XRPL Base Fee Explained

The XRPL Base Fee: 10 Drops Minimum

The XRPL base fee — formally known as the reference transaction cost — is the absolute minimum fee required to have a transaction considered by the network. Set at 10 drops (0.00001 XRP), this baseline protects the XRP Ledger from spam while keeping costs negligible for legitimate users. The base fee is stored in the FeeSettings ledger entry and is updated periodically through the validator fee voting process.

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What Is a Drop?

A drop is the smallest unit of XRP, similar to a satoshi on Bitcoin. 1 XRP = 1,000,000 drops. The XRPL base fee of 10 drops therefore equals 0.00001 XRP. All internal fee calculations on the ledger are performed in drops to avoid floating-point precision issues.
The FeeSettings Ledger Entry

The XRP Ledger stores the current base fee in a special ledger object called FeeSettings. This entry contains: base_fee (in drops), minimum_fee, median_fee, and open_ledger_fee. The FeeSettings entry is updated whenever validators reach consensus on a new fee level through the SetFee pseudo-transaction mechanism.
Base Fee vs. Open Ledger Fee

The base fee (10 drops) is the absolute minimum for queuing a transaction. The open ledger fee is what's required to be included in the current open ledger immediately — this can be significantly higher during high-load periods. If you submit at the base fee during congestion, your transaction is queued for a future ledger.
How Validators Set the Base Fee

Every 256 ledgers (a 'flag ledger', approximately every 15 minutes), validators tally each other's fee preferences from their rippled.cfg [voting] configuration. The network adopts the median of trusted validators' preferences. This decentralized voting mechanism ensures no single entity controls XRPL fee levels.
Base Fee History

The XRPL base fee has remained at 10 drops (0.00001 XRP) for the majority of the ledger's history since 2012. Account reserve requirements were significantly reduced in December 2024 from 10 XRP to 1 XRP for base reserve, and from 2 XRP to 0.2 XRP for object/trustline creation, following a validator vote.

XRPL Fee Quick Reference

Base Fee: 0.00001 XRP (10 drops) | Fee in USD: ~$0.0000152 | 1M Transactions: ~$15.20 | Fees are burned permanently — not paid to validators. Account reserve: 1 XRP. Trustline reserve: 0.2 XRP. Fee updated via validator vote every ~15 minutes.
XRPL vs. Other Networks

Ethereum avg fee: $1–$10+ | Bitcoin avg fee: $1–$5 | Solana avg fee: $0.004 | XRPL avg fee: $0.0000152 | The XRP Ledger is approximately 265x cheaper than Solana and 50,000x cheaper than Ethereum for standard payment transactions.
Historical Fee Burns

Since the XRP Ledger launched in June 2012, more than 14.3 million XRP have been permanently burned through transaction fees. At current prices this represents significant value destroyed, making XRP a deflationary asset over long time horizons.