Moving $100 of Bitcoin costs anywhere from 0.250% to 2.489% of what you sent, depending on which protocol you used and where you sent it. On a single route, BTC to WBTC on Ethereum, the same $100 swap cost 0.318% on the cheapest protocol and 2.489% on the most expensive. That is 7.8 times more for an identical trade. We priced nine swaps across three routes and three protocols, all inside one five-minute window on 20 August 2026.
How did we measure this?
Every number in this report comes from a real quote we requested. On 20 August 2026, we asked Garden, Chainflip and Relay to price the same nine swaps. We collected all nine inside five minutes, so Bitcoin’s price and network conditions were close to identical for every protocol.
The three routes were BTC to USDC on Arbitrum, BTC to WBTC on Ethereum, and BTC to cbBTC on Base. We asked for three sizes on each route: roughly $100, $1,000, and $10,000. The actual amounts landed within 0.8% of those targets, because each protocol converts and rounds a little differently.
Cost here means the gap between what you send and what you get back:
cost % = ((input value − output value) / input value) × 100
We measured the amounts instead of reading each protocol’s stated fee. That catches everything a quote takes from you, including a worse exchange rate, slippage, whether or not anyone calls it a fee. And because we compare each quote against its own input, the small differences in input amounts do not tilt the comparison.
How much did it cost to move Bitcoin to Arbitrum, Ethereum and Base?
The nine Bitcoin swaps cost between 0.156% and 2.489% of the amount being moved. The cheapest protocol in each row is in bold.
How much does it cost to swap Bitcoin for WBTC on Ethereum?
Between 0.222% and 2.489% of the amount, depending on which protocol you use. Garden’s cost fell as the swap grew, from 0.318% at $100 to 0.222% at $10,000, and Chainflip sat between the other two at every size. This route produced the highest single figure in the study, Relay at 2.489% on a $100 swap, which is 7.8 times what the same trade cost through Garden.
How much does it cost to swap Bitcoin for cbBTC on Base?
Between 0.156% and 0.571% of the amount, and only two of the three protocols quote it at all. Chainflip does not offer the route at any size. Garden and Relay sit closer together here than anywhere else in the study. The narrowest result is on this route, where a $100 swap cost 0.370% through Garden against 0.500% through Relay, a difference of about 13 cents. Garden’s cost also fell furthest here, reaching 0.156% at $10,000.
Why does a $100 swap cost so much more than a $10,000 one?
A swap’s cost is really two costs, and telling them apart explains most of the table above. One is a flat fee in dollars that stays the same no matter how much you move. The other is a percentage fee that grows with the amount. A flat fee is a big chunk of a small swap and almost nothing on a large one, which is most of why the $100 column looks so much worse than the $10,000 column.
Fixed component is a cost in dollars that stays the same whatever you move. Pay it on a $100 swap and you pay the same on a $10,000 swap.
Proportional rate is a cost charged as a share of the amount. Move ten times more and you pay ten times more dollars, but the same percentage.
Fitting that model to each protocol’s own data points separates the two:
These are indicative, fitted on three observations from a single sample, and they describe cost inside the quote rather than everything a user pays.
What does this cost structure mean
Every Garden line sits below 0.4%, and the whole chart spans about a fifth of a percentage point. Base falls furthest, from 0.370% at $100 to 0.156% at $10,000, crossing the other two as it drops. Arbitrum is the flattest, moving only between 0.241% and 0.265%.
Chainflip shows only two lines because it does not quote Base. Both start near 1.2% at $100 and fall steeply, reaching 0.539% on Arbitrum and 0.679% on Ethereum at $10,000. That steepness is the flat fee of roughly $0.53 to $0.65 being spread across a bigger swap.
Relay’s baseline runs far below the other two, between 0.476% and 0.571%, while Arbitrum sits almost dead flat at about 1.8% across all three sizes. Ethereum is the highest line in the whole study, starting at 2.489% and dipping to 2.043% before rising again. This chart’s axis reaches 2.5%, six times the height of Garden’s.
The three charts show three different cost shapes. Chainflip’s large flat fee makes it worst on small swaps and steadily cheaper as they grow, from about 1.2% down to 0.6%. Relay charges almost purely by percentage, so it never improves with size, holding near 1.8% on Arbitrum whether you move $100 or $10,000. Garden is low on both counts, so what you pay barely shifts across any route or size, staying inside a fifth of a percentage point. Where you send matters as well. On Relay, choosing Base over Ethereum cut the cost of a $100 swap by about five times.
A cost that goes up with size can happen when liquidity is thin, because a bigger trade has to be filled at a worse price. But one quote per size cannot tell that apart from tiered pricing, from the cost of holding inventory, or from a quiet moment on one route.
Conclusion
Which protocol you use to move Bitcoin matters more than most people assume. On the largest swap we tested, the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive quote came to about $190 on a single trade. What makes that gap hard to spot in advance is that it lives in the amount you receive rather than in any advertised fee, so the comparison worth trusting is a live quote for the exact sum you intend to move. The full method is published here, and running the same check on your own amount takes a few minutes.
Best Way to Move Bitcoin to Base, Arbitrum or Ethereum in 2026 was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.