Every transaction on the XRP Ledger must include a small Fee field denominated in drops (one drop = 0.000001 XRP). This fee is deducted from the sender's account and permanently destroyed — it is not paid to any validator or node operator.

Base Fee

The minimum fee for a standard payment is 10 drops (0.00001 XRP). This is set by the network's validators and can be adjusted by majority vote, though it has remained at 10 drops since the network launched.

Load Factor

Each validator node tracks its own server load. When a node is under heavy demand, it temporarily multiplies the base fee by a load factor. The effective fee becomes: Current Fee = Base Fee × Load Factor ÷ Load Base. During normal operations the load factor is 1, meaning you pay exactly 10 drops.

Open-Ledger Cost

To be included in the current open ledger (the most recent block), a transaction must meet the open-ledger cost, which scales exponentially when the ledger is full. Transactions that do not meet this threshold are queued for the next ledger. As Ripple CTO David Schwartz explained in March 2026, even a small overflow beyond key thresholds causes fees to jump quickly — this is intentional design to protect network stability.

The Burn Mechanism

Burned fees reduce the total XRP supply over time. Because XRP has a fixed maximum supply of 100 billion tokens, every burned drop slightly increases the scarcity of remaining XRP. This design aligns user incentives with long-term network health without requiring energy-intensive mining.