers several networks, choosing an L2 version will usually save more than any fee tweak on mainnet.
NFT bridging fees on Polygon
Bridging an NFT between Ethereum and Polygon costs Ethereum mainnet gas on the Ethereum side and a small fee in POL on the Polygon side. The expensive part is always the mainnet leg. Polygon PoS is an Ethereum sidechain whose gas token is POL (formerly MATIC), and its own transaction fees are usually a tiny fraction of mainnet’s.
- Ethereum to Polygon: you pay mainnet gas to approve the bridge contract and to deposit the NFT. The NFT then appears on Polygon after the bridge processes it.
- Polygon to Ethereum: you pay a small POL fee to start the withdrawal on Polygon, wait for the next checkpoint to be recorded on Ethereum (typically under a few hours on the PoS bridge), then pay mainnet gas again to claim the NFT on Ethereum.
- Collection support: the official PoS bridge supports standard NFT formats (ERC-721 and ERC-1155), but a collection must be mapped to the bridge for its bridged version to work. Marketplaces may also list only the native version, so check before you move anything valuable.
Often the cheapest option is not to bridge at all. Many collections are native to Polygon, so you can buy them there directly after moving a little POL or USDC onto the network. Our guide on how to bridge to Polygon walks through moving funds, and the same mainnet-gas rule applies to any bridge.
Common gas-fee mistakes to avoid
- Minting into a spike. Hyped mints attract crowds and drive gas up; entering the moment a mint opens can be the most expensive possible time.
- Forgetting failed transactions cost gas. If a transaction reverts (for example, an item sold before your buy confirmed), you can still lose the gas. This is a real risk during fast-moving mints.
- Ignoring the network choice. Paying Ethereum mainnet fees for something you could do on an L2 is the most common avoidable cost.
- Not keeping enough ETH for gas. You need spare ETH in the wallet to cover gas, separate from the price of the NFT itself.
- Approving unlimited token access carelessly. Beyond cost, broad approvals are a security risk; learn the patterns in our guide to crypto scams and revoke what you no longer use.
Gas fees and security go together
Every gas-paying action is a transaction you are signing, so the habits that save money also protect you. Read what you are confirming, be wary of unexpected approval requests, and keep valuable NFTs and the keys that control them secure. For meaningful holdings, pairing your hot wallet with a hardware wallet keeps signing under your control. Understanding gas is part of operating safely in the wider DeFi and Web3 environment, where you, not a company, authorize every move.
FAQ
Why are NFT gas fees so high on Ethereum?
Ethereum has limited block space, so when many people transact at once they effectively bid against each other, pushing the gas price up. NFT actions are also computationally heavy because they run smart-contract code and often involve multiple steps like approvals plus the purchase. Fees are much lower in 2025–26 than at the 2021–22 peak, thanks to Layer 2 adoption, higher gas limits and upgrades like Dencun and Fusaka. But during hyped mints or volatile markets, congestion can still multiply the base fee for hours, so check a gas tracker before you act.
Can I avoid gas fees entirely?
Not on most public blockchains — gas is how the network is paid to process and secure transactions. You can, however, reduce it sharply by using Layer 2 networks or low-fee chains like Solana, timing transactions for quiet periods, and using lazy minting so the NFT is only minted on its first sale. Creators in particular can avoid upfront gas with lazy minting.
Who receives NFT gas fees?
Gas fees go to the network, not the marketplace. On Ethereum, the base-fee portion is burned (permanently removed from supply), while the priority fee (tip) goes to validators who include your transaction in a block. This is separate from any marketplace commission or creator royalty, which are charged on top of gas by the platform and the collection respectively.
Do I pay gas if my transaction fails?
Often yes. If a transaction is submitted and then reverts — for example, because an item was bought by someone else before yours confirmed — the network still did work to process the attempt, so the gas can be consumed and is non-refundable. This is a real risk during competitive mints, which is one reason to avoid transacting into peak congestion.
Crypto is volatile and risky; this is education, not financial advice. Do your own research.
