# Tezos performances and costs

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This article and all its data have been taken during the Kathmandu protocol (September 2022) and therefore may be outdated when the next protocol will be launched.

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In this article, all performance statistics are given theoretically. All the data are estimates and may change depending on the used contract. If you wish to have access to a more empirical approach, you can read this blog post.

## Estimate Tezos performances (Kathmandu)​

At the time of writing:

• the gas limit of a block is 5,200,000 gas units,

• the gas limit of an operation is 1,040,000 gas units,

• the block time is 30 seconds,

• the maximum bytes size of an operation is ~33kB.

Gas is accounted by an arbitrary unit so that one unit of gas represents one nanosecond of computation performed by the machines used during the benchmark.

### Tez transfer​

A single transfer of tez is using 1001 gas units. On the table below, you can also notice that batching transactions into a single operation doesn’t save up gas compared to perform them separately. The limit size of an operation (33 kB) is reached with a batch of 573 transfers.

Batch sizeGas consummed
11001
1010010
100100100
573573573

For standard tez transfers, we can process the performance of the Tezos blockchain with the following formula:

$\frac{\text{max gas per block}}{\text{tx gas consumption * time per block}}=\text{tx/second}$

With the corresponding values, we then have a result of approximately 173 transfers per second:

$\frac{5200000}{1001 * 30}\approx\bm{173tx/second}$
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The following estimation cost have been made with a tez price of ~1.5€, tez transaction cost estimation: >0.001€. This cost calculation is indicative only. It’s not absolute nor guaranteed, it’s a cost estimate based on figures which are valid at one particular moment.

### FA1.2 transfer​

A single transfer of a FA1.2 token is using 2612 gas units.

With the same logic than for the xtz transfer, we got a result of theoretically 66 FA1.2 transfers per second:

$\frac{5200000}{2612 * 30}\approx\bm{66tx/second}$
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The following estimation cost have been made with a tez price of ~1.5€, FA1.2 transaction cost estimation: ~0.001€. This cost calculation is indicative only. It’s not absolute nor guaranteed, it’s a cost estimate based on figures which are valid at one particular moment.

### FA2 transfer​

One interesting feature of the FA2 standard is the transfer list parameter that allows to directly pass to the contract a list of transfers to perform. Unlike batching, this will reduce the gas consumption.

Here is a summary table of the gas used depending on the size of the transfer list:

Transfer list sizeGas consummed
1261
108975
10072613
300214038
650461529

650 FA2 transfers can fit in a list before reaching the maximum size on an operation while consuming 461,529 gas units which under the gas limit for an operation. In the end, a block can include 11 operations with a list of 650 transfers plus one operation with a list of 171 transfers resulting in 244 FA2 transfers per second.

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The following estimation cost have been made with a tez price of ~1.5€, FA2 transaction cost estimation: ~0.001€. This cost calculation is indicative only. It’s not absolute nor guaranteed, it’s a cost estimate based on figures which are valid at one particular moment.