Every Solana transaction is subject to two distinct fee types that serve different purposes and are distributed differently. Understanding both is essential for developers building on Solana and users who want to optimize their transaction costs.

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Base fees cover cryptographic verification. Priority fees cover queue position. Both matter for a complete fee strategy.

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The Base Fee

The base fee is a fixed cost of 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature in a transaction. It exists to compensate validators for the Ed25519 signature verification work required to process every transaction. Crucially, 50% of the base fee is burned (permanently removed from circulation), and 50% goes to the block-producing validator. This burn mechanism creates mild deflationary pressure on SOL supply.

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The base fee is non-negotiable — it is always charged regardless of whether your transaction succeeds or fails. A standard single-signer transaction therefore always costs at least 5,000 lamports in base fees.

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The Priority Fee

The priority fee is optional and entirely at the discretion of the transaction sender. It is calculated as ceil(compute_unit_price × compute_unit_limit / 1,000,000) lamports. Unlike the base fee, 100% of the priority fee goes to the block-producing validator — none is burned. This creates a direct incentive for validators to process high-fee transactions first.

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Per SIMD-0096, the priority fee distribution changed so that validators receive the full amount with no burn, maximizing the incentive for validators to include competitive transactions quickly.

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Total Transaction Cost

Your total fee equals base fee plus priority fee. For a single-signature transaction with a compute unit price of 50,000 microlamports and a limit of 200,000 CUs: base fee = 5,000 lamports, priority fee = 10,000 lamports, total = 15,000 lamports (0.000015 SOL). Even at peak priority settings, Solana transaction fees remain under $0.01 in most market conditions.