Best gas trackers for daily airdrop ops
Best gas trackers for daily airdrop ops
If you’re doing more than a handful of transactions a day across multiple chains, gas timing stops being a minor inconvenience and starts being a real cost center. I’ve been running airdrop operations out of Singapore for a few years now, farming Ethereum mainnet, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and a handful of alt-chains simultaneously. At peak I was managing 30+ wallets across campaigns, and the difference between transacting at 8 gwei versus 40 gwei on mainnet adds up fast when you multiply it across wallets and session frequency.
This list covers the gas tracking tools I actually use or have tested as part of that workflow. I’m not including everything that exists, just the tools that give reliable real-time data, clear cost estimates across the chains I care about, or useful historical context for timing my sessions. A couple of the picks here are free browser tools you can open on your second monitor. A couple more are APIs worth integrating if you’re scripting your farm. A few sit in between.
The selection criteria are practical: does it update fast enough to be useful for live transactions, does it cover the chains I’m farming, and does it add something the others don’t? I skipped anything that has been consistently unreliable or that I couldn’t verify was still actively maintained as of mid-2026.
how I picked
- Update frequency: anything slower than 15-second refreshes is too slow for making live transaction decisions on mainnet or busy L2s
- Chain coverage: with most serious airdrop campaigns now on rollups (Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, zkSync Era), a mainnet-only tracker has limited standalone utility
- Data accuracy: I cross-referenced readings against on-chain data and against each other when evaluating
- Free tier usability: most individual operators don’t need paid plans, so I checked how far you get without spending money
- API access: for anyone scripting wallets or using automation, programmatic access to gas data matters
- Historical data: knowing typical gas patterns for a chain helps you plan session timing rather than just reacting in the moment
the picks
Etherscan Gas Tracker
If you’re on Ethereum mainnet, Etherscan’s gas tracker at etherscan.io/gastracker is the first page to have open. It shows the current base fee, the recommended gas price for low/average/fast confirmation times, and the estimated wait time for each tier. It updates in near real-time and has never given me a reading I couldn’t trust against actual mempool behavior.
What I find most useful is the gas price history chart at the bottom of the page. It covers 7-day and 30-day patterns, and I use it to figure out when mainnet gas typically dips, which tends to be weekends and early UTC mornings for most weeks. There’s also a gas price oracle API endpoint that returns JSON, so if you’re running scripts you can poll it directly without authentication for basic use. The underlying EIP-1559 base fee mechanics are worth understanding before you rely on any of these trackers heavily, Etherscan included.
- Pros: extremely reliable, shows base fee plus priority fee breakdown natively, built-in 30-day historical chart
- Pros: no account required, works fine on mobile
- Pros: API endpoint available without a key for low-frequency polling
- Cons: Ethereum mainnet only, no L2 or alt-chain coverage
- Cons: historical data window limited to 30 days in the UI
Pricing: Free
Link: etherscan.io/gastracker
L2Fees.info
This is the most useful single-page tool I’ve found for anyone farming across multiple L2s. L2Fees.info shows what it costs in USD to send ETH, transfer an ERC-20 token, or execute a DEX swap on Arbitrum One, Optimism, Base, zkSync Era, Scroll, Starknet, and several others, all on one screen, updated live from each chain’s RPC.
When a campaign goes live and I’m deciding whether to transact now or wait, L2Fees is what I check first. If a swap on Base is costing $0.04 and the same swap on Arbitrum One is costing $0.12, I can make a quick decision about where to concentrate wallet activity. For anyone running multi-account operations across multiple chains, this kind of side-by-side cost comparison is genuinely hard to replicate without building your own dashboard. It reframes gas from “gwei number” to “USD cost per action,” which is the frame that actually matters when you’re optimizing across a portfolio of wallets.
- Pros: side-by-side L2 cost comparison in USD, covers all major rollups
- Pros: shows costs for real transaction types (ETH send, ERC-20 transfer, swap), not raw gwei
- Pros: completely free, no account or API key needed
- Cons: no Ethereum mainnet tracking
- Cons: no historical data, trending, or alerting
Pricing: Free
Link: l2fees.info
Blocknative Gas Estimator
Blocknative has built a reputation in the mempool monitoring space, and their gas estimator reflects that expertise. The key difference from Etherscan’s tracker is that Blocknative shows confidence levels alongside gas price recommendations: they’ll tell you there’s an 80% probability a transaction at X gwei confirms in under 30 seconds, and a 99% probability at Y gwei. For time-sensitive transactions, that framing is more useful than a simple fast/slow label.
