Priority fees and tips: paying to go first
How the network fee, priority fees and tips decide whose trade lands first, and when paying more is a waste.
Words in this lesson
Solana makes a few new blocks every second. When a hot coin launches, thousands of transactions want into the same few blocks. Somebody has to go first. Priority fees and tips decide who.
The network fee
Every transaction pays the base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature. A lamport is the smallest piece of SOL, one billionth of it. Half the base fee is burned and half goes to the validator that builds the block. You cannot change it, and you will hardly ever notice it.
The priority fee
The priority fee is optional, and all of it goes to the validator. Validators line up waiting transactions by how much they pay for the work they ask for. Pay more and you move up the line.
Under the hood it is priced per compute unit, a measure of how much work a transaction needs. You set a price in micro-lamports per unit and a limit on how many units you need. Trading apps hide this math and show you one number in SOL.
Where 0.001 SOL comes from
Your app sets a limit of 200,000 compute units and a price of 5,000,000 micro-lamports per unit.
- Step 1: 200,000 × 5,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000 micro-lamports.
- Step 2: A million micro-lamports make one lamport, so that is 1,000,000 lamports.
- Step 3: A billion lamports make one SOL, so the priority fee is 0.001 SOL.
- Step 4: You pay on the limit you asked for, not on the work your trade actually used. A careless limit costs money.
Axiom's docs, for example, list 0.001 SOL as the default priority fee, as read in October 2026. Most apps also offer an auto mode that raises the fee when the network is busy and lowers it when it is calm.
Tips and fast lanes
A tip is a separate payment that rides inside your transaction to a sending service. The best known is Jito, whose block engine passes transactions to validators that run its software. Other services that take tips include Nozomi and bloXroute. Many trading apps call the tip a bribe. It is the same thing, and it is normal.
Jito also offers bundles: up to five transactions that run in order, all or nothing. If one fails, none of them land. Snipers and launch tools use bundles to buy in the very first block. Jito's minimum tip is 1,000 lamports, but at a busy launch the tips that win are far larger.
When to pay more, and when not to
- Pay more when timing is the whole trade: the first seconds of a launch, or getting out while a coin is crashing.
- Pay less when nothing is racing you: a coin that is hours old, a calm market, a small position.
- Never pay more than the edge you are chasing. A 0.01 SOL tip on a 0.1 SOL trade is 10% gone before the coin moves.
One last thing to remember. Priority fees and tips buy speed, not safety. A fast buy into a bad coin is still a bad buy, it just happens sooner.
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This guide is for learning. It is not financial advice. Most memecoins go to zero and most people who trade them lose money. Only ever trade what you can afford to lose.