TRC-20 vs ERC-20 vs Solana: which rail costs the least
The universal recommendation from every guide in this market is to use Tron due to its low cost. This advice was penned prior to TRON's Energy pricing catch-up, and it was never accurate from the perspective of a wallet sending once. Here's a breakdown of the current costs associated with each rail, as well as the potential charges you might incur from the casino on the other end.
- 0 freeEnergy per TRON account, and a USDT send needs 65,000
- 4.16what Razed charges on all three chains, identically
- 0.000005SOL, the Solana base fee, on any transfer size
- Ethereum
- Tron
- Solana
What TRC-20, ERC-20 and Solana each charge to move a dollar
Three chains, three different pricing structures for the same action. None of them charges by volume, so a $20 transfer costs the same as a $20,000 transfer.
Tron sells you Energy, and gives none away
It's made explicit by TRON itself. Each account has a daily quota of 600 Bandwidth that is free, but nothing for Energy: users need to freeze for Energy, get it delegated, or, ultimately, consume it by burning TRX. A USDT transfer is a smart contract invocation, so it consumes both. It is estimated to be around 65,000 Energy, which when the fallback to burning is considered, costs two to four dollars.
Ethereum sells you gas, at auction
Gas is a fixed amount of work at a floating price. A ERC-20 transfer requires roughly 65,000 gas no matter the hour; the base fee it is multiplied by fluctuates, ranging from 5 to 40 gwei in ordinary 2026 conditions and far greater during a launch. The same action has cost roughly fifty cents or seven dollars.
Solana charges a flat fee and a deposit
The transaction fee is 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL), with a priority tip if you want to jump the queue. What shocks people is the token account: the first time your wallet interacts with a given token, ~0.00204 SOL is locked as a rent-exempt deposit. It is a deposit rather than a fee, and closing the account refunds it.
None of the three prices by size
This is the factor to remember. All three chains charge per transaction, so five 20 deposits cost five times the amount of one 100 deposit. The most expensive practice on this market is topping up in small quantities on an costly rail.
The mechanisms come directly from the respective chains' developer docs: resource model for TRON, gas for Ethereum, and transaction fees for Solana. The dollar estimates are based on the figure ranges provided by these models at 2026 prices. Given they fluctuate with the token, treat them as magnitudes.
The TRC-20 fee advice most guides give is out of date
The help copy from 7Bit Casino itself still advises you that Ethereum transactions will set you back a few bucks in gas on a busy day while the TRC-20 rails, which sit just one row below, cost a few cents. Almost every casino will say something along these lines. It's not a lie, but it's not helpful advice either.
Here's why both statements are true: staking. A casino that pays out from a hot wallet stakes TRX, gets Energy for free, and moves USDT for a fraction of a cent all day. Flush is very specific: withdrawals on Polygon and Tron usually go through within two minutes for under ten cents in network fees, with no fee charged by the platform. That figure is real. It is an account with staked Energy.
Your wallet doesn't have any. When you send USDT on Tron from an exchange withdrawal or a fresh phone wallet, the network took the burn fallback, and the burn fallback is set at whatever the price of that week’s TRX is. That’s how a notorious cents-costing chain ends up charging a casino-goer what Ethereum does at 3 a.m.
Two solutions exist. If you're a frequent sender on Tron, stake TRX for Energy. For one-time or infrequent senders, rent Energy for the duration of a single transaction, which a bunch of services offer for less than the price of a Starbucks Frappuccino. Failing to do either, and using Tron because a blog post told you it was cheap, is how that blog post gets its clickbait.
The TRC-20 casinos are where this Tron floor and fee live, and for deposits, we use the USDT minimum deposit comparison.
Where the casino fee replaces the chain fee entirely
You pay the network as you log on. When you log off, you pay whatever the casino decides, and half of them have decided the chain is irrelevant.
| Casino | Withdrawal fee as published | Does the chain change it? |
|---|---|---|
| Razed | 4.16 on Tether, 0.69 on USD Coin | No, the coin does |
| Cloudbet | A per-network fee that moves with congestion, shown live before you confirm | Yes, and it publishes the table |
| Winz.io | No fee listed on USDT or USDC, processing shown as instant | No fee to change |
| BitStarz | 0% on the published payments table, processing shown as instantly | No fee to change |
| Flush | No platform fee, and network fees quoted at under ten cents on Tron and Polygon | Yes, on the deposit side |
| BC.Game | Zero-fee deposits and withdrawals, advertised in its VIP perk list | No fee to change |
Fee schedules are taken from each operator's own payments page, withdrawal screen or terms. Cloudbet's per-network figures are not provided: they fluctuate with congestion, and any number published here would be out of date within a week.
