Ethereum gas tracker, live in gwei

This Ethereum gas tracker reads the network every block and shows three things most people want before they press “Confirm”: the current gas price in gwei, the protocol’s base fee, and a dollar estimate for the actions you actually do. On the morning of 24 September 2026, while we were writing this, block 26,046,177 carried a base fee of about 0.17 gwei and a gas limit of 60 million. A plain ETH transfer cost roughly one cent. Four years ago the same transfer could cost more than a sandwich.

The numbers above move, so treat this page as two tools in one. The widgets tell you what gas costs now. The guide underneath explains why, so you can read any wallet’s fee screen with confidence and understand what an explorer means by base fee, priority fee and burnt fees.

What gas and gwei actually are

Every operation the Ethereum Virtual Machine performs has a fixed price in gas. Adding two numbers is cheap. Writing a new value to storage is expensive, 20,000 gas for a fresh storage slot, because every node has to keep that data forever. Gas is a measure of work, not money. It turns into money only when you multiply it by the gas price, which is what the gauge above displays.

Gas prices are quoted in gwei, short for giga-wei. One ETH is 10¹⁸ wei, and one gwei is 10⁹ wei, so 1 gwei is a billionth of an ETH. Nobody wants to read “0.00000000084 ETH per gas”, so the industry settled on gwei. The fee formula is simple: fee = gas used × gas price. A 21,000-gas transfer at 0.84 gwei costs 17,640 gwei, or 0.00001764 ETH. At an ETH price around $2,670 that is under five cents, and at today’s 0.17 gwei base fee it drops to about a cent.

Two limits sit on top of this. Your transaction carries a gas limit, the most it is allowed to consume; if it runs out, it fails and you still pay for the work done. The block also has a gas limit, currently 60 million, which caps how much computation the whole network processes every 12 seconds. That second number matters a lot for fees, as we will see.

EIP-1559: base fee, priority fee and the burn

Since the London upgrade on 5 August 2021, Ethereum has priced gas with the mechanism defined in EIP-1559. Instead of a blind auction, each block has a base fee set by the protocol. Every transaction in the block pays it, and that part is burnt: removed from supply rather than paid to anyone. On top you add a priority fee (the tip), which goes to the validator that proposes the block.

The base fee reacts to demand automatically. Each block has a target of half the block gas limit, so 30 million gas today. If a block uses more than the target, the next base fee rises by up to 12.5%; if it uses less, it falls by up to 12.5%. Six completely full blocks in a row roughly double the base fee, which is why a sudden NFT mint or market crash can push prices up within a minute and why they fall again just as fast.

When you sign a type 2 transaction you set two numbers: max fee per gas and max priority fee per gas. You pay the base fee of the block you land in plus your tip, never more than your max fee, and the difference is simply not charged. That is why explorers show a line such as “Txn Savings”. Setting a generous max fee is not wasteful; setting a huge tip is.

Why gas fees are far lower than in 2021

If you used Ethereum during the 2021 bull run, today’s gauge looks broken. Back then gas regularly ran at 50 to 200 gwei and spiked into the hundreds or thousands during popular mints. At 100 gwei a plain transfer costs 0.0021 ETH and a 150,000-gas swap 0.015 ETH, which meant several dollars for a transfer and tens of dollars for a swap. Three changes brought fees down to where they are now.

Activity moved to layer 2

Rollups such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Base execute transactions off the main chain and post compressed results back to it. Most everyday swapping, gaming and payments now happens there, which removes a large share of demand from mainnet block space. Our layer 2 explorer guide shows how to follow those transactions.

Blobs gave rollups their own lane

Before the Dencun upgrade on 13 March 2024, rollups had to post their data as calldata and competed with everyone else for gas. EIP-4844 introduced blobs: a separate data space with its own fee market and its own “blob gas”. Fusaka (3 December 2025) added PeerDAS, and the blob-parameter-only forks that followed raised the blob target first to 10 and then to 14 per block. You can inspect that traffic in our Ethereum blob explorer guide.

The block gas limit doubled in 2025

For almost four years the block gas limit sat at 30 million. Validators, who vote on it block by block, pushed it to 36 million in February 2025, to 45 million in July 2025 and to 60 million on 25 November 2025. Twice the capacity with a 30-million target means ordinary demand rarely fills blocks, so the base fee keeps drifting down toward its floor. Cheap does not mean fixed, though. Heavy congestion can still send the base fee up several times over in a few minutes, and your wallet will quote the new price.

When gas fees are lowest: timing your transactions

Gas follows human activity. Historically, the busiest window has been weekday afternoons in UTC, when European markets are still open and US traders are online. The quietest stretch has been the weekend and the hours roughly between 00:00 and 06:00 UTC, when both continents are asleep. Several fee studies over the years point to Saturday and Sunday mornings as the cheapest slots.

We would add two honest caveats. First, it is a pattern, not a law: a token launch at 03:00 UTC beats any rule of thumb. Second, at sub-gwei prices the saving from waiting is often a fraction of a cent. Timing matters for big jobs, like deploying a contract that needs several million gas, or batching hundreds of transfers. For a single payment, look at the gauge, and if the “Standard” figure is where it has been all week, just send.