Solana transaction fees, priority fees and rent

Base fee and priority fee

Solana documents a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, split between burning and the validator. On top of that, a transaction can add an optional prioritization fee derived from a compute unit price and a compute unit limit, which goes entirely to the validator and improves scheduling when the network is congested.

Both are paid in SOL. A wallet holding only a stablecoin has the same problem as on any other network: it can receive, but it cannot send.

The storage balance that catches people out

On Solana, holding a token requires an account for that token, and accounts need a balance to cover storage. Receiving a new token into a fresh wallet therefore has a cost associated with creating that account, separate from the transaction fee.

This is why a Solana wallet with a zero SOL balance can behave in ways that look broken. The fix is to fund it with a small amount of SOL before expecting to transact.

Addresses and networks

Solana addresses are not EVM addresses. There is no shared-address behaviour with Ethereum and its layer 2s, and a Solana address pasted into an EVM field will be rejected rather than silently accepted.

Token versions still matter. A stablecoin on Solana is a specific mint address; check the destination’s deposit instructions rather than relying on the ticker alone.

Cost in practice

Per-transaction costs are typically very low. The planning cost is the SOL you need to hold for fees and account storage. Budget a small balance at the start rather than discovering the requirement mid-transfer.