How to check transaction fees on the Stellar network
Stellar network fees are checked in your wallet before you confirm or in Horizon fee stats, while an explorer shows the fee on a confirmed payment.
Vahe HakobyanEditor-in-chief
Updated Oct 6, 20263 min readFact-checked
On this page
- Stellar charges a fixed fee per operation, not a percentage.
- A busy network can push the fee above the base.
- A dropped transaction pays no fee; a failed one does.
- Stellar burns fees instead of paying validators.
Stellar charges a small fee in XLM on every operation to keep spam off the ledger. XLM is the network's native token. The fee is fixed per operation rather than a share of what you send, and it is separate from any withdrawal fee a wallet or exchange charges.
What you need before you start
Work out first whether the payment has gone out. An unconfirmed payment needs your wallet on the send screen, where the estimated fee appears. A submitted one needs its hash and a block explorer.
How to check fees on an explorer
An explorer shows the fee on a confirmed transaction. Each ledger records the base fee, the lowest amount the network takes per operation, and Stellar added surge pricing in 2019, so a busy ledger can charge more.
- 1Open a block explorerPick one that shows a fee field.
- 2Paste the transaction hashCopy it from your wallet history.
- 3Read the fee paidThis is the XLM charged, paid by the sender or a fee-bump sponsor.
- 4Compare it with the base feeSurge pricing, a fee bump, or a custom fee can push it higher.
Check fees in your wallet and Horizon
Your wallet estimates the network fee before you confirm, usually on the send screen. That estimate comes from Horizon. Horizon is the API that wallets use to reach Stellar, and its fee stats report what the network accepts now.
- Enter the address and amount, then read the line your wallet labels as the network fee.
- Set a custom fee or add a fee bump if your wallet offers one.
- Call Horizon's fee_stats endpoint for the levels recent senders paid.
After you check: records and safety
Keep a record of every Stellar payment and its fee. The IRS treats cryptocurrency as property, so buying XLM with dollars is not a taxable event, but trading one crypto for another or paying with crypto is.
Frequently asked questions
Stellar burns it. The community voted to turn off automatic creation of new tokens, so the XLM is destroyed rather than paid to validators.
Many wallets let you set a custom fee or add a fee bump. Some show only an estimate.
It can be dropped when its time bounds pass, and a dropped transaction pays no fee. One that fails after landing still pays.
Usually not for a personal payment, though a business can often deduct it as a cost of moving funds.
