Is this fee reasonable on Electrum?

[UserU]

I'm planning to send BTC from Electrum to my cold wallet but for some reason, it displays the "The fee for this transaction seems unusually high (13%+ of amount)" warning.

It's around 16 bucks of but fee comes at almost 2. Fee is set to 1 sat/ byte with 2201 bytes based on Feerate.

While on mempool, it costs less than 20 cents for high-priority transactions.


Was wondering if this is expected/ reasonable or is there another more cost-effective way?

[Charles-Tim]

It's around 16 bucks of but fee comes at almost 2. Fee is set to 1 sat/ byte with 2201 bytes based on Feerate.

But you are sending to just one bitcoin address, that means your transaction has many inputs. The transaction that supposed to be around 110 to 192.5 bytes with 1 input and 1 output is having 2201 bytes. The input is too high.

Even if it has 2 outputs (I mean change address as the second output), the bytes will still be significantly low but only slightly higher than 1 output.

[Hatchy]

It's around 16 bucks of but fee comes at almost 2. Fee is set to 1 sat/ byte with 2201 bytes based on Feerate.

Have you tried changing it from fee rate to memepool? I just checked my electrum and saw that the fee when I switch from fee rate to memepool is lesser..so give it a try and let's see.. but like Charles-Tim said it might be as a result of the number of inputs..

[UserU]

But you are sending to just one bitcoin address, that means your transaction has many inputs. The transaction that supposed to be around 110 to 192.5 bytes with 1 input and 1 output is having 2201 bytes. The input is too high.

Ah. Now you mentioned it, I'm seeing 12 inputs there. Guess I'll have to somewhat consolidate them?

Have you tried changing it from fee rate to memepool? I just checked my electrum and saw that the fee when I switch from fee rate to memepool is lesser..so give it a try and let's see.. but like Charles-Tim said it might be as a result of the number of inputs..

Yup, I've checked mempool and ETA as well but they're giving the same fee rate. Furthest is 10 Mb from tip @ USD 1.97, and nearest is 0.1 @ USD 7.87.

Charles is right about the inputs. Seeing 12 which is definitely excessive.

[Charles-Tim]

Have you tried changing it from fee rate to memepool? I just checked my electrum and saw that the fee when I switch from fee rate to memepool is lesser..so give it a try and let's see.. but like Charles-Tim said it might be as a result of the number of inputs..

UserU posted that he set the fee to 1 sat/byte, setting it to menpool, ETA or Static does not mean anything, the fee rate for 1 sat/vbyte will be the fee rate for 1 sat/vbyte regardless of where you set it.

Ah. Now you mentioned it, I'm seeing 12 inputs there. Guess I'll have to somewhat consolidate them?

Yes. If you are not in a hurry, you can try 0.3 sat/vbyte and wait until it confirmed.

[Frankolala]

Too many input will cost you more funds when making a transaction, this is why you don't need to have too many small small input because your transaction fee depends on the size of your transaction. Initially, I thought that the fee options also affects the transaction fee but I'm surprised that it doesn't.

You can adjust your transaction fee from the fee slider by moving it to the left to reduce the fee charged for that transaction because even if you have many small small input, you don't need to pay up to $16 since the mempool isn't congested. You should also check the fee options to see if it's in ETA, change it to mempool because it will adjust the fee in line with that of mempool.space.

Why are you not reading what people are posting, Bitcointalk was better than this before. Do not just come to this thread to spam.

I have posted before seen your reply..

[Cookdata]

But you are sending to just one bitcoin address, that means your transaction has many inputs. The transaction that supposed to be around 110 to 192.5 bytes with 1 input and 1 output is having 2201 bytes. The input is too high.

Ah. Now you mentioned it, I'm seeing 12 inputs there. Guess I'll have to somewhat consolidate them?

12 inputs with total byte of 2201 vbytes is considerable that the inputs are segwit else it will be bigger than this size.

