Compute Fee
TON fee component covering TVM execution: gas price multiplied by gas used during the compute phase. Two to three orders of magnitude cheaper than Ethereum gas.
Aliases: tvm gas fee, ton gas
Compute Fee is the share of TON’s transaction cost that pays for TVM execution: the contract’s compute phase. It is the direct analogue of gas × gas_price in Ethereum — each instruction has a fixed gas cost, and the total is multiplied by a unit price.
Components
Compute fee = gas_used × gas_price, where:
- gas_used — total gas spent by TVM on instructions during the compute phase.
- gas_price — price per gas unit in nanoton, set by the network config. For basechain it is far below EVM levels.
Unlike Ethereum, TON’s gas price is fixed by configuration and does not fluctuate block by block. There is no per-block fee auction.
Where it shows up
Compute fee is a separate line in transaction reports in TonViewer / TonScan. A jetton transfer typically breaks down as:
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| receiver compute fee | ~0.005 TON |
| forward fee | ~0.001 TON |
| receiver jetton-wallet compute fee | ~0.005 TON |
| Total | ~0.011 TON |
For users that’s a few cents in dollar terms — meaningfully cheaper than the Ethereum equivalent, but not free.
What drives it
- Contract complexity. More cell parsing and logic burns more gas.
- Network load. The price is fixed, but in a saturated shard transactions can roll over to the next block.
- Send mode. If the sender attaches too little value to cover the receiver’s compute phase, the receiver fails with exit code 13 (out of gas).
On TON, compute fees are predictable: the same operation costs the same today and a year from now.