When you find a block solo mining, you don’t just get a random amount of coins. The reward you receive has two distinct parts: the block subsidy and transaction fees. Most guides gloss over this difference, but understanding it changes how you calculate profitability and choose which coins to mine.
I spent three months tracking every block reward across different coins to see how transaction fees actually impact solo mining earnings. The results surprised me. For some coins, fees make up 40% of the reward. For others, they’re practically zero.
Here’s what the numbers say about what you actually earn when you find a block.
Step 1: Understanding What Makes Up a Solo Mining Block Reward
Every block you find pays out two things. The block subsidy — that’s the newly created coins the protocol automatically gives you. And transaction fees — the amounts users paid to include their transactions in your block.
The block subsidy follows a fixed schedule. Bitcoin’s current subsidy is 3.125 BTC, halving every 210,000 blocks. Litecoin pays 6.25 LTC, halving every 840,000 blocks. Kaspa issues about 268 KAS per block with a smooth monthly reduction. These numbers are programmed into the protocol and never change randomly.
Transaction fees are different. They fluctuate based on network congestion. When lots of people want their transactions confirmed quickly, they bid up fees. When the network is quiet, fees drop to almost nothing.
Quick math: If you solo mine Bitcoin and find a block today, you get 3.125 BTC subsidy plus maybe 0.2-0.8 BTC in fees, depending on network activity. That’s 3.325 to 3.925 BTC total. The subsidy is guaranteed, the fees are variable.
For solo miners, this distinction matters more than for pool miners. Pool miners get smoothed-out averages over thousands of blocks. You get whatever the network looks like at the exact moment you find your block. Sometimes that means you hit a high-fee period and earn 20% extra. Sometimes fees are dead and you only get the base subsidy.
How Transaction Fees Are Collected
Every transaction includes an optional fee. Actually, it’s technically optional but practically required — transactions with zero fees usually don’t get mined. Users set their fee based on how urgently they need confirmation.
The miner who finds the block collects all fees from every transaction they include. If your block has 2,500 transactions averaging 0.0001 BTC each in fees, that’s 0.25 BTC for you. If it has 1,000 transactions averaging 0.0003 BTC, that’s 0.3 BTC.
You don’t get to choose which transactions to include — your mining software does that automatically, usually prioritizing highest fee-per-byte transactions to maximize your reward. That’s why transaction selection algorithms exist in mining software.
Step 2: Calculate Your Expected Block Reward for Different Coins
Let’s run through real numbers for coins that actually make sense for solo miners. I’m using current subsidy schedules and average fee percentages from the last 90 days of blockchain data.
Bitcoin:
- Block subsidy: 3.125 BTC
- Average transaction fees: 0.3-0.5 BTC (varies widely)
- Total reward: ~3.425 BTC average
- Current value: 3.425 × $66,312 = substantial
- Fee percentage: 9-15% of total reward
Worth noting: Bitcoin fees are the most volatile. During high network congestion (like during NFT mints or major market movements), I’ve seen blocks pay 1+ BTC in fees. During quiet weekends, fees can drop to 0.1 BTC.
Litecoin:
- Block subsidy: 6.25 LTC
- Average transaction fees: 0.002-0.01 LTC
- Total reward: ~6.26 LTC
- Current value: 6.26 × $53.66
- Fee percentage: 0.03-0.16% of total reward
Litecoin fees are basically negligible for reward calculation purposes. You’re mining for the subsidy, period.
Kaspa:
- Block subsidy: ~268 KAS (decreasing monthly)
- Average transaction fees: 0.1-0.5 KAS
- Total reward: ~268.3 KAS
- Current value: 268.3 × $0.0293
- Fee percentage: 0.04-0.19% of total reward
- Block time: 1 second (produces 86,400 blocks daily)
Kaspa’s interesting because blocks come every second. The per-block reward is small, but solo miners can potentially find multiple blocks per day with enough hashrate.
Monero:
- Block subsidy: ~0.6 XMR (decreasing slowly via tail emission)
- Average transaction fees: 0.0001-0.001 XMR
- Total reward: ~0.601 XMR
- Current value: 0.601 × $342.52
- Fee percentage: 0.02-0.17% of total reward
Monero fees are also basically nothing. CPU mining rewards are almost entirely subsidy-based.
Alephium:
- Block subsidy: ~0.78 ALPH (varies by chain)
- Average transaction fees: 0.001-0.01 ALPH
- Total reward: ~0.79 ALPH
- Current value: 0.79 × $0.0787
- Fee percentage: 0.13-1.27% of total reward
Check out our Alephium solo mining guide for detailed hashrate requirements.
