Gas measures work. A gas price tells you what that work costs.
LET’S PICTURE IT
Think of a taxi: distance is the amount of work, and the price per kilometre determines the bill. Gas used and price per gas play those two roles.
SEE IT FOR YOURSELF
Calculate and split a manual execution feeStep 1 / 4
This example supplies twenty-one thousand gas used. It is a simple teaching input, not a live estimate of a contract call.
This example supplies twenty-one thousand gas used. It is a simple teaching input, not a live estimate of a contract call.With base ten Gwei, priority cap two and total cap twenty, the effective rate is twelve Gwei per gas.Twenty-one thousand times twelve Gwei gives two hundred fifty-two thousand Gwei, or 0.000252 ETH.The base-fee component is 0.00021 ETH and is burned. The priority component is 0.000042 ETH for the block fee recipient.
Animated local teaching model. No wallet, RPC or live blockchain data. Some labels and hashes are abbreviated for readability.
Work and price are separate
Ethereum meters computation using gas. A simple ETH transfer to an ordinary account typically uses 21,000 gas. A contract call can use much more. The price per gas is commonly expressed in Gwei. Gas is a unit of work, not another token.
Base fee plus tip
For a standard EIP-1559 transaction, the effective gas price is the smaller of the fee cap and base fee plus priority fee cap, provided the fee cap covers the base fee. The base fee is burned and the priority fee goes to the block proposer. If your fee cap is below the base fee, the transaction cannot be included at that base fee.
Your limit is a ceiling
A gas limit bounds how much execution can consume. It is not normally the amount charged. Used gas times effective price determines the execution fee. If a transaction runs out of gas, its execution fails; consumed gas is still charged.
Calculate with your own numbers
Our gas calculator uses numbers you enter. It does not fetch a live gas price, estimate execution or include layer 2 data fees. Try 21,000 gas at a base fee of 10 Gwei and a 2 Gwei tip: the execution fee is 0.000252 ETH.