Measured: one transfer on 10 networks (BTC 0.12 USD, USDT on Tron 2.24 USD, Solana 0.0005 USD)

[woopmedia]

We took a single snapshot of transfer costs on 19 October 2026 at 07:07 UTC, straight from public endpoints (mempool.space for BTC, litecoinspace.org for LTC, eth_feeHistory and eth_estimateGas for EVM chains, Solana RPC, TronGrid, XRPL).

BTC payment, next block: about $0.12
LTC: about $0.00008
ETH: about $0.0024; USDT on Ethereum about $0.0054
USDT on Tron, no staked energy: about $2.24
USDT on Solana: about $0.0005
XRP: about $0.000013

One snapshot, not an average; BTC, ETH and SOL priority fees move a lot within an hour. Script and raw CSV are open (Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23473848).

Write-up: https://cryptsy.com/crypto-transfer-fees/

[terminalfees]

Good snapshot, thanks for including the source endpoints. One caveat for anyone reading the Solana figure: the 0.0005 USD is only the network fee. If you trade through a Telegram bot or web terminal, the platform usually adds its own fee on top (often around 1% of the trade size, depending on the tool and fee tier), plus priority fees/tips when the chain is busy. On a 1,000 USD swap that is roughly 10 USD, which dwarfs the base fee. So the cheapest chain is not automatically the cheapest way to trade on it.

[pooya87]

BTC payment, next block: about $0.12

The transaction fees have been very low for a long time now on bitcoin and over the past week they have fallen to as low as 0.14 sat/vb.

So a normal bitcoin transaction with 1 input and 2 outputs which is 141 vbytes paying 0.2 sat/vb would pay 0.00000029BTC (29 satoshis) fee which is $0.024 at current price. It doesn't get any lower than that (29 satoshis)!!!

The reason why fees on shitcoin networks is lower is because their prices are extremely lower.
For example a shitcoin like XRP is only worth $1.34.
If we compute a ratio compared to bitcoin we get some interesting numbers:
XRP price / BTC price = $1.34 / $82920 = 0.000016
XRP fee / BTC fee = $0.000013 / $0.024 = 0.0005

XRP fee according to you (what the fee is in reality): $0.000013
XRP fee using price ratio (what fee should have been): $0.000000384

That's more than 33x higher!

[zasad@]

In my opinion, Ethereum, Solana, and TRON shouldn't be called shitcoins, they are altcoins.
TRON is popular in Asia, for some reason, the Chinese prefer the TRON ecosystem, though some are starting to adopt the BNB Smart Chain or Ethereum instead.
Most payments are made using stablecoins, so comparing the transaction fees of Bitcoin and Litecoin isn't particularly relevant; meanwhile, Ethereum, Solana, and TRON can process payments in under a minute.

[TastyChillySauce00]

If somebody told me back in 2021 that in the future Bitcoin would cost cheaper than tron for transfer, i'm going to have a hard time believing it, after all the Tron was initially created with a vision to become cheaper, faster alternative to existing blockchain which is ethereum and bitcoin, currently it's the opposite.

In my opinion, Ethereum, Solana, and TRON shouldn't be called shitcoins, they are altcoins.
TRON is popular in Asia, for some reason, the Chinese prefer the TRON ecosystem, though some are starting to adopt the BNB Smart Chain or Ethereum instead.
Most payments are made using stablecoins, so comparing the transaction fees of Bitcoin and Litecoin isn't particularly relevant; meanwhile, Ethereum, Solana, and TRON can process payments in under a minute.

Yep, TRON have very active local community and actively participated in events and doing non stop expansion which I believe is the reason it's so popular in Asia. There are actually so many companies in the region that flew under the radar never being heard of outside the continent that actually settled billions.

[internetional]

The transaction fees have been very low for a long time now on bitcoin and over the past week they have fallen to as low as 0.14 sat/vb.

So a normal bitcoin transaction with 1 input and 2 outputs which is 141 vbytes paying 0.2 sat/vb would pay 0.00000029BTC (29 satoshis) fee which is $0.024 at current price. It doesn't get any lower than that (29 satoshis)!!!

The reason why fees on shitcoin networks is lower is because their prices are extremely lower.
For example a shitcoin like XRP is only worth $1.34.
If we compute a ratio compared to bitcoin we get some interesting numbers:
XRP price / BTC price = $1.34 / $82920 = 0.000016
XRP fee / BTC fee = $0.000013 / $0.024 = 0.0005

XRP fee according to you (what the fee is in reality): $0.000013
XRP fee using price ratio (what fee should have been): $0.000000384

That's more than 33x higher!

This approach ignores a fundamental difference between Bitcoin and XRP: the number of coins in circulation.

Instead of comparing transaction fees to the price of a single coin, let's compare them to the total market value of all coins in circulation (market capitalization).

Using approximate figures for October 21, 2026:

Metric	Bitcoin	XRP
Circulating supply	20.1 million	63.13 billion
Market capitalization	$1.70 trillion	$87.38 billion
Transaction fee	$0.024	$0.000013

Now, let's calculate the transaction fee divided by market capitalization.

Bitcoin:

Code:

0.024 / 1,700,000,000,000 = 1.41 × 10^-14

XRP:

Code:

0.000013 / 87,380,000,000 = 1.49 × 10^-16

Comparing the two ratios:

Code:

(1.49 × 10^-16) / (1.41 × 10^-14) = 0.0105

That means XRP transaction fee relative to its market capitalization is only about 1.05% of Bitcoin equivalent ratio. In other words, XRP relative transaction fee is approximately 95 times lower, not 33 times higher as suggested.

What if we use the Bitcoin fee from the OP? It reports a Bitcoin transaction fee of $0.12 rather than $0.024.

Using that figure:

Code:

(0.000013 / 87,380,000,000) / (0.12 / 1,700,000,000,000) = 0.00211

This means XRP transaction fee relative to market capitalization is approximately 475 times lower than Bitcoin transaction fee.

Of course, market capitalization does not directly determine transaction fees, and this ratio is not a measure of network efficiency. However, comparing fees with the price of a single coin is equally problematic because it ignores the enormous difference in circulating supply.

[JeromeTash]

TRON is popular in Asia, for some reason, the Chinese prefer the TRON ecosystem, though some are starting to adopt the BNB Smart Chain or Ethereum instead.

Let me talk just about TRON. The only thing I know that made that network still alive was/is USDT, but that might die down with time since the network fee is higher than it was initially intended for. TRON had many competitors like EOS, but EOS lost it out because people found no point in moving EOS coins, just like a majority find no point in transacting in TRX. Without USDT, not so many people would be using the network today

[o48o]

In my opinion, Ethereum, Solana, and TRON shouldn't be called shitcoins, they are altcoins.
TRON is popular in Asia, for some reason, the Chinese prefer the TRON ecosystem, though some are starting to adopt the BNB Smart Chain or Ethereum instead.
Most payments are made using stablecoins, so comparing the transaction fees of Bitcoin and Litecoin isn't particularly relevant; meanwhile, Ethereum, Solana, and TRON can process payments in under a minute.

Maybe because the developer is Chinese, and they are already accustomed to that infrastructure. They were told that it won't scale well and sending USDT will ultimately become more expensive, but no one was listening because fanbois thought it was just FUD.

Funny enough, if enough people leave TRON for SOL, then TRON will become cheaper to use again, until they come back and it's going to be too expensive again.