How are compute units estimated?

Each instruction type has a typical compute-unit cost: a simple SOL transfer is around 300 CU, an SPL token transfer around 4,500 CU, an account creation around 3,000 CU, an NFT mint around 30,000 CU, and a DEX swap around 60,000 CU. The tool sums your instruction counts to estimate the transaction's total CU usage.

What is a priority fee on Solana?

Beyond the flat 5,000-lamport-per-signature base fee, you can attach a priority fee priced in micro-lamports per compute unit. It bids for faster inclusion when the network is congested. Priority fee equals compute-unit limit times the micro-lamport price, divided by one million to convert to lamports.

What micro-lamport prices do the tiers use?

The tool uses illustrative tiers of roughly 1,000 micro-lamports/CU (low), 10,000 (medium), and 50,000 (high). Real optimal pricing is dynamic — query getRecentPrioritizationFees from an RPC node at send time, because congestion changes minute to minute.

Why add a buffer to the compute limit?

If a transaction exceeds the compute-unit limit it requested, it fails. Best practice is to set the limit slightly above the simulated usage. The tool prices the priority fee against the estimated CU usage; in production, set your ComputeBudget limit a little higher to avoid failures.

Are these costs exact?

No. Compute-unit costs vary by program implementation and account state, and SOL's price moves constantly. Treat the output as a planning estimate. For exact figures, simulate the transaction against an RPC node, which returns the actual units consumed.

Solana Compute Unit & Priority Fee Estimator

Solana fees have two parts: a tiny flat base fee per signature and an optional priority fee that bids for faster inclusion. This estimator adds up the compute units your instructions consume and prices the priority fee so you can see the real cost in lamports, SOL, and dollars before you send.

How it works

Total compute units come from summing per-instruction estimates. The fee is then:

base_fee     = 5,000 lamports × signatures
priority_fee = compute_units × micro_lamports_per_CU / 1,000,000
total        = base_fee + priority_fee   (lamports)
SOL          = total / 1,000,000,000
USD          = SOL × sol_price

Per-instruction CU estimates: SOL transfer ≈ 300, token transfer ≈ 4,500, account creation ≈ 3,000, NFT mint ≈ 30,000, swap ≈ 60,000.

Notes and example

A transaction that does one SOL transfer (300 CU) plus one token transfer (4,500 CU) needs about 4,800 CU. At a medium tier of 10,000 micro-lamports/CU the priority fee is 4,800 × 10,000 / 1,000,000 = 48,000 lamports, plus the 5,000-lamport base fee, for 53,000 lamports — about 0.000053 SOL, or roughly $0.008 at $150/SOL. Priority pricing is dynamic, so query getRecentPrioritizationFees at send time for live numbers, and set your ComputeBudget limit slightly above the estimate.