The free web interface covers Ethereum mainnet. Their paid API plans support additional chains and higher request volumes, but pricing at the enterprise tier is significant and not listed publicly without a sales call. For most individual operators, the free estimator is sufficient. I’ve used it on days when Etherscan’s gas oracle seemed to lag during rapidly changing conditions, and Blocknative consistently felt more responsive during spikes. MetaMask uses Blocknative’s mempool data internally, which is a reasonable signal of reliability.
- Pros: confidence interval framing (80% / 99% confirmation probability) is more actionable than fast/slow tiers
- Pros: strong mempool expertise, used internally by MetaMask and other wallets
- Pros: free estimator, no login needed for mainnet use
- Cons: free tier is Ethereum mainnet only, multi-chain API access requires paid plans
- Cons: enterprise API pricing is opaque, not accessible for individual operators
Pricing: Free web estimator; paid API plans available (contact for pricing)
Link: blocknative.com
Owlracle
Owlracle (owlracle.info) is the pick if you want a multi-chain gas oracle with a usable free API tier and access to historical price data. It covers Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Fantom, Arbitrum, and several others. The API returns gas price recommendations alongside historical price windows, which makes it practical for building simple gas-timing scripts that don’t just react to current conditions.
The free tier allows 100 API calls per hour with an API key. That’s enough for most individual setups running periodic checks across a handful of chains. The returned data includes base fee, max priority fee, and estimates for different confirmation speeds in clean JSON. I’ve seen it referenced in open-source airdrop farming scripts in Telegram groups, which is a decent signal of practical adoption beyond developer curiosity. Their documentation walks through available endpoints clearly, including how to request historical gas averages over configurable time windows.
- Pros: multi-chain API with historical data, clean documentation
- Pros: free tier with API key, 100 calls per hour is workable for individual operators
- Pros: returns both base fee and priority fee recommendations in standard formats
- Cons: rate limits are restrictive if you’re polling many chains at high frequency
- Cons: UI is minimal, not designed for non-technical users who want a dashboard experience
Pricing: Free tier (100 calls/hour with API key); paid plans available
Link: owlracle.info
Ultrasound.money
Ultrasound.money is primarily an ETH issuance and burn tracker, but the real-time base fee display makes it a useful secondary monitor during mainnet sessions. It shows the current base fee in gwei, updated block-by-block, alongside the ETH burn rate. The base fee visualization makes it easy to see at a glance whether you’re in a rising or falling gas environment without cross-referencing another tab.
What it’s particularly good for is reading the macro state of the Ethereum network. On days when there’s heavy NFT mint activity or a major protocol launch driving gas up, Ultrasound.money lets you see the burn rate spike in real-time. That context helps me judge whether current gas is a short-term spike (wait 20 minutes) or a sustained elevated state (wait 2 hours or move activity to an L2). The Ethereum gas documentation on ethereum.org covers the mechanics underlying these fee market dynamics, which is worth reading once if you want to understand what you’re actually looking at in any of these trackers.
- Pros: block-by-block base fee updates, burn rate context for interpreting spike duration
- Pros: free, no account, clean visual interface
- Pros: useful for ETH-heavy portfolios where mainnet timing matters
- Cons: no priority fee recommendations or confirmation time estimates
- Cons: Ethereum only, no L2 or alt-chain data
Pricing: Free
Link: ultrasound.money
Arbiscan Gas Tracker
If Arbitrum One is a significant part of your farm, keeping Arbiscan’s gas tracker open is worth the dedicated tab. Like Etherscan (it’s built by the same team), Arbiscan shows recommended gas prices for Arbitrum One with fast/standard/slow tiers. Arbitrum’s gas pricing tracks both L2 execution cost and the underlying L1 data posting cost, and Arbiscan surfaces both components clearly in a way the chain-agnostic tools don’t.
Arbitrum One has hosted a significant share of serious airdrop campaigns over the past two years, and protocols native to the Arb ecosystem continue to run activity there. Cheap gas on Arb is often a prerequisite for efficient farming, but there are congestion events where costs spike noticeably. I check this alongside L2Fees.info when deciding whether a session on Arbitrum is worth running now or whether to wait. See our full review of Arbiscan for a closer look at the explorer’s other features beyond the gas tracker.
- Pros: Arbitrum One native, shows L1 data cost plus L2 execution cost separately
- Pros: same interface as Etherscan, low learning curve if you already use Etherscan
- Pros: free, reliable, part of a well-maintained explorer network with consistent uptime
- Cons: Arbitrum One only, not a cross-L2 comparison tool
- Cons: no API beyond standard Etherscan-family format (limited vs. dedicated gas APIs)
Pricing: Free
Link: arbiscan.io/gastracker
Polygonscan Gas Tracker
Polygon PoS still hosts meaningful airdrop and protocol activity, particularly for newer projects targeting retail users with lower transaction costs. Polygonscan’s gas tracker at polygonscan.com/gastracker does for Polygon what Etherscan does for mainnet: clean, reliable, real-time gas recommendations in MATIC gwei, with a price history chart and the same familiar layout.
