Satoshi & Gwei Converter
Satoshi and gwei converter
Base unit
Gwei
Smallest unit
Value in USD
One bitcoin is 100,000,000 satoshi; one ether is 1,000,000,000 gwei, and one gwei is 1,000,000,000 wei. Gas prices are quoted in gwei, which is why a fee that looks tiny as a number can be a real amount of money. Conversions between units are exact and run in your browser; only the USD line uses a live price, taken from the same pipeline as the rest of the site.
What this converter does
It moves an amount between a chain’s base unit and its subdivisions — bitcoin and satoshi, or ether, gwei and wei — and shows what that amount is currently worth in dollars.
The units
Satoshi is the smallest unit of bitcoin. One bitcoin is 100,000,000 satoshi, so a satoshi is eight decimal places down. Bitcoin has no smaller unit: amounts on the network are integers of satoshi, and the “bitcoin” you see quoted is a human-facing presentation of that integer.
Wei is the smallest unit of ether, and there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them in one ETH — eighteen decimal places. Because that number is unwieldy, an intermediate unit exists: gwei, one billion wei, or one billionth of an ETH.
Why gwei is the unit you actually meet
Ethereum gas prices are quoted in gwei, and this is where the arithmetic catches people out. A simple transfer costs 21,000 gas. At 21 gwei, that is 21,000 × 21 gwei = 441,000 gwei = 0.000441 ETH. The number “21” looks negligible; the fee is not necessarily negligible at all, because it scales with the ether price. Our gas tracker shows current tiers with the dollar cost already worked out.
What is exact and what is not
The unit conversions are exact — they are fixed powers of ten defined by each protocol, and nothing about them changes with market conditions. Only the dollar line depends on a price, taken from the same documented pipeline as the rest of the site and subject to the same freshness caveats. See our methodology.
Frequently asked questions
How many satoshi are in a bitcoin? Exactly 100,000,000.
How many gwei are in an ETH? Exactly 1,000,000,000. And one gwei is 1,000,000,000 wei.
Why does the gwei row show a dash for bitcoin? Because gwei is an Ethereum unit. Bitcoin’s only subdivision in common use is the satoshi.
Can I convert between BTC and ETH here? No — that is a price conversion, not a unit conversion. Use the crypto converter.