Ergo:
- Block subsidy: 51 ERG (decreasing every ~2 years)
- Average transaction fees: 0.1-0.3 ERG
- Total reward: ~51.2 ERG
- Current value: 51.2 × $0.3491
- Fee percentage: 0.2-0.6% of total reward
Our Ergo solo mining setup guide covers GPU configuration for this coin.
Why These Numbers Matter for Solo Miners
When you’re calculating expected value for solo mining, most people just multiply the block subsidy by coin price. That’s wrong. You need to include average fees, because over hundreds or thousands of theoretical blocks, those fees add up.
For Bitcoin, ignoring fees underestimates your earnings by 9-15%. That’s the difference between break-even and profitable in some scenarios. For other coins, fees are so small they’re basically rounding errors.
Step 3: Factor Transaction Fees Into Your Profitability Calculations
Here’s how I actually calculate expected earnings from finding a block. This is the method I use in my mining spreadsheets.
Formula: (Block Subsidy + Average Fees) × Coin Price = Gross Block Reward
Then subtract your costs:
- Electricity cost for time to find block
- Hardware depreciation
- Pool fee if using a solo mining pool
Let’s work through a real example. Say you’re solo mining Bitcoin with 100 TH/s (about one Antminer S19).
Network hashrate: 750 EH/s
Your hashrate: 0.1 PH/s
Your share: 0.1 / 750,000 = 0.000000133%
Blocks per day: 144
Expected blocks per day: 144 × 0.000000133% = 0.0000192 blocks
Days to find one block: 1 / 0.0000192 = ~52,083 days (143 years)
Okay, that’s why most people don’t solo mine Bitcoin. But if you did find a block:
Gross reward: 3.425 BTC × $66,312
Electricity (143 years at 3,250W, $0.10/kWh): Let’s not even calculate this
Net: Irrelevant because you’ll never find a block
Better example: Solo mining Kaspa with 600 GH/s (achievable with 6-7 mid-range GPUs).
Network hashrate: ~95 TH/s
Your hashrate: 0.6 TH/s
Your share: 0.6 / 95 = 0.63%
Blocks per day: 86,400
Expected blocks per day: 86,400 × 0.63% = 544 blocks
Days to find one block: ~0.00184 days (2.7 minutes average)
Wait, that’s too fast. Let me recalculate with realistic numbers.
Actually, with 600 GH/s you’d expect more like 1 block every 2-3 hours depending on luck variance. The Kaspa network moves fast.
Gross reward per block: 268.3 KAS × $0.0293
Electricity per block (3 hours at 1,400W, $0.10/kWh): $0.42
Blocks per day: ~8-12
Daily gross: 2,146-3,220 KAS
Daily electricity: $3.36
Net daily: Depends on KAS price
This is why I always tell people: do the math for your specific situation. Kaspa solo mining can work with enough GPUs. Bitcoin solo mining is essentially a lottery ticket unless you have massive hashrate.
Step 4: Track How Transaction Fees Change Your Actual Earnings
If you’re serious about solo mining, keeping detailed records matters. I log every block found with these data points:
- Date and time found
- Block height
- Block subsidy (from protocol)
- Transaction fees (from block explorer)
- Total reward
- Coin price at time of finding
- USD value
After tracking this for coins where I actually find blocks (Kaspa, Alephium, some Ergo), I noticed patterns. Weekend blocks on Kaspa have slightly lower fees. Ergo blocks during Asian trading hours tend to have higher fees. These differences are small — maybe 5-10% — but they exist.
For Bitcoin, I obviously don’t have personal data from finding blocks. No one with hobby-level hashrate does. But I track historical fee percentages from public block explorers. That data shows massive volatility. Some blocks pay 2% fees, others pay 25%.
The practical lesson: When calculating if solo mining makes sense, use average fees for your baseline calculation. But understand your actual result could be 20% higher or lower just based on when you find your block.
Tools for Tracking Block Rewards
I use these block explorers to check actual reward data:
- Bitcoin: mempool.space shows detailed fee breakdowns per block
- Litecoin: blockchair.com has good historical fee data
- Kaspa: explorer.kaspa.org breaks down subsidy vs fees
- Monero: xmrchain.net shows full reward composition
- Ergo: explorer.ergoplatform.com lists fees separately
I check these weekly to update my profitability spreadsheets with current average fees.
Step 5: Adjust Your Strategy Based on Fee Economics
Transaction fees change which coins make sense to solo mine. Here’s my framework for evaluating this.
High-fee coins (fees are 5%+ of reward): Only Bitcoin really falls here consistently. For these coins, timing matters. If you could somehow predict high-fee periods and mine more aggressively then, you’d increase earnings. In practice, this is basically impossible for solo miners. Network congestion happens unpredictably.
Strategy: Mine consistently, accept that fees will average out over time. Don’t try to time the network unless you have some edge (you don’t).
