Bitcoin Fees Today: Current sat/vB Rates and Mempool Status

    Bitcoin transaction fees are paid per byte of transaction data, not per bitcoin sent. This page shows the current recommended rates, how busy the network is, and what those numbers mean in practice.

    Current recommended fee rates

    Updated 2026-09-11 10:10 UTC.(cached for up to 60 seconds)

    Current Bitcoin fee rates by confirmation priority
    PriorityTypical confirmationFee rate
    High priorityNext block (~10 min)3 sat/vB
    Medium priority~30 minutes1 sat/vB
    Low priority~1 hour1 sat/vB
    EconomyHours, when the mempool clears1 sat/vB
    Approximate cost in satoshis at the high-priority rate, by transaction size. Multiply the rate by the size in virtual bytes.
    Transaction typeSizeCost at high priority
    Native SegWit (1 in / 2 out)141 vB423 sats
    Legacy (1 in / 2 out)226 vB678 sats
    Consolidation (5 in / 1 out)500 vB1,500 sats

    Bitcoin network status

    Block height

    966,493

    Unconfirmed transactions

    81,103

    Mempool backlog

    ~41.4 blocks

    Next difficulty change

    +3.53%

    1,187 blocks remain until the next difficulty retarget (41.1% through the current epoch).

    How Bitcoin transaction fees work

    Every Bitcoin transaction competes for space in the next block. Blocks arrive roughly every ten minutes and hold a limited amount of data, so miners prioritise the transactions offering the most value per byte of space they consume. That price is expressed in satoshis per virtual byte, written sat/vB.

    What sat/vB actually means

    A satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin. A virtual byte is a unit of transaction size that accounts for the SegWit discount. A fee of 10 sat/vB on a 141 vB transaction costs 1,410 satoshis — regardless of whether you are sending 0.001 BTC or 10 BTC. This is why consolidating many small inputs is expensive and why sending a large amount can be cheap.

    How confirmation priority is decided

    Wallets estimate what rate is currently needed to be included within a target number of blocks. High priority aims for the next block, medium for around thirty minutes, low for about an hour, and economy accepts an open-ended wait until the backlog clears. When the mempool is nearly empty these four numbers converge; when it is congested they can differ by an order of magnitude.

    If your transaction is stuck

    A low-fee transaction is not lost — it waits in the mempool. Wallets that support replace-by-fee let you rebroadcast the same transaction at a higher rate. Child-pays-for-parent works from the receiving side by spending the unconfirmed output with a high enough fee to make the pair worth mining.

    This page is educational. It is not financial advice, and fee estimates are probabilistic — always confirm the rate in your own wallet before broadcasting.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is a good sat/vB fee right now?

    It depends entirely on how full the mempool is. The fee table above shows the current recommended rates from mempool.space for next-block, ~30 minute and ~1 hour targets. Paying the economy rate is fine when you are not in a hurry; paying the high-priority rate is only worth it when a delay would cost you something.

    Why do Bitcoin fees change so much?

    Block space is fixed at roughly one block every ten minutes. When more people broadcast transactions than fit in the next few blocks, miners select the highest fee rates first, so the price of fast confirmation rises. When the backlog clears, rates fall again.

    Does a larger transaction cost more?

    Yes. Fees are priced per virtual byte, not per bitcoin sent. A transaction with many inputs is larger in bytes and therefore costs more at the same sat/vB rate, regardless of the amount being transferred.

    What happens if I pay too low a fee?

    The transaction sits in the mempool until the backlog clears enough for it to be included, which can take hours or longer. Some wallets support replace-by-fee (RBF) or child-pays-for-parent (CPFP) so you can raise the effective fee afterwards.

    Is this page showing real-time fees?

    No. The figures are fetched from mempool.space on our server and cached for up to 60 seconds, then served to every visitor from that cache. The timestamp above each table tells you exactly how old the reading is. Always confirm the fee in your own wallet before broadcasting.

    Data source

    Fee rates, block height, mempool statistics and difficulty data on this page come from mempool.space, fetched by our server and cached for up to 60 seconds. See our data methodology for refresh cadence, stale-data handling and limitations.

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