• Blockchain activity is now significantly cheaper, as transaction fees on both Bitcoin and Ethereum tailed 90 percent since the start of April 2024.

• Bitcoin’s average transaction cost has dropped from around $16 to below $1 with a significant drop in mempool congestion.

• Nowadays, Ethereum users spend a few cents only for their transfers, swaps, and NFT sales, whereas a year ago similar transactions could cost a lot.

Comparing transaction costs on the two most used blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, in the past couple of years demonstrates a significant drop. The decrease in the fees is a result of improved network efficiency, as well as the increased competition between the users and wider adoption of scaling solutions. 

Consider April 2024, when it cost an average of $16.16 to send a transaction on the Bitcoin network. However, when you fast forward to April 18, 2025, you’ll notice that things are different. As of 8 pm Eastern time on that day, the average Bitcoin transaction fee was roughly $0.91 per transaction. 

Source: BitInfoCharts

Based on mempool.space data, to have your Bitcoin transaction confirmed as quickly as possible, around 4 satoshi per byte, or $0.47, will do. The mempool, which as of recently holds about 21,000 pending transactions, is essentially a waiting area for unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions. 

Some time in 2024, its number of transactions was roughly 248,000 transactions, thus it has dropped by a huge margin compared to the value as of last year.

Source: memepool.space

Not just Bitcoin, the costs of using Ethereum have also plummeted. When you compare the cost of sending Ethereum on April 18, 202,4 to the cost today, it is 92% lower. Then, the cost was about $4.03 per transaction, but today, it’s just $0.31, or 0.00019 ETH. 

Source: BitInfoCharts

In other words, fees are now below 1 gwei on the Etherscan Gas Tracker, the little unit that Ethereum uses to measure gas fees. Today also, a high-priority Ethereum transfer only costs 0.388 gwei, roughly one cent, and usually takes about 30 seconds. 

That is only meant for a basic ETH transfer, however, more complicated movements, like token swapping and NFT selling, will come with a little extra cost. The cost of swapping tokens is about $0.22 now, while an NFT sale will be about $0.37, and bridging (which is moving assets from one chain to another) is about $0.07. Moreover, borrowing on Ethereum will cost you about $0.37. 

Source: Etherscan.io

The current cost of swapping tokens on Ethereum is also way cheaper than that of last year, which was around $1.16 even for a fast ETH transfer. Also, back then, doing a token swap cost over $20, and selling an NFT was almost $35.