Razed is the most blatant about its fee paying no heed to the chain choice that it offers. It charges 4.16 USDT for withdrawal of Tether whether you choose Ethereum, Tron or Solana, and 0.69 to withdraw USD Coin on Ethereum or Solana. Moving value on Ethereum costs real money and on Solana a fraction of a cent, but here the price is the same. The Ethereum user is subsidized and everyone else is charged extra. At that cashier, the choice to make is the coin, and USD Coin is six times cheaper to withdraw.
How to pick between TRC-20, ERC-20 and Solana
Below is the order in which decisions save money, from the most impact to the least impact.
- 01
Check whether the casino prices the chain at all
If withdrawal fees are fixed or zero, the selected network will only influence the deposit leg. Only two on our list, Cloudbet and Flush, actually shift the figure on the chain side.
- 02
Then check the deposit floor on that chain
A floor beats a fee. Flush asks 1 USDT on Solana and 100 on Tron, which dwarfs any network cost either rail could charge you.
- 03
Use Solana if both accept it
A fraction of a cent per transfer and a one-off account deposit that you get back. Nothing else on this list competes on a per-send basis.
- 04
Use Tron only with Energy behind it
The rail is essentially free when staked or rented. From the burn fallback, it is a poor default for a small deposit, costing a send of two to four dollars.
- 05
Send once
Each of the three chains charges per transaction. A transfer of 200 costs the same as a transfer of 20, so consolidation is more effective than optimising the rail.
Questions about TRC-20, ERC-20 and Solana fees
Is TRC-20 still the cheapest way to send USDT? 
No, if it’s a one-off send from an ordinary wallet. A TRC-20 transfer is a call to the contract that consumes Energy, and TRON provides zero free Energy. Without staked or rented Energy, the TRX-burn fallback makes a single USDT transfer cost around two to four dollars, which is comparable to a transfer on Ethereum during quiet hours.
Why do casinos still say Tron costs cents?
Because it does for them. A casino that cashes out from a hot wallet has staked TRX, generating Energy at no cost, so the cost of each transfer is almost imperceptible. According to Flush, Tron and Polygon payouts have a network fee lower than ten cents, which is the case for a wallet that has Energy staked. Yours most likely doesn’t.
Which chain is genuinely cheapest for a stablecoin transfer?
Solana, by a wide margin. The transaction fee is 5,000 lamports, or 0.000005 SOL, which is a fraction of a cent. The only cost is the one-time rent deposit of approximately 0.00204 SOL to initialize the token account, which is refunded when the account is closed.
Does the network I pick change the casino's withdrawal fee?
For half of the cashiers we've checked, no. Razed withdraws Tether on Ethereum, Tron, and Solana for 4.16 USDT. Winz.io and BitStarz do not show a withdrawal fee. Cloudbet is the exception: it charges a per-network fee depending on network congestion and publishes the table.
How much does an ERC-20 USDT transfer cost?
A typical ERC-20 transfer consumes roughly 65,000 gas. Considering that the base fees ranged between 5 and 40 gwei in normal days in 2026, it resulted in a cost ranging from fifty cents to seven dollars. Among the three, only Ethereum experiences a one magnitude difference in gas prices within a day.
How do I make TRC-20 cheap again?
When performing the transfer, either stake TRX for Energy or rent Energy. Both options remove the TRX-burn contingency and bring the cost of a USDT transfer near to zero. If you are planning to send on Tron more than once, this is the sole modification that makes the chain work as its reputation states.
Every rail we have priced, in one place
This is the mechanism page. These are numbered by each cashier attaches it.
The deposit side
Comparison prices a minimum deposit in USDT across fifty-one Tether rails and USDC casinos, and USDC does the same for Circle's dollar, where USD Coin is cheaper than Tether in two rails.
The withdrawal side
Instant USDT withdrawals organizes the payment requests in accordance with the actual release from each casino, and the below-minimum guide covers the minimums that are higher than any fee on this site.
Theo Brandt
I spent two years on the support side of a crypto payment processor, explaining to people why a transfer they were told would cost cents had cost four dollars. The answer was nearly always a resource model nobody had described to them. Casinos repeat the same shorthand, so I read the cashiers and the chain documentation and put the two side by side.
18+. Some links on this page are affiliate links. They never change a rating or a figure. Read the review methodology.