Low-fee coins (fees under 1% of reward): Most PoW coins. Litecoin, Monero, Kaspa, Alephium, Ergo, Flux, Ravencoin. For these, fees are basically irrelevant to your calculation.
Strategy: Ignore fees in profitability calculations. Focus entirely on block subsidy and your odds of finding blocks. Fees are rounding errors.
Special case – dying coins: When a coin’s price crashes but remains mineable, transaction volume often dies too. Fees go to zero because no one is using the network. This creates a death spiral where miners leave, making solo mining easier, but the reward becomes worthless.
I saw this happen with a few smaller coins. Block reward was technically still there, hashrate dropped making solo mining feasible, but fees disappeared completely because the only transactions were miners moving coins to exchanges to sell.
Strategy: Avoid coins in obvious decline regardless of solo mining odds. A 100% chance of finding worthless blocks is not interesting.
The Monero Lesson
I solo mined Monero for two months last year as an experiment. CPU mining, running on some old hardware during winter for heat. Found 3 blocks total with about 15 KH/s.
All three blocks paid almost exactly 0.6 XMR. Transaction fees across all three blocks combined were maybe 0.0005 XMR. Basically nothing. This taught me that for most coins, the elaborate fee tracking I was doing didn’t matter.
After that, I simplified my profitability spreadsheets. For low-fee coins, I just calculate based on block subsidy. Saves time and the accuracy loss is negligible.
Step 6: Understand How Halving Events Change Your Math
Block subsidies don’t stay constant forever. Most coins have programmed supply schedules that reduce rewards over time.
Bitcoin halves every four years. Litecoin halves every four years. Ergo reduces smoothly over eight years. Kaspa has monthly reductions. Monero uses tail emission after the main schedule ends.
For solo miners, halvings create a decision point. Your expected value per block just cut in half. Unless the coin price doubles to compensate (it usually doesn’t, at least not immediately), your mining is suddenly less profitable.
Here’s what the numbers say: If you’re solo mining with a 0.5% chance of finding a block monthly, and the reward halves, you now have a 0.5% chance at half the prize. Your expected monthly return just dropped 50%. The mining difficulty might drop as miners leave, improving your odds slightly, but rarely enough to fully offset the reward cut.
I track all upcoming halvings for coins I mine or consider mining. Bitcoin’s next halving is 2026. Litecoin’s is 2026. If you’re calculating multi-year ROI on mining hardware, you need to factor in these events.
Quick math example: You buy a GPU rig planning to solo mine Ergo. Current block reward is 51 ERG. In two years, it drops to maybe 43 ERG (Ergo’s reduction is gradual). Your hardware is getting less reward per block over time, even if difficulty stays constant. That affects your break-even timeline.
The Transaction Fee Compensation Hypothesis
Some people argue that as block subsidies decrease, transaction fees will rise to compensate. The theory is that miners need to earn enough to secure the network, so fees will naturally adjust upward.
Looking at actual data: This hasn’t really happened yet for most coins. Bitcoin fees have increased over the years, but mostly due to network congestion, not deliberate fee market development. Litecoin fees are still negligible despite multiple halvings.
For solo mining calculations, I don’t factor in hypothetical future fee increases. I use current average fees and current block subsidies. Anything else is speculation.
Step 7: Compare Solo vs Pool Mining for Fee Collection
This is where solo mining gets interesting from a fee perspective. When you mine in a pool, fees get distributed across all miners proportionally. When you solo mine, you get 100% of the fees in blocks you find.
For high-fee coins like Bitcoin, this creates variance. Some blocks pay high fees, others low fees. In a pool, you get the average. Solo mining, you get whatever your specific block paid.
Let’s say average Bitcoin fees are 0.4 BTC per block, but the range is 0.1 to 1.2 BTC depending on network congestion. Pool mining, you effectively get 0.4 BTC per block worth of fees distributed across your shares. Solo mining, you might find a block during a quiet period and only get 0.1 BTC in fees. Or you might hit a congested period and get 1.2 BTC.
Over thousands of blocks, this averages out. But solo miners don’t find thousands of blocks (unless you’re mining fast-block coins like Kaspa). You might find one block. Or ten. Or zero.
This adds another layer of variance on top of the already high variance of finding blocks at all. Honestly, if variance bothers you, solo mining is the wrong choice regardless of fee considerations. Check out the differences in our solo mining vs lottery mining article.
Pool Fees vs Transaction Fees
Don’t confuse these. Pool fees are what the pool operator charges (typically 0.5-2% of your earnings). Transaction fees are what you collect from blocks.
When using a solo mining pool like CKPool, you pay the pool fee but keep 100% of block rewards (subsidy + transaction fees). When using a regular proportional pool, you pay the pool fee and only get your proportional share of all rewards.
