When is gas cheapest on Polygon?
Timing is worth real money on Polygon. The same swap costs $0.0028 at its cheapest hour and $0.0061 at its most expensive — 2.2× the price for an identical transaction.
The cheap stretch runs from 02:00 UTC to 09:00 UTC — 7 consecutive hours below the 241.6 gwei median, covering overnight in the Americas, and the working morning across Asia. The single cheapest cell in six months of data was Wednesday at 04:00 UTC; the most expensive was Saturday at 09:00 UTC.
Weekends are not cheaper here in any meaningful sense: the weekend mean of 250.2 gwei sits within 4% of the weekday mean. Day of week is the wrong dimension to optimise on Polygon — hour of day is where the variation lives.
Right now
Polygon is at 247.8 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 | 04:00 UTC | 229.3 gwei | -5% | $0.0031 |
| 2 | 05:00 UTC | 230.7 gwei | -5% | $0.0031 |
| 3 | 06:00 UTC | 233.7 gwei | -3% | $0.0031 |
| 4 | 03:00 UTC | 237.0 gwei | -2% | $0.0032 |
| 5 | 18:00 UTC | 237.3 gwei | -2% | $0.0032 |
| 6 | 21:00 UTC | 237.3 gwei | -2% | $0.0032 |
| 7 | 19:00 UTC | 237.6 gwei | -2% | $0.0032 |
| 8 | 07:00 UTC | 237.6 gwei | -2% | $0.0032 |
| 9 | 20:00 UTC | 238.3 gwei | -1% | $0.0032 |
| 10 | 23:00 UTC | 238.4 gwei | -1% | $0.0032 |
| 11 | 17:00 UTC | 239.1 gwei | -1% | $0.0032 |
| 12 | 08:00 UTC | 239.8 gwei | -1% | $0.0032 |
| 13 | 22:00 UTC | 240.0 gwei | -1% | $0.0032 |
| 14 | 02:00 UTC | 240.4 gwei | 0% | $0.0032 |
| 15 | 01:00 UTC | 242.2 gwei | +0% | $0.0032 |
| 16 | 00:00 UTC | 242.8 gwei | +0% | $0.0033 |
| 17 | 16:00 UTC | 242.9 gwei | +1% | $0.0033 |
| 18 | 13:00 UTC | 243.1 gwei | +1% | $0.0033 |
| 19 | 15:00 UTC | 243.8 gwei | +1% | $0.0033 |
| 20 | 14:00 UTC | 244.2 gwei | +1% | $0.0033 |
| 21 | 11:00 UTC | 244.4 gwei | +1% | $0.0033 |
| 22 | 12:00 UTC | 259.7 gwei | +8% | $0.0035 |
| 23 | 09:00 UTC | 270.5 gwei | +12% | $0.0036 |
| 24 | 10:00 UTC | 283.4 gwei | +17% | $0.0038 |
What it costs
At the cheapest hour versus the most expensive, priced at $0.089 per POL.
| Transaction | Gas units | Cheapest hour | Most expensive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send native token | 21,000 | $0.00039 | $0.00086 |
| Send an ERC-20 token | 65,000 | $0.0012 | $0.0027 |
| Swap on a DEX | 150,000 | $0.0028 | $0.0061 |
Gas units are typical values, not measurements — real usage varies with the contract and with state.
Six months, by day and hour
Each cell combines about 6,933 readings from 25–26 occurrences of that hour. Green is cheaper, red dearer.
Questions
When is gas cheapest on Polygon?
Averaged over six months, the cheapest single hour is Wednesday at 04:00 UTC, at 208.5 gwei. The broader cheap window runs 02:00 UTC to 09:00 UTC.
How much can timing actually save on Polygon?
The most expensive hour runs 456.9 gwei against 208.5 gwei at the cheapest. On a 150,000-gas swap that is $0.0061 against $0.0028.
What data is this based on?
1,164,768 block observations for Polygon 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 6,933 readings from 25–26 occurrences of that hour. All hours are UTC.