How much it costs to create an NFT is one of the first questions asked by those who’d love to bring their art onto the blockchain but don’t know where to start.
You may be surprised to find out that, depending on the blockchain and platform you’re using, creating an NFT can actually be cheaper than you expect, but some chains can still surprise you with high fees.
Read on to learn how much it costs to actually create an NFT and which popular blockchains are the most affordable to mint on.
The costs of creating an NFT project can vary a lot depending on many factors, like the blockchain you choose and its gas fees, platform fees, and listing fees.
That’s why launching an NFT collection can range from a few dollars on some networks and marketplaces to hundreds of dollars on others.
While some NFTs sell for incredible amounts of money and become famous, the threshold for entry is usually significantly lower. This is especially true nowadays with marketplaces like Magic Eden offering (almost) free mints, where you only need to pay program and gas fees (on Solana, for example). However, these fees also vary depending on the current network activity.
There are two main factors that affect the cost of creating an NFT:
Let’s take a closer look at each of them here.
When you mint your NFT on a specialized marketplace, you might be asked to pay a platform fee to the marketplace. NFT minting platforms are usually super user-friendly and don’t require any coding knowledge, so launching an NFT is actually quite easy.
Meanwhile, blockchain transaction fees, unlike platform fees, aren’t optional or avoidable, unless the platform decides to cover them for you as well.
Ethereum and Bitcoin tend to be the most expensive among the popular blockchains, while Base and Solana are on the cheaper end of the spectrum.
However, the final bill for creating your NFT will also heavily depend on the size of your transaction (so a static image NFT is significantly cheaper than a moving image, for example). The simpler the NFT, the cheaper the associated transaction fees will be.
With all the different costs of creating an NFT, let’s break it down by blockchain to make it easier to understand.
Here, we’re only talking about the on-chain fees to upload a 20 KB file, so no marketplace fees are included.
Ethereum is considered one of the more expensive blockchains, but its decentralization, security and large community are among the key reasons it leads in the NFT market.
Usually, Ethereum network fees can vary between $50 and $150 for a collection of 50 NFTs, but this price can easily go above $500 during times of high network congestion. At the time of writing, with median gas fees at around 6.503 Gwei, you’d pay around $117 for this number of NFTs, or $2.34 per NFT.
Solana is among the most affordable blockchains for launching your NFTs, although its popularity doesn’t quite match that of Ethereum.
On Solana, you need three transactions to create an NFT, where each of them costs 0.00045 SOL. With SOL worth $150.08 at the time of writing, it would cost around $10.13 to mint 50 NFTs, or $0.2 per NFT.
The cost of inscribing Bitcoin Ordinals is calculated using the formula content size in bytes divided by 4, multiplied by the fee rate. So, for a 20 kb image, which is relatively small, and a medium priority fee of 5 sats (at the time of writing), this would be 20,000/4 * 5, which comes up to 25,000 sats, or 0.00025 BTC, which is $23.36 (with BTC worth $93,456).
In other words, creating a series of 50 Ordinals at the same rate, with an image of the same size (let’s say you want to start a themed collection!) would set you back $1,168. This makes Ordinals the most expensive option among the ones we’ve listed. But that’s the price of using the most secure and decentralized blockchain. (h/t Ordinal Hub for the formula source)
Base is an Ethereum Layer 2 launched by Coinbase that was designed with lower costs in mind, so it comes as no surprise that it’s also cheaper than Ethereum.
At the time of writing, one transaction on Base would set you back $0.06, meaning that to create 50 NFTs, you’d pay $3. Easy, right?
If you want to create your own NFTs, the Magic Eden Mint Terminal is a great way to start.
Simply choose the chain on which you want to host your collection, upload your artwork, enter the name and other data, set the price and then broadcast your transaction. With specific markets for minting on Ethereum, Base, Apechain, Abstract and more.
Connect your wallet to Magic Eden now to start minting NFTs.
Creating NFTs costs money, at least the gas fees required to broadcast them to the network. If you’re using a platform, you may even have to pay their marketplace fees. The total cost is highly dependent on your choices but typically you are looking at a few dollars per minted NFTs.
Designing an NFT is free if you’re doing it yourself, but creating and deploying one will incur blockchain transaction fees. They depend on the size of your NFT, your blockchain of choice and network congestion, among other factors. The cost can range anywhere from less than a dollar to thousands of dollars.
Creating NFTs completely for free isn’t possible, but you can drive the cost down so much that it’s close to negligible by using a marketplace like Magic Eden, plus low-fee blockchains like Base or Solana.
It’ll depend on your NFT, but a single simple NFT on Solana might cost you around $0.2 by today’s SOL price. In either case, generally speaking, Solana is one of the cheapest blockchains for NFTs. With its low gas fees, it’s likely that you’ll pay less than $1 per NFT.
Many blockchains aimed at low fees are great choices for creating NFTs. Among the biggest blockchains, Solana and Base are the least expensive at time of writing. However, their transaction fees also depend on how busy the network is at the specific moment you’re minting your NFTs.
Creating an NFT without coding experience typically costs a few dollars per NFT. No coding experience means you’ll need to use a platform that simplifies the process for you, such as Magic Eden, so you’re paying the same amount that someone with coding experience does.
The cost of creating an NFT collection is the same as creating a single NFT times the number of NFTs in your collection. In other words, if it costs $1 to create an NFT, be prepared to pay $50 for 50 of them
The information provided on this website is provided for general educational purposes only and is in no way financial or investment advice. Certain information may have also been provided to us or prepared by third parties; these materials are provided for convenience and are not an endorsement by Magic Eden. Magic Eden is not liable for any errors, changes or amendments to such information, including any actions taken in reliance on such information.
