How much are Lightning Network fees?

Lightning Network fees are usually small, often a few sats or less for an everyday payment, because they are set by the nodes that route your payment rather than by miners. The total you pay can include routing fees, a fee from your wallet provider and, at times, on-chain mining fees for channel work. For how the network itself works, see what the Lightning Network is.

How are Lightning routing fees calculated?

The Lightning specification, BOLT 7, gives each channel two fee settings. One is a base fee, a flat amount in millisatoshis charged for every forwarded payment. The other is a proportional fee, written in millionths, often called ppm. The fee for one hop is the base fee plus the amount times the ppm rate divided by one million.

For example, a node with a 1 sat base fee and a 100 ppm rate would charge 1 sat plus 10 sats to forward a 100,000 sat payment, for 11 sats. A payment that passes through three nodes pays each of them. Lightning Labs notes that fees are only paid when a payment succeeds, and that each node chooses its own policy. LND's sample settings show a default base fee of 1,000 millisatoshis, which is 1 sat, and a default rate of 1 ppm, though operators often change these. Amounts are measured in satoshis.

How much are Lightning wallet fees?

Wallets differ, and fees can change, so check the app's fee page. As of November 2026, some examples are:

• Phoenix charges 0.4% plus 4 sats to send, nothing to receive when the channel has room, and 1% plus mining fees when it must add liquidity.
• Wallet of Satoshi charges no platform fee to send or receive over Lightning, and says senders may pay small routing fees to other nodes.

Self-custodial wallets usually rely on a Lightning service provider. Lightning Labs explains that providers often charge an upfront fee for opening a channel, to cover mining fees and the cost of capital, frequently taken from the first payment you receive. See what a Lightning wallet is for why this is needed.

How do Lightning vs on-chain bitcoin fees compare?

On-chain fees work differently. Miners charge by the size of the transaction in virtual bytes, not by the amount sent. COLDCARD notes that each extra native SegWit input adds about 68 vbytes, so a payment that spends many small coins costs more. When the mempool is busy, the fee rate rises for everyone.

Lightning routing fees, by contrast, scale with the payment amount and route length. That makes Lightning cheap for small and frequent payments. For very large amounts, a proportional fee can add up, and moving bitcoin between on-chain and Lightning still pays at least one on-chain fee.