Transaction fees

[Cricktor]

..., you can send it when the mempool is almost empty ^{but lately it has been in that state most of the time anyway}  .

That's not quite true that mempools have been almost empty lately. There are a lot of very low fee rate (mostly spam crap) transactions worth a few dozens of full blocks, see below.



But of course, if you place your transaction fee rate bid smartly above all the crap, you can get your transaction confirmed still with a very modest transaction fee. From the perspective of starting e.g. from 1sat/vByte it looks more like you said (many spikes not rising above 1vMByte)...



Below is the current pending blocks according to mempool.space. If I'm not much in a rush with my transaction, aiming for a confirmation within about 0.5-1h or so, I would use a transaction fee of 0.35-0.40sat/vB.

[dkbit98]

Is it true you have to wait until exactly the right to time to send the transaction to save on the fee.  Can anyone please help me?

No it's not true.
Most wallets already have estimated fees for every transaction, but you can also check them yourself on mempool.space website.
Bitcoin transaction fees have been very low for some time, and they can increase only if mempool gets full again.
CUrent averge fees are 0.8 sat/vB, that is around $0.08, and you can increase it slightly if you want faster transaction confirmation.

[hd49728]

Is it true you have to wait until exactly the right to time to send the transaction to save on the fee.  Can anyone please help me?

No it's not true.
Most wallets already have estimated fees for every transaction, but you can also check them yourself on mempool.space website.
Bitcoin transaction fees have been very low for some time, and they can increase only if mempool gets full again.
CUrent averge fees are 0.8 sat/vB, that is around $0.08, and you can increase it slightly if you want faster transaction confirmation.

For quick overview, this website can help.
https://whatthefee.io/

For more details, it's recommended to use other websites.
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,fee
https://mempool.space/graphs/mempool#24h