Ethereum Gas Cost Calculator

Ethereum gas transaction cost

The total cost of any Ethereum transaction comes down to gas_fee = gas_used × gas_price, where gas_used depends on how complex the contract is and gas_price is given in gwei. A few typical figures: a plain ETH transfer is 21,000 gas, an ERC-20 transfer runs about 50,000, a Uniswap swap around 150,000, an NFT mint near 300,000, and heavier DeFi interactions can hit 500k and beyond. Example: 150,000 gas at 30 gwei works out to 0.0045 ETH, or roughly US$15.75 with ETH at US$3,500. Since EIP-1559, the price splits into a base fee (burned, set by the protocol) and a priority fee (the tip that goes to the validator). Only that tip is yours to adjust if you want faster inclusion.

Applications

Use it to estimate cost up front in DeFi when you're weighing whether a small swap still pays off after fees, to plan NFT mints during a launch, or to choose between Mainnet and Layer 2 (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync), which cut fees by 10–100x. It also helps with budgeting airdrops and bridge costs, or with on-chain arbitrage where the margin has to cover gas. For live prices, check Etherscan Gas Tracker, Blocknative or ETH Gas Station.

FAQ

Why does gas_used vary so much? Every EVM opcode has a fixed price. Writing to storage (SSTORE) costs about 20,000 gas, SLOAD around 2,100, and an ADD just 3. Complex contracts run through thousands of opcodes, so it adds up fast.

Why is L2 so much cheaper? Rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism and Base bundle hundreds of transactions and post only a compressed proof back to L1, so the cost gets spread across all of them.

What if I set the gas limit too low? The transaction reverts with an "out of gas" error, and you still pay for whatever gas it burned getting there. Leave yourself a safety margin.

When is gas cheapest? During off-peak hours such as early morning UTC, on weekends with no live launches, and whenever DeFi activity is quiet.