Autostack • Onchain vs Lightning • Fees
KEEP MORE OF EVERY STACK
Small recurring Bitcoin buys lose a slice to network fees when they're delivered onchain. See what stays in your stack when your autostack arrives over Lightning instead. No price predictions here — just fees.
You'd keep ~$1,066 with Lightning
≈ 1,066,000 sats staying in your stack (at an estimated $100,000/BTC) sats are bitcoin's smallest unit — 100 million per bitcoin
- Left after network fees
- Lost to network fees
Onchain = settled on Bitcoin's base network. Lightning = a payment layer on top of it — instant, near-zero fees.
Lost to network fees over 10 years — Onchain: $1,092 · Lightning: $26
View the numbers as a table
| Year | Paid in* (see the note below the table) | Onchain — after network fees | Onchain — network fees | Lightning — after network fees | Lightning — network fees |
|---|
“Paid in” is what you're charged for each buy. This page models only the Bitcoin network fee that comes out of it — Stacked's fee and the payment provider fee apply too, and they're the same whichever way your bitcoin is delivered, so leaving them out shows the delivery difference on its own.
Onchain estimates assume a typical payout transaction of about 140 vbytes at your selected fee rate — actual fees vary with Bitcoin network demand (current rates: mempool.space). Dollar figures are in today's dollars: the fees you avoid stay in your stack as bitcoin, and what those sats are worth later follows bitcoin's price, which this page doesn't predict.
No Lightning wallet yet?
The Stacked Wallet app is the easiest way to start: it's self-custodial, comes with a Lightning address built in, and you can run your autostack straight from the app.
Get the Stacked Wallet appAlready have a Lightning wallet?
Point your autostack at your Lightning address and keep the fees from every buy — it takes about a minute.
Switch to LightningWhat your stack actually looks like
Each onchain buy arrives as its own UTXO — a separate coin in your wallet. Stack over Lightning and you choose your own coin size: say you move savings to a long-term wallet (cold storage) every time they reach 500,000 sats.
520 onchain UTXOs · ≈50,000 sats each
51 Lightning-batched UTXOs · 500k sats each
And what it costs to move it later
One day you'll move that stack — new wallet, new setup, or spending it. Every coin you spend adds the same fixed chunk to the transaction — about 68 vbytes — no matter how little the coin holds. More coins, bigger transaction, bigger fee. Here's the slice of your stack it would eat, at three future network conditions.
| Network conditions | Onchain stack | Lightning-batched |
|---|
However busy the network gets, the batched stack costs about 10× less to move.
Lightning delivery on Stacked is self-custodial, just like onchain — your keys, your Bitcoin, delivered in seconds instead of waiting for block confirmations.