Is Nostr free to use? What costs what, and why

The short answer to "is Nostr free" is yes, but with asterisks worth understanding. The protocol itself is free. Specific services built on top have fees. The fees are small, transparent, and mostly avoidable.

This guide walks through exactly what costs what, what is always free, and what you can optionally pay for.

The short answer on cost

The Nostr protocol is free to use forever. Clients are free. Posting is free. Reading is free. What costs money: short premium NIP-05 identifiers ($2.99 and up per year), some paid relays ($10 to $100 per year), and the sats inside any zaps you choose to send. Everything else is zero.

When you are ready, grab your @nostr.blog address →

What is always free

Three core things, and they are the important ones.

Posting and reading. The public relays that host most Nostr traffic do not charge for incoming or outgoing events. You publish signed events, relays store them, followers fetch them. Zero fees at every step.

Creating an account. An account on Nostr is a cryptographic key pair generated on your device. No registration fee because there is no registry to register with. Every Nostr client generates keys for you on first launch at no cost.

Installing a client. Damus, Primal, Amethyst, Coracle, Iris, Snort, nostr.blog's client, and every other mainstream option: all free. No in-app purchases blocking core functionality. No subscription tiers for basic use.

These three cover the essential daily experience of using Nostr. If all you want is a social network where you post, read, follow, and interact, everything you need is free permanently.

What costs money, and why

The fees that exist are layered on top of the protocol and exist because they cover real infrastructure costs.

NIP-05 identifiers on hosted domains

Your raw public key (npub1pf8hkx3...) is free and works everywhere. A readable identifier (alice@nostr.blog) costs a small annual fee because someone has to host a JSON file for it and keep that file online.

On nostr.blog, prices by name length:

The lowest tier is $2.99 per year. This is cheaper than a single cup of coffee per year. Premium short names cost more because they are genuinely scarce; there are only 26 single-letter names at most per domain.

Hosting the JSON file on your own domain is free beyond the cost of the domain registration. Our NIP-05 guide covers both paths in detail.

Paid relays

Most relay traffic runs on free public relays. A few paid relays exist and charge for access.

Why anyone would pay for a relay:

• Spam-free. Paid relays enforce a small write fee (1 to 100 sats per event). The cost is negligible but high enough that spammers cannot afford to flood.
• Higher retention. Paid relays often promise to keep your events online longer than free ones. Free relays sometimes prune old events to save storage.
• Faster response. Paid relays often run on better hardware with lower latency.
• Better uptime. Free relays sometimes go offline; paid ones usually have service-level commitments.

Prices vary. A typical paid-relay subscription is $10 to $100 per year. Most users do not need one; free relays cover the common case. Power users with strong uptime requirements sometimes pay.

Lightning wallet fees

Zapping is not free, but the fee structure is usually tiny.

The zap amount itself (whatever sats you choose to send) is the dominant cost. On top of that:

• Routing fees are usually 0 sats for small zaps (under 1000 sats) and 1 to 10 sats for medium ones. Large zaps cost more in absolute terms but still typically under 1 percent of the amount.
• Service fees on custodial wallets. Wallet of Satoshi, Strike, and similar take a small cut on buys and withdrawals. The cut varies (typically 1 to 3 percent on buys, close to zero on sends).
• Channel open fees. One-time Bitcoin on-chain fee when a non-custodial wallet opens a channel. 200 to 20,000 sats depending on mempool congestion. Custodial wallets avoid this entirely.

For routine zapping, these fees are rounding errors. A 21-sat zap costs essentially 21 sats. A 1000-sat zap costs 1000 sats plus 0 to 5 in routing. The protocol is not skimming a cut.

What is misleadingly framed as free

Two things other platforms call "free" that are worth distinguishing from actually-free.

Ad-supported freemium. Twitter/X, Threads, Instagram, and Mastodon are "free" in the sense that you do not pay cash. You pay with data exposure, attention spent on ads, and engagement optimization that shapes what you see. Nostr has no equivalent: there is nothing to monetize your attention because there is no company in the middle. This makes Nostr more expensive in direct fees (there are some) and less expensive in indirect costs (there are none).

"Free" with account risk. Free platforms can ban you, rate-limit you, or change their rules in ways that strand your account. The cost is conditional: it is zero until something happens to you, then it is everything. Nostr cannot do this because nobody has the power to; the cost structure is more predictable.

The honest tradeoff is that Nostr is free in all the ways that matter and has modest, transparent fees for the things it charges for. That is different from "free to you, paid for by advertisers" and usually better.

A realistic budget for a heavy Nostr user

What a typical engaged user actually spends in a year:

• NIP-05 identifier: $2.99 to $29 depending on name length
• Zaps sent: variable, often $10 to $100 per month if you are actively zapping writers you like
• Lightning wallet fees: effectively zero for routine use
• Paid relay subscription (optional): 0 or $10 to $100
• Client install or subscription: 0

Total for a user who pays modest attention: $40 to $60 per year plus whatever they voluntarily tip as zaps. Total for a user who wants the absolute minimum cost: pay nothing except the sats in their own outbound zaps.

This compares favorably to any platform where "the user is the product." Nostr's fees go to infrastructure costs and voluntary tipping, not to advertisers bidding on your attention.

How to minimize costs

If you want to use Nostr as close to free as possible:

1. Skip the NIP-05 or host it yourself. Your raw npub works; readable names are a convenience.
2. Use free public relays. Default relay lists on every major client point at free options.
3. Use a custodial Lightning wallet for small amounts. Wallet of Satoshi has no opening fees and routine transactions are essentially free.
4. Only zap when you want to. Zaps are entirely voluntary; nothing forces you to send them.

Under this path you can use Nostr indefinitely without spending a cent. Most users choose to spend a small amount on a NIP-05 because a readable name is worth $2.99 per year. Some spend more on bigger names, premium relays, or active zapping.

The choice is yours because no platform is making it for you.