When is gas cheapest on Base?
Timing is worth real money on Base. The same swap costs $0.0017 at its cheapest hour and $0.032 at its most expensive — 18× the price for an identical transaction.
The cheap stretch runs from 10:00 UTC to 11:00 UTC — 1 consecutive hours below the 0.00503 gwei median, covering the European morning. The single cheapest cell in six months of data was Sunday at 03:00 UTC; the most expensive was Wednesday at 12:00 UTC.
Weekends are genuinely cheaper: 0.00510 gwei against 0.00653 gwei on weekdays, 22% lower. If a transaction can wait until Saturday, it should.
Right now
Base is at 0.00500 gwei — about its six-month median.
Every hour, ranked
Mean gas price for each hour of the day (UTC), averaged across all days over six months.
| # | Hour (UTC) | Mean fee | vs median | Swap cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10:00 UTC | 0.00502 gwei | 0% | $0.0017 |
| 2 | 08:00 UTC | 0.00508 gwei | +1% | $0.0018 |
| 3 | 07:00 UTC | 0.00508 gwei | +1% | $0.0018 |
| 4 | 09:00 UTC | 0.00508 gwei | +1% | $0.0018 |
| 5 | 04:00 UTC | 0.00511 gwei | +2% | $0.0018 |
| 6 | 03:00 UTC | 0.00511 gwei | +2% | $0.0018 |
| 7 | 20:00 UTC | 0.00513 gwei | +2% | $0.0018 |
| 8 | 21:00 UTC | 0.00515 gwei | +2% | $0.0018 |
| 9 | 22:00 UTC | 0.00519 gwei | +3% | $0.0018 |
| 10 | 23:00 UTC | 0.00522 gwei | +4% | $0.0018 |
| 11 | 05:00 UTC | 0.00525 gwei | +4% | $0.0018 |
| 12 | 00:00 UTC | 0.00554 gwei | +10% | $0.0019 |
| 13 | 18:00 UTC | 0.00562 gwei | +12% | $0.0019 |
| 14 | 11:00 UTC | 0.00575 gwei | +14% | $0.0020 |
| 15 | 17:00 UTC | 0.00576 gwei | +15% | $0.0020 |
| 16 | 19:00 UTC | 0.00578 gwei | +15% | $0.0020 |
| 17 | 15:00 UTC | 0.00588 gwei | +17% | $0.0020 |
| 18 | 06:00 UTC | 0.00590 gwei | +17% | $0.0020 |
| 19 | 16:00 UTC | 0.00594 gwei | +18% | $0.0021 |
| 20 | 02:00 UTC | 0.00617 gwei | +23% | $0.0021 |
| 21 | 13:00 UTC | 0.00633 gwei | +26% | $0.0022 |
| 22 | 01:00 UTC | 0.00661 gwei | +32% | $0.0023 |
| 23 | 14:00 UTC | 0.00763 gwei | +52% | $0.0026 |
| 24 | 12:00 UTC | 0.017 gwei | +247% | $0.0061 |
What it costs
At the cheapest hour versus the most expensive, priced at $2313.42 per ETH.
| Transaction | Gas units | Cheapest hour | Most expensive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send native token | 21,000 | $0.00024 | $0.0045 |
| Send an ERC-20 token | 65,000 | $0.00075 | $0.014 |
| Swap on a DEX | 150,000 | $0.0017 | $0.032 |
Gas units are typical values, not measurements — real usage varies with the contract and with state. L2 execution fee only — excludes the L1 data fee, which is usually the larger share of what you pay.
Six months, by day and hour
Each cell combines about 7,674 readings from 25–26 occurrences of that hour. Green is cheaper, red dearer.
Questions
When is gas cheapest on Base?
Averaged over six months, the cheapest single hour is Sunday at 03:00 UTC, at 0.00500 gwei. The broader cheap window runs 10:00 UTC to 11:00 UTC.
How much can timing actually save on Base?
The most expensive hour runs 0.092 gwei against 0.00500 gwei at the cheapest. On a 150,000-gas swap that is $0.032 against $0.0017.
What data is this based on?
1,289,164 block observations for Base between 2026-04-30 and 2026-10-27, sampled every 12 seconds and averaged by day and hour: each of the 168 cells combines about 7,674 readings from 25–26 occurrences of that hour. All hours are UTC.
Why do Base fees look so low here?
Base is a rollup. The fee measured on this page is the L2 execution fee only; settling the transaction on Ethereum adds an L1 data fee that is usually the larger share of what you actually pay and is not included in these figures.