TRON does not charge gas the way Ethereum does. It prices computation in energy and transfers in bandwidth. An account that has not staked TRX pays for energy by burning TRX.
This matters because a wallet holding only USDT cannot pay a TRON fee at all — and that is the most common reason a first mint fails. The failure is a network fee, not a platform charge.
Two ways to cover it
Hold TRX. The simplest option. Keep a small TRX balance and the network takes what it needs. The app warns you when the balance looks too thin for the operation you are about to submit.
Rent energy. Energy trades on an open market on TRON. Renting is usually cheaper than burning TRX for the same operation, and it is delegated straight to your address — nothing is held in custody and no approval is required.
The gas saver
The Gas saver switch on the operation screen makes every operation rent its energy first. The app prices the operation, sees how much energy your address is short, rents exactly that, waits for delivery, and only then submits.
A shortfall under 10 000 energy is never rented for. The provider's floor is 32 000, so covering a few thousand would mean paying for a whole order, one more signature and a minute of waiting — more than just burning the TRX.
Bandwidth
Energy is only half of a TRON fee. Every transaction also spends bandwidth — one unit per byte of the transaction, roughly 350–400 for a contract call.
| Free allowance | 600 bandwidth per address per day |
| Typical contract call | ~350–400 bandwidth |
| Price beyond the allowance | Burned in TRX at the network rate (currently 1 000 sun per byte, ~0.35–0.4 TRX per transaction) |
The free 600 cover one transaction a day, not two. An operation that needs an approve first is two transactions, and paying for rented energy in TRX is a third — so on a busy day part of the bandwidth is bought by burning TRX, even with the gas saver on.
The gas saver rents energy only; bandwidth is never rented and is always paid from your own allowance or TRX. That is why the app still asks for a small TRX balance when the energy is already covered: before screening it reads your remaining bandwidth and the live bandwidth price, counts how many transactions the operation needs, and refuses to start if the TRX for the missing bandwidth is not there. Bandwidth bought this way is not a platform charge — it goes to the network.
Staking TRX for bandwidth on your own address removes this cost entirely.
The energy shop
The energy page rents energy directly, for any TRON address, whether or not you use UNIT.
| Amount | 32 000 to 5 000 000 energy |
| Term | 1 hour (longer terms are planned) |
| Payment | One TRX or USDT transfer |
| Delivery | Seconds after payment |
Things worth knowing before you order:
- Prices are indicative until the order exists. Energy trades on an open market; the amount you pay is fixed the moment the order is created.
- Orders cannot be cancelled and expire 30 minutes after creation.
- There is no payment callback. Delivery is confirmed by watching your address' energy, so keep the page open until it lands.
- Bandwidth is included. Together with the energy, the order buys the bandwidth the transaction needs, so it does not burn TRX for bandwidth either.
- Order creation is rate-limited to three per minute. A
503means every unpaid order slot is currently taken — that is a normal state, not an outage.
How much energy a transaction burns depends on the contract it calls. Check the consumption of your own past transactions on Tronscan before choosing an amount.