A charge for the network resources used to process an action.
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Paying for a delivery covers work even when the parcel’s contents have a different value. A transaction’s fee is separate from the amount it transfers.
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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.
Value and fee differ
Sending 0.01 ETH and paying 0.000252 ETH in execution fees are two separate amounts. The value goes to the recipient under the transaction’s rules. The fee pays for network execution, with different components following protocol rules.
Work has a price
Ethereum measures execution work in gas. Multiply gas used by effective price per gas to calculate the execution fee. A complex contract action can require more gas than a simple transfer.
Why the fee can change
The base fee changes according to network conditions and protocol rules. Users specify fee caps and priority-fee limits. A number shown in a wallet is an estimate under particular assumptions, not a promise that every possible action costs that amount.
Try simple maths
Open the manual gas calculator and change one input at a time. It uses your values without fetching prices. For layer 2 networks, additional components can make a total fee different from this execution-only example.
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Is a transaction’s transferred amount the same thing as its fee?
The value and network fee have different purposes and are accounted for separately.