Sending the inputs once to your cold wallet will consolidate them as a single output.
I think 1 sat/vbyte is fair to consolidate them now but if you want to go sub 1 sat fee rate, you will have to connect your electrum server to servers like electrum.loyce.club, there are more alternatives servers that accept less than 1 sats/vbyte here

[Charles-Tim]

Sending the inputs once to your cold wallet will consolidate them as a single output.
I think 1 sat/vbyte is fair to consolidate them now but if you want to go sub 1 sat fee rate, you will have to connect your electrum server to servers like electrum.loyce.club, there are more alternatives servers that accept less than 1 sats/vbyte here

He can use 0.3 sat/vbyte which is more than 3 times less than 1 sat/vbyte.

According to what I found out here, 0.3 sat/vbyte will be very good: https://mempool.jhoenicke.de/#BTC,24h,weight

With 0.3 sat/vbyte, the fee will reduce to around $4.8 which I think is better.

To use a server that will accept less than 1 sat/vbyte is not hard to set up.

I have used 0.3 sat/vbyte countless number of time on Electrum, Sparrow and Bluewallet.

[Findingnemo]

Sending the inputs once to your cold wallet will consolidate them as a single output.
I think 1 sat/vbyte is fair to consolidate them now but if you want to go sub 1 sat fee rate, you will have to connect your electrum server to servers like electrum.loyce.club, there are more alternatives servers that accept less than 1 sats/vbyte here

He can use 0.3 sat/vbyte which is more than 3 times less than 1 sat/vbyte.

According to what I found out here, 0.3 sat/vbyte will be very good: https://mempool.jhoenicke.de/#BTC,24h,weight

With 0.3 sat/vbyte, the fee will reduce to around $4.8 which I think is better.

To use a server that will accept less than 1 sat/vbyte is not hard to set up.

I have used 0.3 sat/vbyte countless number of time on Electrum, Sparrow and Bluewallet.

Adding to that he can also check out the LoyceV's 0.1 sat/vbyte Electrum Server Adventure where links of other threads also present about how to use electrum to broadcast TXs with less than 1sat/vb.

As I checked TXs with 0.27sat/vb are included in blocks so he can use 0.3sat/vb to consolidate the inputs or just send directly to the address he wants too that will reduce the fee atleast 3x cheaper.

[LoyceV]

It's around 16 bucks

I'm seeing 12 inputs there.

How did you get to this situation where you have 12 inputs worth about $16 in total? That means they're 1500 sat on average, which is close to dust. In the future, it's best to avoid such payments on-chain. I'd even avoid the amount after consolidation: 0.0001x BTC will be dust the moment fees go up a bit. For now, I'd send them with a very low fee, say 0.18 sat/vbyte, assuming you're not in a hurry to get it confirmed.

[Pmalek]

1 sat/vByte is no longer the lowest fee rate that you have to pay for your transaction to be broadcast by nodes. You can pay as low as 0.1 sat/vByte. Since you are making the transaction to yourself and consolidating your inputs, the transaction shouldn't have a high priority. There is no need to overpay on the mining fees. I once had a consolidation transaction sit in the mempools for 10 days before it finally got confirmed.

Check out How to make a bitcoin transaction and pay less than 1 sat/vByte if you don't know how to make such transactions with Electrum. The last few blocks, for example, included transactions that paid only 0.26 sats/vByte.

[Charles-Tim]

For now, I'd send them with a very low fee, say 0.18 sat/vbyte, assuming you're not in a hurry to get it confirmed.

What fee rate has been the lowest since some nodes have been accepting less than 1 sat/vbyte transactions?

1 sat/vByte is no longer the lowest fee rate that you have to pay for your transaction to be broadcast by nodes. You can pay as low as 0.1 sat/vByte.

I think this is not advisable because the mempool has not become so less congested down to 0.1 sat/vbyte, but 0.2 sat/vbyte transactions has been confirmed.

For faster confirmation, 0.3 sat/vbyte is the best fee rate.

[pooya87]

What fee rate has been the lowest since some nodes have been accepting less than 1 sat/vbyte transactions?

