Solana priority fees explained: what they are and what you pay on ripr

On Solana, a priority fee is an optional amount of SOL you attach to a transaction to bid for a place in the next block when the network is busy. It is collected by validators, and it is separate from whatever fee an app charges you to trade. On ripr, trades are sent with Solana's base network fee and no priority fee, so the two things you set before a buy are the amount and the slippage — not a bid for block space.

What are Solana priority fees?

A priority fee on Solana is an optional payment, made in SOL, that rides along with the base fee every Solana transaction already pays. The base fee is fixed and tiny. The priority fee is the part that can vary, and it exists so that when more transactions arrive than a block can hold, there is a way to say which ones should be looked at first.

Both the base fee and the priority fee are paid in SOL. That is why a Solana wallet needs a little SOL sitting in it even when the thing you are buying is a different coin entirely.

Validators collect the priority fee. Those are the computers that produce Solana's blocks. Your app does not get a share of it, and neither does the coin's creator. That separation is the first thing worth getting straight: a priority fee is a chain cost, not a platform charge.

Solana's own docs call it a prioritization fee, and they treat it as optional. Solana's fees documentation has the full mechanics if you want them.

Why Solana has priority fees at all

Solana has priority fees because block space is finite and demand for it is not. Each block holds only so much work, so when a coin starts moving, far more transactions are sent than will fit.

The scale is easy to underestimate. One actively traded Solana coin took more than 85,000 buys and sells in a single 24 hours in ripr's live market data — and that is one coin, competing for block space with everything else trading on Solana at the same time.

When that much activity lands at once, some transactions wait their turn and some expire without being included. A priority fee is the lever Solana gives the sender for that queue, and that is all it is: it changes nothing about the coin, the price or the market.

What you pay when you trade on ripr

A trade on ripr goes out carrying Solana's base network fee, with no priority fee attached, so the cost of getting your transaction on chain stays small and predictable. There is no auction to join before you buy.

The trading fee you pay the app is a separate line. Buying or selling a coin on ripr's own bonding curve carries a 1% swap fee, split 0.75% to ripr and 0.25% to the coin's creator. The help centre's page on what fees are charged during trading has that breakdown.

On iOS and Android, the trade sheet lists the network fee, any router fee and the refundable account deposit before you confirm. That list is worth reading rather than tapping straight through.

Launching a coin is the one place on ripr where a priority fee appears: a launch carries a small one as part of its cost. Trading does not.

A priority fee is not slippage, and it is not a safety check

A priority fee and slippage answer different questions, and they are easy to confuse. A priority fee is about whether your transaction gets picked up at all.

Slippage is about the price you accept once it does.

On ripr, Auto slippage sets your maximum slippage from how much the coin moved in the last five minutes, landing between 3% and 15%, and you can set the number yourself instead. The help centre's guide to slippage and how to set it covers both ways. When your trade goes to a DEX pool, the transaction itself carries a minimum-output limit built from that setting — so on a pool trade your own setting is what caps the price, not your place in the queue.

A priority fee says nothing about the coin either. Before you buy, ripr shows warnings for known rug patterns — a creator holding unlocked liquidity, liquidity that has already been pulled, a coordinated launch — and says plainly that not seeing a warning never means a coin is safe. Those warnings appear in the buy flow as well as on the coin page. How to spot a risky meme coin walks through the rest of those checks.

What you control on ripr when the network is busy

On ripr, when Solana is busy, the levers that matter are your size, your slippage and what you do while a trade is in flight. Four habits cover most of it:

1. Keep some SOL spare in your ripr wallet. Every transaction needs the base network fee, and a buy that spends your whole balance can leave nothing to pay it with.
2. Trade a smaller amount. A smaller order asks less of the market and is less likely to run past your slippage ceiling.
3. Read the prompt when the price moves. If the market shifts between your quote and your signature, ripr asks you to accept the new price instead of sending the old one. The help centre explains why a quote changes from moment to moment.
4. Send once, then watch the status. After you send, the app keeps your signed trade in flight for up to about a minute and follows its status until it confirms or expires. It is one signature for that window, so the trade can fill once and only once. Tapping buy again does not change the first attempt — it starts a second, separate trade.

Some of this is handled for you: ripr's execution service runs next to its own Solana node, so your app receives a ready, simulated transaction in a single request instead of making many network reads itself. Standard requests to that node fail over automatically to a commercial provider if it is slow or down.

Frequently asked questions

Is a Solana priority fee the same as a gas fee?

No. Every Solana transaction pays a small base network fee, which is the part people usually mean by gas. A Solana priority fee is an optional extra payment in SOL, added alongside that base fee, which bids for earlier inclusion when blocks are full. On ripr, trades are sent with the base network fee and no priority fee.

Do I need to pay a priority fee to buy a coin on ripr?

No. Buying a coin on ripr needs SOL for the trade itself and a little spare for the base network fee, because trades are sent with no priority fee. The 1% swap fee on the bonding curve is separate from anything the chain charges. How to buy a Solana meme coin walks through the whole flow.

Do Solana priority fees change the price I get for a coin?

No. A Solana priority fee affects when a transaction is picked up, not the price it executes at. On ripr, the price comes from the market at the moment your trade fills, and your slippage setting is what caps how far that price can move against you while you are confirming.

Why did my Solana trade fail even though the network fee was paid?

A trade can fail for reasons a fee cannot fix: too little SOL left for the network fee, an amount larger than the market will fill, price movement past your slippage, or heavy load on the network. The help centre page on why a swap failed runs through those checks in order.

Priority fees in one line

A priority fee on Solana is an optional bid for block space, paid to validators, and on ripr your trades go out with the base network fee and no priority fee. That leaves you two dials worth thinking about before you tap buy: how much you are trading, and how much slippage you will accept. Open a coin from ripr's Explore page, read its warnings, set your slippage, and send once.

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Last verified 3 November 2026. This article is published by ripr, which builds an app for trading Solana coins. Nothing here is financial advice.