The maximum per-gas rate sets a ceiling, not a fixed quote.
LET’S PICTURE IT
A taxi budget says how much you permit per kilometre; the actual published rate may still be lower.
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.
Read the unit
maxFeePerGas is a price ceiling per gas. It is not itself a total ETH fee or the number of gas units to execute. The total resource allowance is specified separately by the gas limit.
It covers base plus priority
For a standard EIP-1559 transaction, the effective price cannot exceed this cap and must cover the base fee. The effective priority component is limited by what remains after base fee.
A higher cap need not be fully charged
If base plus the priority cap is below the total cap, that smaller combined rate determines the effective price. Increasing the total cap alone does not always increase the amount actually paid per gas.
Budget and settlement differ
Wallets may show a maximum execution budget using the gas limit and fee cap. The eventual accounted execution fee uses actual gas consumption and the effective price. Other fee categories may need additional budgeting.