What Should I Pay? Screensaver
The What Should I Pay? screensaver shows Bitcoin fee estimates in satoshis per virtual byte for each confirmation target, from the next block out to about a week of waiting. It runs in the browser with nothing to install; press ESC to exit.
How the What Should I Pay? screensaver works
The saver reads Blockstream's public fee-estimates endpoint, key-free.
No account and no key: the request goes straight from your browser, or from this site's own refreshed copy of the feed where the source does not permit browser access.
Values are drawn on a canvas that resizes with the window, so it works on a laptop or a wall display.
If the source is unreachable the saver says so on screen rather than showing stale numbers as though they were current.
A worked example
Each row is a target — next block, about an hour, a day, a week — with a bar for the estimated rate. The shape is the point. When the network is quiet the bars are almost equal, so paying for immediate confirmation costs barely more than waiting. When it is busy the left end towers over the right, and the footer converts the next-block rate into the actual cost of a typical 140-byte payment.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display without changing the data.
- Add it to a Multi-view grid to watch it alongside other live savers.
- Press ESC at any time to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a satoshi per virtual byte?
- The fee rate: how much you pay per unit of transaction size. Fees are charged by size rather than by amount sent, which is why moving a fortune can cost less than moving pocket change from many small inputs.
- Are these estimates reliable?
- They are inferences from the current mempool, not guarantees. If a burst of high-fee transactions arrives after you broadcast, your transaction can wait longer than the target suggested.
- Is this real data?
- Yes. It comes from Blockstream's public fee-estimates endpoint, key-free. Nothing is invented or simulated, and if the source cannot be reached the saver reports that instead of drawing something plausible.
- Does it cost anything or need an account?
- No. Every screensaver here is free, runs in the browser and needs no sign-up. This one uses a public API that requires no key.