# Ethereum Gas Fee Estimator for NFT Minting & Transfers > Estimate what an NFT mint, transfer or contract deployment will cost in gas, at any gwei price. Free browser calculator with typical network scenarios. Source: https://thenftacademy.com/tools/gas-fee-estimator Site: The NFT Academy (https://thenftacademy.com) --- Free tool ## Gas fee estimator What a mint, a transfer or a contract deployment actually costs — at the gas price you enter, and at four typical network conditions so you can see how much the time of day matters. Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere. What you are doing Operation Pick the closest match, or type your own figure below. Gas units How many times ETH price $ Your gas price gwei Check etherscan.io/gastracker for the live number. Gas units are the work your transaction asks the network to do. Gwei is what you pay per unit — that part moves minute to minute. At your gas price 20 gwei · 0.00170 ETH In dollars · $5.10 At typical network conditions Quiet · 8 gwei Weekends, off-peak hours · 0.00068 ETH · $2.04 Normal · 20 gwei A typical weekday · 0.00170 ETH · $5.10 Busy · 45 gwei A popular mint is running · 0.00383 ETH · $11.48 Gas war · 120 gwei Everyone is minting at once · 0.01020 ETH · $30.60 Scenario gwei figures are representative of Ethereum mainnet ranges, not a live feed. Layer 2s like Polygon, Base and Arbitrum typically cost a small fraction of these. These are estimates for Ethereum mainnet. Actual cost depends on network congestion at the moment your transaction is mined, and on how the specific contract is written. Always check the figure your wallet shows before confirming. ### How gas actually works Every transaction on Ethereum consumes a measurable amount of computation, counted in **gas units**. Sending ETH costs exactly 21,000. Transferring an NFT costs roughly three times that, because the contract has to update ownership records. Deploying a contract costs far more again. That part is stable and predictable. What isn’t stable is the **gas price**, quoted in gwei, which is set by an auction for space in the next block. When demand is low it might be 8 gwei; during a contested mint it can exceed 120. Same transaction, fifteen times the cost. ### Typical gas units by operation | Operation | Approximate gas units | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | Send ETH | 21,000 | The fixed floor for any transaction | | Approve a marketplace | ~46,000 | One-off per collection, per marketplace | | Transfer an ERC-721 | ~65,000 | Varies with contract implementation | | Mint, simple contract | ~85,000 | A plain ERC-721 mint | | Mint, complex contract | ~150,000 | Allowlists, reveals, on-chain metadata | | Accept an offer | ~180,000 | Order matching adds meaningful cost | | Deploy an NFT contract | 250,000+ | Highly variable; often far more | ### Three ways to pay less #### Wait Gas prices follow a daily and weekly rhythm. Late at night and at weekends, UTC, the price is routinely a third of the weekday peak. If your transaction isn’t time-critical, waiting a few hours is the cheapest optimisation available. #### Use a layer 2 Polygon, Base and Arbitrum settle to Ethereum but process transactions far more cheaply — typically fractions of a cent rather than tens of dollars. For minting your own work, this is almost always the right choice, and it’s the reason "it costs hundreds of dollars to mint an NFT" is no longer true unless you specifically choose mainnet. #### Don’t chase contested mints A gas war is a bidding contest you’re unlikely to win against automated bidders, and losing still costs you the gas. If a mint requires you to pay 120 gwei to have a chance, the expected value of participating is usually negative. ### A note on failed transactions This is worth stating on its own because it surprises people every cycle: **a failed transaction still costs gas.** If a mint sells out while your transaction is pending, or you set the gas limit too low, the network performed work on your behalf and charges you for it. Nothing arrives in your wallet. Budget for this when you model a mint — the expected cost of attempting is higher than the cost of one successful attempt. ### Common questions ##### What is gwei? A gwei is one billionth of an ETH. Gas price is quoted in gwei per unit of gas, so your total cost is gas units × gas price × 10⁻⁹ ETH. The gas units depend on what your transaction does; the gwei depends on how busy the network is right now. ##### Why does the same action cost different amounts at different times? The gas units barely change — a transfer is a transfer. What changes is the price per unit, which is set by competition for block space. When a popular collection is minting, everyone bids the price up at once, and a mint that cost $3 an hour earlier can cost $60. ##### Do I pay gas if my transaction fails? Yes. The network did the work of attempting it, so you pay for that work even though nothing happened. This is the single most common way people lose money on a contested mint. ##### How do I avoid paying Ethereum gas at all? Use a layer 2 or an alternative chain. Polygon, Base, Arbitrum and Solana all process NFT transactions for a tiny fraction of Ethereum mainnet cost — often well under a cent. The trade-off is a smaller market and different marketplace support. ##### Why does this tool not show the live gas price? Because this site is entirely static, with no server calling an API on your behalf. A number that looked live but was hours stale would be worse than no number. Instead you enter the current figure, etherscan.io/gastracker shows it, and the tool does the arithmetic.