Optimism gas fees are a fraction of a cent: on November 3, 2026, a simple ETH transfer on OP Mainnet cost about $0.00005 and a typical swap well under $0.001 in gas on our live check. Fees on Optimism are paid in ETH, not in the OP token. Below: how the two parts of the fee work, live numbers, what moves them and what to do if you have no ETH on OP Mainnet.
Key Takeaways
- Gas token: ETH on OP Mainnet (chain ID 10). OP is a governance token and does not pay fees.
- Two parts: an execution gas fee (same gas units as on Ethereum) plus an L1 data fee for posting data to Ethereum.
- Transfer: about $0.00005 on our November 3, 2026 check.
- Swap: about $0.00035 for a 150,000-gas swap at the same gas price.
- About 40x cheaper than Ethereum for the same transfer on the same day.
How Optimism Fees Work
OP Mainnet is an Ethereum layer 2 built on the OP Stack (an optimistic rollup). According to the Optimism fee documentation, every transaction pays:
| Fee part | What it pays for | How it is set |
|---|---|---|
| Execution gas fee | Running the transaction on OP Mainnet | Gas used x (base fee + priority fee), EIP-1559 style, same gas units as on Ethereum |
| L1 data fee | Publishing the transaction data to Ethereum | Estimated compressed size x Ethereum data price (blob and base fee) |
| Operator fee | Optional extra fee an OP Stack chain can set | Added by the Isthmus upgrade; deposit transactions are exempt |
The execution part works exactly like Ethereum: a simple ETH transfer uses 21,000 gas, a token swap uses more. The difference is the price per unit of gas, which on OP Mainnet is a tiny fraction of Ethereum’s.
The L1 data fee is what makes a layer 2 different. Since the Ecotone upgrade (March 14, 2024) OP Mainnet posts data to Ethereum as blobs (EIP-4844), and since Fjord (July 10, 2024) the fee is based on an estimate of each transaction’s compressed size (FastLZ). Both changes cut the data part to almost nothing for ordinary transactions.
Live Fees on OP Mainnet
| November 3, 2026 | |
|---|---|
| Gas price (eth_gasPrice) | 0.0010 gwei |
| Base fee in the latest block | under 0.000001 gwei |
| Ethereum base fee used for the L1 data fee | 0.040 gwei |
| Ethereum blob base fee | 0.002 gwei |
| ETH price | $2,285.73 |
| Simple ETH transfer (21,000 gas) | about $0.00005, of which L1 data under $0.000002 |
| Swap (150,000 gas, about 600 bytes of data) | about $0.00035, of which L1 data under $0.00001 |
Gas prices from the public OP Mainnet RPC (eth_gasPrice and the latest block) and the GasPriceOracle contract (0x420000000000000000000000000000000000000F, fee upper bound for the transaction size). The swap line is a calculation for a typical 150,000-gas swap, not a quote from a specific route. ETH price from CoinGecko. Fees move with demand, so check the wallet estimate before you sign.
Almost all of the gas price is the priority fee (about 0.001 gwei): the base fee was close to zero because blocks were far from full (about 9.4 million of 40 million gas used in the block we read).
Optimism vs Ethereum and Other Layer 2s
The same transaction costs far less on OP Mainnet than on Ethereum, even when Ethereum is quiet:
| Transaction | OP Mainnet | Ethereum |
|---|---|---|
| Gas price, November 3, 2026 | 0.0010 gwei | 0.042 gwei |
| Simple ETH transfer (21,000 gas) | about $0.00005 | about $0.002 |
| Swap (150,000 gas) | about $0.00035 | about $0.014 |
Both columns use the same ETH price ($2,285.73) and the same gas units. Ethereum gas was itself low on that day; when it spikes, the gap grows, while OP Mainnet’s execution fee stays tiny and only its small L1 data part follows Ethereum.
Other ETH-gas layer 2s are in the same range: see Base gas fees (also an OP Stack chain) and Arbitrum gas fees. For a full list of fee tokens, see gas tokens by chain.
What Moves Optimism Fees
- OP Mainnet demand: the base fee rises when blocks fill up, for example during a popular launch or an airdrop claim.
- Ethereum data prices: the L1 data fee follows Ethereum’s blob and base fees. Ordinary transfers barely notice; transactions with a lot of calldata pay more.
- Transaction size and complexity: a simple transfer uses 21,000 gas; multi-step DeFi actions can use several hundred thousand gas units and more bytes of data.
- Priority fee: wallets add a small tip. On a quiet network the tip is most of the gas price.
How to Pay Less on Optimism
- Batch actions: one transaction with several steps costs less than several separate transactions.
- Avoid peaks: big launches and market crashes push the base fee up for a while.
- Keep a small ETH buffer: running out mid-way means an extra top-up transaction, often from another network.
- Mind the bridge, not the gas: moving funds to OP Mainnet usually costs more than using it. Compare routes in crypto bridge fees before you move a large amount.
What Optimism Gas Fees Do Not Cover
- No ETH, no transaction: you cannot pay Optimism gas with USDC, USDT or OP. Even sending a stablecoin needs a little ETH on OP Mainnet.
- ETH on Ethereum is not ETH on Optimism: each network has its own balance; the same 0x address works on both, but the coins must be bridged. See what is a layer 2.
- Withdrawals through the native bridge are slow: the official bridge back to Ethereum has a challenge period of about 7 days; third-party bridges are faster but charge their own fee.
- Bridge and swap fees are separate: the gas numbers above are network fees only, not the price impact or service fee of a swap; see what is slippage.
No ETH on Optimism?
You cannot pay Optimism fees with another token. The quickest fix is a one-step swap from a network where you already have funds straight to ETH on OP Mainnet, using the widget on this page. Route pages: Ethereum to Optimism, Arbitrum to Optimism, and the Optimism bridge hub. Network settings (RPC, chain ID 10) are on the OP Mainnet network page.