0.1 sat/vb is the lowest fee rate that is being mined these days so OP is overpaying by at most 10x for his transaction if this is a consolidation attempt.

I think this is not advisable because the mempool has not become so less congested down to 0.1 sat/vbyte, but 0.2 sat/vbyte transactions has been confirmed.

For faster confirmation, 0.3 sat/vbyte is the best fee rate.

It's more complicated than that.
The main problem is that most people are not yet aware that they can set the fee rate below 1 sat/vb and most wallets don't even support that, at least not by default (like Electrum that you have to manually enter something in the console to be able to do it). So even with a small traffic where blocks are almost full, the majority would be paying 1 sat/vb as the lowest fee rate. Therefore the competition is already taking place at a higher rate!

However, over the past few months that these low rates became possible the mempool hasn't been that congested to make them impossible. So even when people are competing with rates above 1 sat/vb, it is possible to set the rate to a lower value even at 0.1 which I've seen being confirmed. Like this block.

As for what rate to choose, the numbers (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 1+) depend on the situation. I wouldn't give any exact numbers like you did. You must always check the mempool to see how things are. Both https://mempool.space/ and https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,weight work although the first one is more user friendly since it gives numbers but you have to analyze the chart yourself if you use the second site.
For example right now forget about anything lower than 1 since the rate is currently above 2.5 sat/vbyte.

[nc50lc]

Was wondering if this is expected/ reasonable or is there another more cost-effective way?

Depends on the situation:
Does most/all of those 12 inputs are displayed with the same address?
Does the inputs' total amount is significantly greater than your send amount?
Are one or two of the inputs' amount is enough to send to your recipient?

I asked because Electrum is designed to spend all of the UTXO that's associated with the same address even if the total amount is too high for the output.

In that specific case (most of the 12 inputs are of the same address), you can use "coin-control" to select which UTXO to spend. (tutorial)
Select the one(s) with the right amount to cover for the send amount and the fee.
Selecting one or three should significantly reduce the calculated absolute fee.

Ah. Now you mentioned it, I'm seeing 12 inputs there. Guess I'll have to somewhat consolidate them?

If you consolidate them now but intends to send to that transaction's recipient right after,
you'll just create another transaction is "bundled" with your consolidation transaction since it'll spend your consolidation transaction's output.
That wont be efficient and will just result with overall larger total size of the bundled txns, thus more fee.

If it's not a rush transaction, just send it with their suggested lower fee (using the sub1sat/vB trick) spending all of those 12 inputs in that transaction to consolidate it while sending to you intended recipient.

[Pmalek]

I think this is not advisable because the mempool has not become so less congested down to 0.1 sat/vbyte, but 0.2 sat/vbyte transactions has been confirmed.

I did not suggest to him to broadcast transactions paying 0.1 sats/vByte. I only said that it was technically possible. One should never make any bitcoin transaction without a prior check on the current network conditions in order to understand what fee rate to set, considering the priority of their transaction. A few days ago I had a 0.22 sats/vByte transaction confirm within an hour.

[LoyceV]

What fee rate has been the lowest since some nodes have been accepting less than 1 sat/vbyte transactions?

I've seen 0.15 sat/vbyte get confirmed, but a couple of months ago I waited about a month to get 0.22 sat/vbyte confirmed. It varies

For faster confirmation, 0.3 sat/vbyte is the best fee rate.

"Fast" shouldn't really be a priority when sending dust to cold storage

even at 0.1 which I've seen being confirmed. Like this block.

I don't see it. This looks like CPFP was used to increase the (effective) fee.

[hosemary]

What fee rate has been the lowest since some nodes have been accepting less than 1 sat/vbyte transactions?

I've seen 0.15 sat/vbyte get confirmed, but a couple of months ago I waited about a month to get 0.22 sat/vbyte confirmed. It varies

On December 26, 2025, many transactions were confirmed with the fee rate of 0.11-0.12 sat/vbyte.
I'm not sure, but this may be the lowest fee rate at which miners have included transactions in the blockchain normally so far.

For example, see block number 929,473.