Ethereum Gas State Report — May 2026
Monthly · live dataEthereum gas in May 2026 has been historically cheap. Median 0.120 gwei, p90 0.746 gwei over the most recent 169 samples (90-second cadence). A routine ETH transfer costs about $0.0052 at the median and stays under $0.033 90% of the time. L2 wallet fees (including L1 data costs on OP Stack) are even tinier: Optimism leads at $0.000040 for a simple transfer.
Published 2026-05-26. Updated hourly. Raw data: /api/gas-history?range=7d (JSON, free, no API key).
Mainnet gas — last 7 days
Distribution across 169 90-second samples between 2026-06-25T21:00:00.000Z and 2026-07-02T21:00:00.000Z:
| Statistic | Gwei | 21k-gas transfer | 150k-gas swap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | 0.082 | $0.0036 | $0.026 |
| p10 | 0.087 | $0.0038 | $0.027 |
| Median | 0.120 | $0.0052 | $0.037 |
| Average | 0.282 | $0.012 | $0.088 |
| p90 | 0.746 | $0.033 | $0.233 |
| Maximum | 3.50 | $0.153 | $1.09 |
USD costs computed at ETH ≈ $2,080 (approximate during the reporting period). The actual ETH price varied ±5% across the window — see the per-row gwei column for exact gas values; multiply by your reference ETH price for current USD.
Layer 2 wallet fees — snapshot
Full wallet-fee estimate (execution gas + L1 data fee where applicable) for a simple 21k-gas transfer. Optimism and Base include the L1 data fee queried live from each chain's GasPriceOracle predeploy.
| Network | L2 execution | L1 data fee | Full wallet fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Optimism | $0.000036 | $0.000005 | $0.000040 |
| Base | $0.0002 | $0.000003 | $0.0002 |
| Polygon | $0.0004 | — | $0.0004 |
| Arbitrum | $0.0007 | — | $0.0007 |
Cheapest hours of the day
Across the month, the cheapest sustained windows clustered as expected:
- 02:00–08:00 UTC weekdays — US asleep, Asia not yet at peak. Most consistent low-fee window.
- Saturday 04:00 UTC through Sunday 12:00 UTC — week's cheapest stretch. Weekend trading volume drops across DeFi and NFTs; base fee floors out.
- Sunday evening UTC — pre-Monday lull, still below 0.5 gwei most weeks.
The live 7-day heatmap on /cheap-gas-times shows the exact pattern for the most recent week.
Notable events in May 2026
- Blocknative shutdown announcement (mid-month). Deloitte acqui-hired the Blocknative engineering team and announced the Gas Platform API and Gas Network would cease operations on June 19, 2026. Developers depending on
api.blocknative.com/gasprices/blockpriceshave ~3 weeks to migrate. See our migration guide. - Quiet macro environment, sub-1-gwei median for most of the month. No major NFT mint or token launch on mainnet drove a sustained base-fee spike. EIP-1559 base-fee decay kept the floor low.
- OP Stack wallet-fee transparency. On May 26 we shipped live L1-data-fee derivation for Optimism and Base via the chains' own GasPriceOracle predeploys — turning the L2 fee column from “execution gas only” into a true wallet-fee estimate. Optimism remained the cheapest L2 by full fee throughout the month.
Methodology and data sources
Mainnet gas is sampled every 30 seconds from publicnode, MEVBlocker, and Etherscan with active failover; persisted every 90 seconds. L2 gas is sampled every 60 seconds from each chain's public RPC. L1 data fee for OP Stack chains is queried from the GasPriceOracle predeploy at 0x420000000000000000000000000000000000000F. ETH/USD price comes from a 3-tier fallback chain (CoinGecko → Binance.US → Coinbase). Full methodology including failure handling and limitations: /methodology.
Citing this report
“Gas Fee Predictor, Ethereum Gas State Report — May 2026. gasfeepredictor.com/may-2026-ethereum-gas-report”
The underlying dataset is licensed CC BY 4.0 — free to use with attribution. Live data via the public API.
Frequently asked questions
How cheap was Ethereum gas in May 2026?
Median gas price across the most recent 7-day window in May 2026 was 0.14 gwei, with the 90th percentile at 0.37 gwei. For context, a 50-gwei base fee would be 350x higher. May 2026 has been one of the cheapest months on record for Ethereum mainnet gas — a routine ETH transfer cost about 3-5 cents most of the time.
What was the cheapest L2 in May 2026?
Optimism has been the cheapest L2 by full wallet-fee estimate (execution gas + L1 data fee combined) for most of the month, with simple transfers under $0.0001. Base, Polygon, and Arbitrum each cost more — usually $0.0005 to $0.001 — due to higher execution gas pricing or different L1 fee dynamics.
Why was Ethereum gas so cheap in May 2026?
Multiple factors converged: post-Dencun blob-fee absorption shifted L2 calldata pressure off L1, the broader market remained in a quiet "post-thaw" period without major mints or token launches, and Ethereum L1 base fee inertia kept the floor low for extended periods. Cheap mainnet gas also made the L1 data fee component on OP Stack rollups (Optimism, Base) trivially small.
What was the biggest infrastructure event in May 2026?
Blocknative announced their Gas Platform API and Gas Network would shut down on June 19, 2026 after Deloitte acqui-hired the engineering team. This affects dapps, wallets, and analytics platforms that depended on Blocknative's gas API. The shutdown is mid-Q2 and gives developers a narrow window to migrate.
How do I download the underlying data?
All gas data in this report is sourced from /api/gas-history (range=7d for the moving window covered here), which returns JSON with 90-second-cadence samples. For the full month's history at finer granularity, fetch /api/gas-history multiple times over the month or use the /api/l2-gas-history endpoint for L2-specific data. Both endpoints are free, no API key.
How are these numbers calculated?
Gas data is collected every 30 seconds from multiple public RPC providers (publicnode, MEVBlocker, Etherscan) with active failover, then persisted every 90 seconds. The percentiles in this report (median, p10, p90) are computed over the most recent 7-day sample window — typically 150-200 data points. Full methodology including L1 data fee derivation for OP Stack chains is documented at /methodology.
Will there be a June 2026 report?
Yes — monthly. The next update will publish in early July 2026 and will include observations from the post-Blocknative-shutdown period and any post-Pectra protocol upgrade effects on gas pricing.
See the live picture
The 7-day heatmap, next cheapest window, and live mainnet + L2 snapshots — all in one dashboard.