I was comparing several Bitcoin
BTC mining pools recently and noticed that many miners still choose pools mainly by brand name, while actual profitability can vary quite a bit.
For example:
Headframe - FPPS - 0.9%
Trustpool - PPS+ - 1.0%
EMCD - FPPS+ - 4.0%
ViaBTC - PPS+ - 4.0%
AntPool - FPPS+ - 4.0%
This made me wonder:
When choosing a pool in 2026, what matters most to you?
- Pool fee?
- FPPS vs PPS+ vs PPLNS?
- Uptime?
- Daily payouts?
- Actual sat/PH/day profitability?
I'm curious what experienced miners prioritize today.
Pool size is huge so headframe at 76ph is a no go.
76 ph is 76000 th at 3.2 cents a th it means about 2400 usd a day a block is 3 x 66.7= 200k
Thus 200,000/2400= 83 days a block with normal luck
I have 2.5ph it cost me 2400 a month to run it.
Headframe means with normal luck I have to wait 83 days
With 2x bad luck I have to wait 166 days.
So I am not going to run 2.5ph with them.
I need my pool to make at least a block a week on average not a block in 12 weeks on average
That's true if you're looking at pool size alone.
But I think payout model matters just as much. On FPPS pools, miners are not waiting for "their" block the same way they would on a small PPLNS or solo pool.
What surprised me recently is that some smaller pools can remain competitive on actual profitability despite having a much lower network share.
I started comparing pools by real profitability rather than just pool size and found some interesting differences:
https://hashradar.live/For large farms I would probably look at uptime, payout consistency and actual sat/PH/day first, then pool size second.
