Which Layer 2 Has the Lowest Gas Fees for Your Transaction Type

05 September 2026

There is no single answer to which Layer 2 is cheapest. Gas costs depend heavily on the operation you want to execute, and the architecture of each network shapes its fee profile. What works cheaply for a simple ETH transfer may cost more for an NFT mint.

Four major Layer 2 networks dominate user activity: Arbitrum One, Optimism, Base, and zkSync Era. Each uses a different approach to batching and posting data to Ethereum. That difference matters for your wallet.

ETH Transfers

Sending ETH is the simplest transaction. Costs are low across all four networks. zkSync Era tends to have the lowest raw cost for a basic transfer because its ZK rollup design batches many transactions into a single validity proof. That proof is small, so L1 data costs are reduced. Optimism and Base are similar; both are optimistic rollups that post transaction data as calldata, which is cheaper than the storage-heavy approach of some older chains. Arbitrum One falls in the same range. For a single ETH send, the difference between the cheapest and most expensive is often less than a few cents.

ERC-20 Transfers

Sending tokens introduces more computation. Each network must update contract state. zkSync Era still holds an advantage here: its custom account abstraction model can batch token transfers efficiently. The Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible optimistic rollups handle this with standard EVM opcodes. Arbitrum One, Optimism, and Base charge similar fees for ERC-20 sends. The gap between ZK and optimistic rollups narrows. None of them are dramatically more expensive than the others.

Uniswap Swaps

Trading tokens on Uniswap requires multiple state changes. The contract reads pool data, updates balances, and emits events. This is a much heavier operation, and zkSync Era's advantage fades because its ZK proof must encode all that computation. The proof generation cost scales with complexity. Optimistic rollups post calldata of the full transaction. For a standard swap, Arbitrum One, Optimism, and Base often beat zkSync Era. The difference is small but consistent, and Arbitrum One's efficient sequencer model gives it a slight edge here.

NFT Mints

Minting an NFT is the most storage-intensive common action. The contract writes a new token ID, metadata, and owner record to state. Optimistic rollups pay a high cost for this because they post all that data to L1 calldata. zkSync Era has a different disadvantage: its ZK proof must commit to the new state root, and the cost of computing the proof for an NFT mint offsets the calldata savings. In practice, all four networks charge similar amounts for minting a single NFT. None is clearly cheapest.

Why ZK rollups have different cost profiles

ZK rollups, like zkSync Era, compress transaction data more aggressively. They generate a succinct validity proof that verifies the correctness of the entire batch on Ethereum. This proof is tiny, so the L1 data cost is low. But the prover must compute the proof for every batch, and that computation has a fixed overhead. For simple actions like ETH transfers, the low data cost dominates. For complex actions like swaps or mints, the proof computation cost catches up. Optimistic rollups pay higher L1 data costs but no proof generation cost; they post all transaction data as uncompressed calldata. The trade-off is simple. ZK rollups win on simple transactions. Optimistic rollups compete or win on complex ones.

Arbitrum nova for ultra-low-cost use cases

Arbitrum Nova is a separate chain from Arbitrum One. It uses a different data availability model called AnyTrust. Instead of posting all transaction data to Ethereum, Nova relies on a committee of validators to store data off-chain, and only data availability certificates are posted to L1. This massively reduces gas costs for users. Nova is designed for high-volume, low-value applications like gaming or social transactions. It does not support general-purpose DeFi at the same security level as Arbitrum One. For simple token transfers or interactions with whitelisted contracts, Nova fees are often under a cent. It is not a replacement for the main networks. It is an alternative for use cases where cost sensitivity exceeds security sensitivity.

Ongoing Reference Tools

Gas costs change with L1 congestion and network activity. No static comparison is reliable.

L2Fees.info provides live fee estimates for common operations across all major Layer 2 networks. It updates in real time. You can check the current cost of an ETH transfer, token swap, or NFT mint before you act. The site shows both the L2 fee and the total cost including L1 data posting.

L1Beat tracks the security and data availability models of each Layer 2. It publishes detailed data on how each chain posts data to Ethereum. You can see which networks use calldata, blobs, or data availability committees. This technical information explains why one network charges more than another for the same transaction.

No single Layer 2 will stay cheapest forever. Check L2Fees.info before you transact. Check L1Beat if you want to understand why the numbers look the way they do. The answer depends on what you are doing, when you are doing it, and how much security you require.

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