What does it cost to send XRP, and how fast is it?

The full answer

How much does a standard XRP transaction cost?

XRPL.org’s Transaction Cost page, checked on 29 September 2026, says the current minimum transaction cost the network requires for a standard transaction is 10 drops, and that it sometimes increases due to higher than usual load [1]. Some transaction types cost a different amount. The same page lists a key reset transaction at 0, a multi-signed transaction at 10 drops times one plus the number of signatures provided, and an AccountDelete transaction at 200,000 drops [1].

The minimum is not fixed forever. XRPL.org says the ledger has a mechanism for changing the minimum transaction cost to account for long-term changes in the value of XRP, and any change has to be approved by the consensus process [1].

In dollar terms, CCN’s 20 August 2026 summary of Blockworks’ State of XRP report said the average transaction cost in Q2 2026 fell to $0.00024 [2]. crypto.news described XRP Ledger fees on 8 July 2026 as fractions of a cent [3]. DefiLlama’s XRPL page, in a 24-hour reading saved on 29 September 2026, showed $1,659 in chain fees across 3.19 million transactions [4].

Where does the fee go?

XRPL.org states that the transaction cost is not paid to any party: the XRP is irrevocably destroyed [1]. It gives the reason. To protect the XRP Ledger from being disrupted by spam and denial-of-service attacks, each transaction must destroy a small amount of XRP [1].

The amounts destroyed are small. CCN, reporting Blockworks’ figures, said only about 40,600 XRP were burned during Q2 2026, a quarter in which the ledger processed 222.4 million transactions [2]. crypto.news put the ledger’s total fee burn since 2012 at roughly 14 million XRP as of 8 July 2026 [3].

CryptoSlate worked out the scale on March 2, 2026: “A million transactions at the base fee works out to about 10 XRP burned.”[6] Whether that burn affects XRP’s supply in any way that matters is argued on does XRP fee burning matter.

How high have fees risen under load, and how often?

XRPL.org says the transaction cost is designed to increase along with the load on the network, making it very expensive to deliberately or inadvertently overload the network [1]. When the open ledger is busy, the open ledger cost increases exponentially for each transaction included in it [1]. A transaction that meets a server’s local load cost but not the open ledger cost is not simply rejected: if the server estimates it is likely to be included in a later ledger, it adds the transaction to a queue [1]. The cost to relay a transaction is the base fee multiplied by the server’s load_factor, which represents the server’s current load level [1].

That describes the mechanism. No history of fee spikes has been found, so how high costs have risen in practice, and how often, is not known as of 1 October 2026. A Yahoo Finance report gave a quarterly average transaction cost of $0.00024, which it said had fallen [2].

Servers under strain also multiply the base cost by a load factor.[1] XRPL.org’s home page, checked September 29, 2026, showed 0.000011 XRP beside the words “Predictable, ultra-low fees.”[7]

How fast does an XRP payment settle?

XRPL.org’s documentation says a new ledger closes approximately every 3-5 seconds, and that transactions settle in 3-5 seconds for a fraction of a cent [22]. The way the ledger reaches agreement without mining is covered in how the XRP Ledger is kept secure without mining.

One reported example exists. crypto.news wrote on 8 July 2026 that the tokenized-Treasury settlement Ripple executed with JPMorgan, Mastercard and Ondo cleared in seconds on the XRPL, and that the instrument carrying the money was RLUSD [3]. That is a single settlement described by a news outlet, and its cash leg was a stablecoin rather than XRP.

How do the cost and finality time compare with Ethereum, Solana, Stellar and a bank wire?

For bank payments, CoinDesk reported on 7 September 2026 that DBS and Citi completed a cross-border USD payment using tokenized deposits on Swift’s Digital Ledger on 5 September, and that it settled in minutes rather than the industry norm of up to two business days [5]. The same article said, citing DBS’s statement, that a corporate treasurer moving liquidity from Singapore to New York on a Friday has to wait until the following Monday at the earliest [5]. The status of that Swift system is covered in what Swift’s blockchain ledger is and whether it is live.

Dated fee and finality figures for Ethereum, Solana and Stellar have not been established as of 1 October 2026, so no side-by-side comparison is given. Activity measures across those chains are compared in how XRP Ledger activity compares with Ethereum, Solana and Stellar. Whether speed is what sets XRP apart at all is the subject of what actually makes XRP different from Stellar and other fast networks.

Solana: the base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature; “50% is burned (removed from circulating supply) and 50% goes to the block-producing validator.”[9] Solana says finality “Today that takes about 12.8 seconds,” and its Alpenglow upgrade, which targets about 150 milliseconds, was “Not activated” on mainnet when checked September 29, 2026; Solana gives Q3 2026 as the expected mainnet date.[10]

Stellar: the minimum fee “cannot be lower than 100 stroops per operation,” and fee lumens “go into a locked account and are not given to or used by anyone.”[11]

If validators aren’t paid from fees, who pays for the network’s security?

Because XRPL.org says the transaction cost is not paid to any party [1], validators receive nothing from the fees on the transactions they process. Who runs validators and how that work is funded is not covered by the sources on this page as of 1 October 2026. The question of who pays for the ledger’s software is taken up in who writes and pays for the XRP Ledger’s software.

It gives the motive as “to preserve and protect the stable operation and sensible evolution of the network.”[8]

Does destroying fees make XRP scarcer?

The strongest critique of the burn is its size. crypto.news called the roughly 14 million XRP burned since 2012 a rounding error against a 100 billion token supply [3]. CCN, in its report on Blockworks’ Q2 2026 figures, wrote that billions of dollars can move across XRPL without creating substantial fee demand or meaningfully reducing XRP’s supply [2]. The case for and against the burn mattering is set out in do XRP fee burns make XRP scarce.

What other costs does a sender face?

The ledger’s transaction cost is one cost among several. XRPL.org says closing an account with an AccountDelete transaction costs 200,000 drops [1]. Costs charged off the ledger, such as exchange withdrawal and trading fees, are covered in what fees buyers really pay.