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ProLesson 1 of 7 · 3 min read

The fee stack: where your money goes

Every buy and sell costs more than the price on the screen. Here is each layer, who gets it, and what one real trade costs.

On this page
  1. The layers
  2. Fixed fees and percent fees
  3. Quiz

Every time you buy or sell a memecoin, you pay more than the price on the screen. The cost comes in layers. Some are tiny and fixed. Some are a percent of your trade. One of them never shows up as a fee at all.

Traders call the whole pile the fee stack. Learn it once and you will read every trade screen differently.

The costs on one tradeA bar for one buy. Most of it reaches the coin, and six slices come off the end: the network fee paid to Solana, which is tiny; an optional priority fee so validators pick your transaction first; a tip some apps add to land the trade faster; the trading app's platform fee on each buy and sell; the fee the coin's launchpad or pool takes on every swap, part of which often goes to the coin's creator; and slippage, the price moving against you before you fill. You pay them again when you sell. Not to scale.One buy, and what it costsWhat reaches the coinNot to scaleNetwork feePaid to Solana for every transaction. Tiny.Priority feeOptional extra so validators pick yours first.TipA bonus some apps add to land the trade faster.Platform feeThe trading app's cut of each buy and sell.Pool or launchpad feeThe launchpad's or pool's cut, part to the creator.SlippageThe price moving against you before you fill.You pay them again when you sell.
The fee stack: every layer you pay on one trade, from the tiny network fee to slippage.

The layers

  • Network fee. What Solana charges to process any transaction: 5,000 lamports per signature, which is 0.000005 SOL. Tiny and fixed.
  • Priority fee. An optional extra you pay the validator so your transaction goes ahead of others. Trading apps usually set one for you.
  • Tip. A payment to a fast sending service such as Jito so your trade lands quickly. Some apps call it a bribe.
  • Platform fee. What the app you trade on takes, usually a percent of every buy and every sell.
  • Pool or launchpad fee. What the place the coin trades charges on each swap. Part of it often goes to the coin's creator.
  • Price impact and slippage. Nobody sends you a bill for these, but you lose money because your own trade, or someone else's, moved the price.

One more line surprises newcomers. The first time you buy a coin, your wallet opens a small token account to hold it. Solana asks for a deposit of about 0.0015 SOL for that account, as of late October 2026, and a network change is cutting it further in steps. It is not lost. You get it back when the empty account is closed. Check whether your app closes it when you sell everything. If it does not, your wallet or a cleanup tool can close empty accounts for you.

Fixed fees and percent fees

The layers split into two families. Fixed fees, as most apps set them, are the same whether you trade 0.1 SOL or 10 SOL: the network fee, the priority fee and the tip. Percent fees grow with your trade: the platform fee, the pool fee and the creator fee.

That split matters more than it looks. On a big trade the fixed fees disappear into the rounding. On a tiny trade they can be the biggest cost on the screen.

Example

One 1 SOL buy, line by line

You buy 1 SOL of a coin that is still on the pump.fun bonding curve. You use a trading terminal that charges 1%, and you leave its priority fee and tip at 0.001 SOL each.

  1. Step 1: Network fee: 0.000005 SOL.
  2. Step 2: Priority fee: 0.001 SOL.
  3. Step 3: Tip: 0.001 SOL.
  4. Step 4: Platform fee at 1%: 0.01 SOL.
  5. Step 5: Launchpad fee on the curve, 1.25% as of October 2026: 0.0125 SOL. Of that, 0.003 SOL goes to the coin's creator.
  6. Step 6: Total: about 0.0245 SOL, or 2.45% of your trade, before any price impact. If it is your first buy of this coin, about 0.0015 SOL more sits in the token account deposit.
  7. Step 7: Selling later costs about the same again. So the coin has to rise about 5% before you are even.
LayerFixed or percentWho gets it
Network feeFixedHalf is burned, half goes to the validator
Priority feeFixed, you choose itThe validator
TipFixed, you choose itThe sending service and the validators it works with
Platform feePercentThe trading app
Pool or launchpad feePercentThe launchpad, the pool's liquidity and often the creator
Price impact and slippageDepends on your sizeOther traders, and sometimes a bot
The fee stack at a glance.

The next lessons take each layer in turn: what it is, who sets it, and how to stop overpaying for it.

Next: priority fees and tips

Check what you learned

0 of 4 answered

  1. Question 1What is Solana's base network fee for a normal transaction with one signature?
  2. Question 2Which of these gets bigger when your trade gets bigger?
  3. Question 3TrickyYou buy a coin for the first time and about 0.0015 SOL more than expected leaves your wallet. What is it most likely to be?
  4. Question 4Why do fixed fees hurt small trades the most?

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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.