Bitcoin On-Chain vs Lightning Fee Calculator
See exactly which costs less for your payment: an on-chain Bitcoin transaction at current network fees, or a Lightning Network payment at typical routing fees. Live data, instant comparison, nothing leaves your browser.
How the two fees compare across common payment sizes, at your current settings above. On-chain fees stay flat because they depend on transaction size, not amount — Lightning fees rise with amount because part of the fee is a percentage.
| Amount | On-chain fee | Lightning fee | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 sats | — | — | — |
| 10,000 sats | — | — | — |
| 100,000 sats (0.001 BTC) | — | — | — |
| 1,000,000 sats (0.01 BTC) | — | — | — |
| 10,000,000 sats (0.1 BTC) | — | — | — |
| 100,000,000 sats (1 BTC) | — | — | — |
How it works
Four steps, no account, no waiting.
Enter a payment amount
Type an amount in sats or BTC — this is what you're sending.
Set on-chain options
Pick your address type and how fast you want the transaction confirmed.
Set Lightning options
Adjust typical hop count and routing-fee assumptions, or leave the defaults.
Compare instantly
See both fees side by side, in sats and fiat, with a plain-language verdict.
Why use this calculator
Live on-chain fees
Pulls the current recommended sat/vB rate from a live mempool feed, not a guessed number.
Realistic Lightning model
Models base fee + proportional rate across multiple hops, the way real Lightning routing actually works.
Fully adjustable
Change address type, confirmation speed, hop count, and routing-fee assumptions to match your situation.
Break-even insight
See the payment size where on-chain and Lightning cost roughly the same — not just a single number.
Private by design
Runs entirely in your browser. Amounts and settings are never sent to or stored on any server.
Free, no sign-up
No account, no limits, no watermark on the numbers.
On-chain fees vs Lightning fees, explained
The two fee models work completely differently — understanding why makes it obvious when each option wins.
On-chain fees are about data, not money
A Bitcoin on-chain fee is priced per virtual byte (vB) of transaction data, at whatever the current network fee rate (sat/vB) happens to be. A simple transaction is roughly the same size in bytes whether it moves 10,000 sats or 10 BTC — so the fee is essentially flat regardless of the amount sent. What changes the fee is transaction size (how many inputs and outputs, and which address type you use) and how fast you want it confirmed.
Lightning fees are mostly about amount
A Lightning payment routes through one or more channels, and each hop can charge a small flat base fee plus a fee rate priced in parts-per-million (ppm) of the amount sent. That means Lightning fees scale up as the payment gets larger, while on-chain fees don't. This is exactly why Lightning tends to dominate for small and mid-sized payments, while very large payments can sometimes be cheaper on-chain.
Where the break-even point is
Because on-chain cost is flat and Lightning cost grows with amount, there's a crossover size where the two roughly match. Below it, Lightning almost always wins — often by a wide margin, since typical routing fees amount to a fraction of a cent even on meaningful payments. Above it, the flat on-chain fee can start to look competitive, especially during low-fee periods on the base chain. The calculator above computes this for your specific settings rather than relying on a generic rule of thumb.
What this calculator doesn't account for
Real Lightning routing fees depend on which nodes and channels actually carry your payment, and can differ from the typical defaults used here. This tool also doesn't include the one-time on-chain cost of opening or closing a Lightning channel, which matters if you don't already have inbound or outbound liquidity — for occasional large payments, that setup cost can outweigh any per-payment savings.