Quick math: Solo mining Bitcoin through CKPool (assuming 2% pool fee), if you find a block with 3.125 BTC subsidy + 0.4 BTC fees = 3.525 BTC total, you keep 3.5145 BTC after the 2% fee. You paid 0.0705 BTC to the pool operator.
Regular pool mining with same 2% fee and same hashrate, you’d earn tiny fractions of many blocks. Your share of a 3.525 BTC block might be 0.00001 BTC depending on your hashrate percentage. You’d earn smoothly over time but never see the full block reward.
Honest Assessment: When Transaction Fees Actually Matter
After all this analysis, here’s my straightforward take: Transaction fees only significantly affect solo mining calculations for Bitcoin. For everything else, they’re noise.
If you’re solo mining Bitcoin (which you probably shouldn’t unless you have serious hashrate), factor in fees as ~10% of your expected reward. Understand this number swings wildly.
If you’re solo mining literally anything else, just calculate based on block subsidy. Fees won’t move your profitability calculation enough to matter. Maybe you get an extra 0.5% from fees. Great. It doesn’t change your decision.
What actually matters more than fees:
- Your electricity cost — this is usually your biggest variable expense
- Your hardware efficiency — newer hardware mines more per watt
- Your realistic odds of finding blocks — check our mini-miner chances guide
- The coin’s price volatility — price matters more than fees
- Network difficulty trends — is difficulty rising or falling?
I spent three months tracking fees because I wanted comprehensive data. What I learned is that comprehensive data on fees is mostly unnecessary for practical solo mining decisions. It’s interesting. It’s technically correct. But it’s not the factor that determines success.
The factor that determines success is having enough hashrate to find blocks within a reasonable timeframe, and low enough costs that those blocks are profitable. Fees are a minor adjustment to that calculation.
Warning: Don’t Forget Your Electricity Costs
Here’s where most solo mining profitability calculations fail. People calculate the value of finding a block, divide by their expected time to find a block, and decide it looks profitable. They forget to subtract electricity for all the time they’re mining without finding blocks.
Real example from someone who messaged me: They calculated that solo mining Litecoin would pay 6.26 LTC per block worth about $620. Their expected time to find a block was 8 months. They thought “$620 every 8 months, I can handle that.”
They forgot: 8 months of running 700 MH/s of Scrypt miners at 2,500W. That’s 8 × 30 × 24 × 2.5 = 14,400 kWh. At $0.12/kWh, that’s $1,728 in electricity. To maybe earn $620.
The math only works if you find blocks significantly faster than expected, or if your electricity is cheap or free. Otherwise you’re burning money hoping for lucky variance.
Always calculate your electricity cost for the expected time-to-block, not just the value of the block itself. This is basic stuff, but lots of people miss it when they get excited about solo mining.
Secure Your Winnings
Finding a solo block means receiving 3.125 BTC directly to your wallet — currently worth over $250,000. That amount should never sit on an exchange.
Two hardware wallets we recommend for solo miners:
Ledger Nano X (~$149) — Industry standard, supports BTC natively
Buy Ledger Nano X
Trezor Model T (~$179) — Open-source firmware, strong community trust
Buy Trezor Model T
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I get to keep all transaction fees when solo mining?
Yes, you keep 100% of transaction fees from any block you find, minus any pool fee if you’re using a solo mining pool. The fees go directly to the coinbase transaction that pays you the block reward. For most coins, fees are under 1% of your total reward so this doesn’t change your math much.
How do I know if a coin’s transaction fees are worth considering?
Check a block explorer for your coin and look at the last 100 blocks. Add up total fees and divide by 100 to get average fees per block. Then divide that by the block subsidy. If the result is under 2%, fees aren’t worth tracking in your profitability calculations. Only Bitcoin consistently has fees over 5% of reward, making them significant for planning.
Can I mine only high-fee blocks and skip low-fee ones?
No, that’s not how mining works. You don’t know what fees a block will contain until you find it. The transactions in the mempool when you find a block become your block’s transactions. You can’t choose to only mine during high-fee periods because you don’t control when you find blocks — that’s determined by random hash generation and luck.
Will transaction fees eventually replace block subsidies?
That’s the design assumption for Bitcoin and some other coins — as subsidies decrease through halvings, fees are supposed to rise to sustain miner incentives. Whether this actually happens is unknown. Current data shows fees haven’t increased proportionally to subsidy reductions yet. For solo mining calculations, don’t bet on future fee increases. Use current numbers.
Do transaction fees affect my chances of finding a block?
No, fees don’t affect your probability of finding a block at all. Your chances depend only on your hashrate relative to network hashrate. Fees only affect how much you earn *if* you find a block. High fees don’t make blocks easier to find, they just make found blocks more valuable.