To swap USDT to USDC, choose USDT on the network where you hold it as “from” and USDC on the network you want as “to”, approve USDT if asked and confirm. On November 12, 2026, $1,000 of USDT on Ethereum (999.74 USDT) quoted 996.27 USDC on Ethereum, and every route we checked paid 995.2 to 996.5 USDC per 1,000 USDT, before the 0.7% service fee. Converting the other way: USDC to USDT.
Key Takeaways
- Route type: same-network DEX aggregator swap, or one-step cross-chain through a bridge or solver.
- Time: seconds on the same network; 2 seconds to about 12 minutes cross-chain on our check.
- Cost: about 0.35-0.48% all in per 1,000 USDT, plus gas; Tron is the exception with about $21 of network fee.
- Main catch: USDT is priced slightly differently on each network, so the dollar value of a quote misleads; compare the USDC you receive.
What Is USDT?
USDT (Tether) is the largest dollar stablecoin and the default on exchanges and on Tron. It is a separate token on each network: ERC-20 on Ethereum, TRC-20 on Tron, BEP-20 on BNB Chain, SPL on Solana, and USDT0 on Arbitrum. LI.FI priced it between $0.9943 (Solana) and $1.0003 (Ethereum) on November 12, 2026. More on the versions: USDT networks, what is USDT0.
What Is USDC?
USDC is the dollar stablecoin issued by Circle, backed by cash and short-term US Treasuries. Circle issues it natively on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Solana and other networks, which is why US platforms and DeFi apps often ask for USDC rather than USDT. On BNB Chain the usual USDC is a bridged token: bridged vs native USDC.
How the USDT to USDC Swap Works
On one network, DEX aggregators (Nordstern, SushiSwap, OKX DEX and others) route USDT through stablecoin pools to USDC; you approve USDT once and sign the swap. Cross-chain, a bridge or solver (Across, NEAR Intents, Layerswap, LI.FI Intents) takes your USDT on the source network and pays USDC on the destination from its own liquidity, so you sign once, on the source network.
Quotes by Amount (Ethereum, November 12, 2026)
| You send | You receive | Route fee | Gas | Best route |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100 of USDT | 99.62 USDC | $0.25 | $0.02 | SushiSwap |
| $1,000 of USDT | 996.27 USDC | $2.50 | $0.03 | Nordstern |
| $10,000 of USDT | 9,962.74 USDC | $25.00 | $0.04 | Nordstern |
Per USDT sent, the rate held at about 0.35% below 1:1 from $100 to $10,000, so size did not move the price. The route fee is a flat 0.25%; the rest is the pool spread between the two tokens. Quotes are LI.FI routes before the 0.7% Step Exchange service fee; they change every minute.
Which Route Pays the Most (USDC per 1,000 USDT)
LI.FI quotes in dollars, and it valued USDT on Solana at $0.9943 but on Ethereum at $1.0003. So “$1,000 of USDT” was 1,005.7 tokens on Solana and 999.7 on Ethereum. We converted every quote to USDC per 1,000 USDT tokens:
| USDT on | USDC on Ethereum | USDC on Base | USDC on Solana | USDC on Arbitrum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | 996.53 | 996.41 | 996.28 | 996.37 |
| BNB Chain | 996.21 | 995.99 | 996.19 | 996.44 |
| Solana | 996.07 | 996.22 | 996.50 | 996.20 |
| Tron | 995.94 | 995.57 | 995.23 | 996.16 |
USDT0 on Arbitrum to USDC on Arbitrum came to 996.50 per 1,000. The whole table spans 1.30 USDC, about 0.13%, so the network you need the USDC on matters more than the route. The real difference is gas, below.
Tron: The $21 Surprise
Every route that started with USDT on Tron showed $20.93 to $22.67 of network fee, against about $0.01 on BNB Chain or Solana and $0.02 to $0.06 on Ethereum. Moving a TRC-20 token costs energy, and a wallet without staked or rented TRX energy burns TRX to pay for it. On a $100 swap that fee would eat about a fifth of the amount. There was also no same-network USDC route on Tron on our check, so USDT on Tron always leaves the network. If you swap from Tron, swap a larger amount once instead of many small ones, or get energy first; USDT to TRX covers getting TRX.
Step by Step
- Connect your wallet on the network where your USDT is.
- From: USDT. To: USDC on the same network or another one.
- Approve USDT if asked; keep slippage at 0.1-0.3%.
- Paste the receiving address if the USDC goes to another network (Solana addresses are base58, the others start with 0x).
- Check the minimum received in USDC and confirm.
Mistakes to Avoid
- Judging by the dollar column: compare USDC received per USDT sent, as in the table above.
- Ethereum approvals: USDT on Ethereum requires the allowance to be set to zero before it can be changed to a new amount. If a wallet shows two approval transactions, that is why; it costs extra gas, not funds.
- Many small swaps from Tron: each one pays the energy fee again.
- Sending USDC to an exchange on the wrong network: an exchange deposit address for USDC on Ethereum is not the same as USDC on Base or Solana.
Other stablecoin routes: USDC to EURC, TRX to USDC, SOL to USDC, how to bridge USDT.