Gas on Polygon PoS is cheap enough most of the time that it rarely creates friction, but there are periods around NFT campaigns or DeFi launches where costs spike enough to be noticeable when you’re running many wallets. Having the tracker bookmarked means a quick check before batching interactions rather than assuming fees will be negligible. It also uses an API endpoint format consistent with the Etherscan API, so if you’ve already built tooling against Etherscan’s format, switching the base URL is all it takes to pull Polygon gas data programmatically. Our review of Polygonscan covers the full explorer feature set in more detail.
- Pros: Polygon PoS native, reliable and maintained by the same team as Etherscan
- Pros: Etherscan-compatible API format, straightforward to integrate with existing tooling
- Pros: free, no account required
- Cons: Polygon PoS only, not useful for Polygon zkEVM or other chains
- Cons: Polygon gas is cheap enough most of the time that it rarely changes your timing decisions
Pricing: Free
Link: polygonscan.com/gastracker
comparison table
| Tool | Price | Primary strength | Primary weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Etherscan Gas Tracker | Free | Ethereum mainnet reliability and history | Mainnet only |
| L2Fees.info | Free | Side-by-side L2 USD cost comparison | No mainnet, no history |
| Blocknative Gas Estimator | Free (paid API) | Confidence-level probability estimates | Multi-chain needs paid plan |
| Owlracle | Free (100 calls/hr API) | Multi-chain API with historical data | Restrictive rate limits on free tier |
| Ultrasound.money | Free | Block-by-block base fee plus burn context | No confirmation time estimates |
| Arbiscan Gas Tracker | Free | Arbitrum One native, L1 plus L2 cost breakdown | Arbitrum only |
| Polygonscan Gas Tracker | Free | Polygon native, Etherscan-compatible API | Polygon PoS only |
how to choose
The most important variable is which chains you’re actually farming. If your entire operation is Ethereum mainnet, Etherscan Gas Tracker plus Ultrasound.money for context covers everything you need at zero cost. If you’re doing most of your activity on L2s (which describes most serious airdrop farming in 2026), L2Fees.info is the one tab you can’t skip, and you pair it with the relevant chain-specific explorer gas tracker for more granular real-time data before submitting transactions.
For operators running scripts or automation, the choice is between Owlracle and building against Etherscan-family APIs directly. Owlracle has cleaner multi-chain historical data, which is valuable if your scripts want to time transactions based on recent gas patterns rather than just reacting to the current price. The Etherscan-family APIs are more reliable and have better uptime track records for mainnet and chain-specific queries, but you’ll need separate integrations for each chain. You can find more on multi-chain wallet management approaches on our blog.
Think about whether you need alerting, because none of the tools in this list offer gas price alerts on free tiers. For that, you’d need to build a lightweight monitoring script against one of the APIs (Owlracle or Etherscan-family) that sends a message when prices drop below a threshold. Most experienced operators I know run a simple cron job that polls gas and sends a Telegram alert when conditions are favorable for a batch session. It’s a few hours of setup that pays back quickly if you’re operating at any real volume.
If you’re early in building your gas monitoring setup, understanding the EIP-1559 base fee mechanism before picking tools is time well spent. Knowing why base fees spike (Ethereum block utilization above the 50% target over sustained periods) helps you interpret what you’re looking at in any tracker and make better decisions about whether to wait or transact now. It also helps you evaluate whether a tracker’s recommendations actually reflect on-chain conditions accurately.
verdict / top pick
For most daily airdrop operators, the two-tab setup covers it: L2Fees.info open permanently for cross-chain USD cost context, and the chain-specific explorer gas tracker (Etherscan for mainnet, Arbiscan for Arbitrum, Polygonscan for Polygon) for real-time gwei before submitting. Both are free, require no account, and cover the majority of what you actually need.
If you’re scripting and need programmatic access, add Owlracle to get a multi-chain API with historical data on the free tier without a complicated setup. Blocknative is the natural upgrade if you’re making mainnet transactions where timing precision actually matters and you want confidence intervals rather than rough fast/slow buckets.
L2Fees.info is the pick I’d recommend to someone just getting started, because the shift from “what’s the gas price in gwei” to “what does this transaction actually cost in USD across chains” is the mental model that makes the biggest practical difference when you’re comparing farming efficiency across networks. Our full review of L2Fees goes deeper on how it pulls data and how to use it alongside chain-specific explorers for a complete picture.
Written by Xavier Fok
disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links. if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. verdicts are independent of payouts. last reviewed by Xavier Fok on 2026-05-19.