Fees
What you pay miners to include your transaction — an open auction for block space.
In plain words
Block space is scarce, and scarce things are bid for. Your fee is what you leave behind: money in, minus money out. Miners take the highest bids first — not the biggest names. Fees price a payment's data size, not its amount: $10 and $10 million can cost the same. Quiet days cost pennies. Busy days are an auction. Patient? Bid low and wait.
Why it matters
- You set the fee. Priority is bought, not begged.
- Cost follows data size, never the amount of money moved.
- Fees are the plan that pays for security once new coins end.
Numbers that matter
- sat/vB — the unit: satoshis per virtual byte of transaction size.
- ~140 vB — the size of a simple one-in, two-out payment.
Not to be confused with
- Percentage fees — card networks take a cut of the amount; Bitcoin charges by size in bytes.
Go deeper
Updated 2026-07-29