How much does a typical TON transaction cost?

A simple TON transfer costs an average of approximately 0.0055 TON in gas fees. TON's architecture is designed so that fees remain below $0.01 even if TON's price increases significantly — this is a deliberate scalability goal, not an accident of low demand.

What is Tonkeeper Battery and how does it work?

Tonkeeper Battery is a feature that allows you to pre-pay transaction fees using a credit card, TON, or USDT stablecoins — so you don't need to hold TON just for gas. One Battery charge covers a simple TON transfer. More complex transactions like token or NFT transfers require 5–10 charges. Battery removes the friction for new users who want to transact without first visiting an exchange to acquire TON.

Tonkeeper Education Hub #2: TON Transaction Fees Explained and Tonkeeper Battery Guide

TON transaction fees explained and Tonkeeper Battery guide — Education Hub second installment

Welcome back to the Tonkeeper Education Hub. In our first installment, we covered what blockchain is and how blockchain explorers work. This time, we are going deeper into something that affects every transaction you make on TON: fees.

We will also introduce Tonkeeper Battery — a feature that removes one of the most common friction points for new crypto users entirely.

How Do TON Transaction Fees Work?

Every blockchain needs fees to compensate the validators who process and record transactions. TON's fee structure is more granular than most blockchains — rather than a single "gas price," a TON transaction fee is the sum of five components:

TransactionFee = StorageFees + InFwdFees + ComputationFees + ActionFees + OutFwdFees

Here is what each component covers:

Storage Fee: The cost of storing your wallet's smart contract state on the blockchain. This is charged per second of storage — a small ongoing fee for keeping your wallet data on-chain.
In-Forward Fee (in_fwd_fee): A charge for importing messages from outside the TON blockchain into the TON network for validators to process.
Computation Fee: The cost of executing the smart contract code on the TON Virtual Machine (TVM). More complex operations cost more. A simple transfer involves minimal computation; a DeFi interaction involves significantly more.
Action Fee: The cost of actions triggered by smart contract execution — for example, sending messages to other contracts as part of a transaction.
Out-Forward Fee (out_fwd_fee): A charge for sending messages out of the TON network to interact with external services.

For practical purposes, most users do not need to calculate these components individually. For a simple TON transfer, total fees average approximately 0.0055 TON. TON's architecture is specifically designed to keep transaction fees below $0.01 even as the price of TON increases — this is a deliberate engineering goal, not an accident of low network usage. The TON documentation covers the fee formula in technical detail for developers who want to calculate costs precisely.

🔋 Tonkeeper Battery: Pay Gas Without Holding TON

One of the most common friction points for new crypto users is this: to make any transaction, you need to already hold the network's native token (TON, in this case) to pay gas. If you receive USDT as your first crypto and want to send it to someone, you need TON to cover the fee — which means a trip to an exchange before you can do anything.

Tonkeeper Battery solves this. Battery is a pre-paid gas credit system built into Tonkeeper. You load Battery charges using:

In-app purchase with a credit or debit card
TON
USDT stablecoins on TON

When you make a transaction, Tonkeeper automatically uses Battery charges to cover the gas fee. You do not need to hold TON for gas. This is particularly valuable for users who primarily hold stablecoins or other tokens.

Battery capacity for different transaction types:

1 charge: covers a simple TON transfer
5–10 charges: required for more complex transactions such as token or NFT transfers

Tonkeeper Battery processed more than 2 million transactions by mid-2024. For users new to TON, it is one of the most practical features to enable first — it removes a significant administrative hurdle from the first experience of the network.

Next in the series: Managing collectibles and NFTs in Tonkeeper.