TL;DR
Solana transaction fees consist of a tiny base fee (0.000005 SOL per signature) plus optional priority fees paid per compute unit to incentivize faster transaction inclusion.
Every Solana transaction pays a base fee of 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature — roughly $0.001 at typical SOL prices. This base fee is split: 50% is burned, 50% goes to the validator. On top of this, you can add priority fees (per compute unit) and Jito tips (per bundle) for faster inclusion. The total cost of a typical DEX swap is $0.001-0.05 depending on priority.
During normal network conditions, even minimal priority fees get your transaction included quickly. During congestion (popular launches, airdrops), priority fee bidding intensifies and you may need to pay $0.01-1.00+ for reliable inclusion. For competitive activities like sniping, Jito tips of $1-50+ may be needed. Fee optimization is a key differentiator between trading bots.
Solana fees are orders of magnitude cheaper than Ethereum. A Uniswap swap on Ethereum costs $5-50+ in gas; the equivalent Jupiter swap on Solana costs $0.001-0.05. This low fee structure enables strategies that are uneconomical on Ethereum — frequent rebalancing, small position trades, and high-frequency bot trading. It also means scammers face almost zero cost to deploy honeypots and rug pulls.