Zcash transaction fees and how long a Zcash transaction takes

A normal Zcash transaction pays 0.0001 ZEC and usually has its first confirmation within a few minutes. The fee is a protocol convention; the time follows from the 75-second block target. Here is where each number comes from, when it is different, and what to do when a transaction misbehaves.

What a Zcash transaction costs

Zcash blocks are rarely full, so users do not bid against each other for space the way they do on Bitcoin. Instead the ZIP 317 rule sets a conventional fee — the fee wallets pay by default and that miners expect:

conventional fee = 5,000 zatoshis × the number of logical actions, with a minimum of two actions.

A zatoshi is one hundred-millionth of a ZEC, so the minimum is 10,000 zatoshis: 0.0001 ZEC. On 12 September 2026, with ZEC at about $1,119, that is roughly eleven cents. Older guides quote 0.00001 ZEC; that was the previous convention, replaced by ZIP 317 in 2023 (zcashd 5.5).

A "logical action" is, roughly, the larger of the number of inputs and the number of outputs in each pool the transaction touches. A typical transfer — one input, one payment, one change output — is two actions and pays the minimum, whether it is transparent or fully shielded. Transactions pay more when they do more: paying several recipients at once, or sweeping up many small inputs, adds actions at 5,000 zatoshis each. One case worth knowing: moving coins from a transparent address into the shielded pool touches both pools, so it counts the transparent input on top of the shielded actions and usually costs 0.00015 ZEC.

Wallets set this fee for you. Paying less is allowed by the rules but such transactions are limited to a small allowance per block, so they can wait many blocks.

How long a Zcash transaction takes

The short version:

• Block target: one every 75 seconds. Individual blocks can take much longer than that.
• First confirmation: usually within a few minutes of broadcast.
• Spendable: when your wallet's own confirmation count is met; wallets hold newly received funds for a fixed number of confirmations, which at 75 seconds a block is a matter of minutes.
• Exchanges and custodians: each sets its own threshold, anywhere from a few confirmations to several dozen, because a deposit they credit cannot be reversed. Even a demanding threshold such as 24 confirmations is about half an hour.

Shielded transactions take a moment longer to build, not to confirm: the wallet has to generate a zero-knowledge proof before broadcasting, which takes seconds on a modern phone and longer on old hardware or for large transactions. Once broadcast they confirm at the same pace as transparent ones.

For why services wait for confirmations at all, and what a chain reorganisation is, see how on-chain confirmations work.

Why a transaction is pending, and what to do

It has an expiry, and will either confirm or vanish. Every Zcash transaction carries an expiry height. Wallets default to 40 blocks — about 50 minutes — and a transaction not mined by then is dropped from every node's mempool (the pool of unconfirmed transactions each node holds) and can never confirm. Your wallet should then mark it expired and let you resend safely. A transaction built with the default expiry should not sit pending for more than an hour.

It was never broadcast. A wallet that lost connectivity can show a transaction as sent while no node received it. Restart the wallet and let it resync; it will rebroadcast, or mark the transaction expired once its expiry height passes.

The fee is below the conventional amount. A manually lowered fee, or an old wallet still using the pre-2023 convention, produces a transaction miners fit in only as their per-block allowance for cheap transactions allows. There is no way to raise the fee on a broadcast Zcash transaction; wait for it to confirm or expire, then resend at the default fee.

Your wallet is behind the chain. Shielded wallets have to scan blocks to find payments meant for them, and a phone wallet that has been closed for a while may be minutes or hours behind. The transaction confirmed; your wallet has not read it yet. Let it sync.

The recipient has not credited it. If you sent to an exchange, the deposit is waiting for their confirmation threshold, not the network's. Check their deposit page.

Do not send the payment again on the assumption the first one failed. If the first was merely slow you will have paid twice; wait for it to confirm or expire.

Checking a Zcash transaction

Every transaction has an id — a 64-character hex string your wallet shows as the txid. Paste it into a Zcash block explorer to see the block it landed in and how many confirmations it has.

What the explorer shows depends on the transaction. A transparent transaction shows addresses and amounts like Bitcoin. A fully shielded transaction shows that it exists, its block, its fee and its size, but not who sent it, who received it, or how much; a shielding transaction from a transparent address shows its transparent side and hides the rest. That is the point of the shielded pool, so confirming that a shielded payment reached you is done in your own wallet, not on an explorer. If you need to show someone your shielded history, a viewing key lets them see every transaction for that account.

Which kind of transaction you receive is decided by the address you gave: t1… and t3… addresses receive transparently; unified u1… addresses (and older zs1… addresses) receive shielded when the sending wallet supports it. See shielded vs transparent addresses and unified addresses explained.

On a swap into ZEC

When you swap into Zcash on SwapToZec, two fees appear in the quote before you send anything: a 0.5% swap fee, and a fixed network-fee line for the ZEC payout, about five cents' worth of ZEC at the time of writing. The ZEC amount in the quote is the amount that arrives.

The payout is sent once your deposit is confirmed. Your deposit is identified by the exact amount you send and verified on-chain before the swap proceeds, so send exactly the figure shown. From the moment the payout is broadcast the timing above applies. The status page shows the payout transaction id so you can look it up.

Every route into Zcash works the same way; Bitcoin to Zcash is the most common. If it is your first ZEC, the first-ZEC guide covers wallet setup before you swap.