TRX Transaction Fees: Bandwidth and Energy Guide

Unlike Ethereum's gas model, TRON uses a dual-resource system of Bandwidth and Energy to process transactions. This system is designed to make simple TRX transfers free or extremely cheap, while smart contract interactions require Energy that can be obtained through staking TRX.

Bandwidth: The Cost of Simple Transfers

Every TRON account receives a daily free allocation of 600 Bandwidth points. A standard TRX transfer consumes approximately 268 bytes of bandwidth. This means most everyday TRX transfers are completely free using your daily free bandwidth. If you exceed your daily free bandwidth, each additional byte of bandwidth costs a small amount of TRX — typically around 0.1 TRX for a standard transfer. You can also obtain additional bandwidth by staking (freezing) TRX to the bandwidth pool.

When both staked bandwidth and daily free bandwidth are exhausted, TRX is burned to cover bandwidth costs at the rate of 1,000 sun per byte.

Energy: The Cost of Smart Contract Interactions

Energy is required for any transaction that interacts with a smart contract — including sending USDT (TRC20) tokens. Unlike bandwidth, there is no daily free Energy allocation. To send USDT TRC20 without burning TRX, you must either stake TRX to obtain Energy, or rent Energy from an Energy delegation service. A standard USDT TRC20 transfer requires approximately 65,000 Energy. Without staked Energy, sending USDT costs around 13–15 TRX in burned fees. With Energy delegation services, this cost can be reduced to 4–5 TRX or less.

New Account Creation Fee

Sending TRX or TRC20 tokens to a TRON address that has never been activated incurs an additional fee of 1 TRX. This one-time fee activates the new account on-chain. Once an account is activated, subsequent transfers to it do not incur this fee. Always check whether the recipient address has been previously activated to avoid unexpected fee charges.