Solana has always pushed the narrative that it’s “cheaper than Ethereum”, but lately it doesn’t feel that way.

I tried sending the same token from Jupiter mobile wallet and Phantom.
Both showed different gas fees. Naturally, I picked the cheaper one.

Still ended up paying the higher fee Jupiter showed.

That alone is confusing.

Then on Jupiter Ultra swap, it says “gasless”, yet every swap I made cost around $0.24. So what exactly is gasless here?

One thing I respect about Ethereum is this: it never takes more than the estimate. If anything, you pay less.

On Solana, the base fee might be cheap, but once you factor in priority fees, compute units, routing, and network congestion, the real cost shows up after the transaction. That’s the annoying part.

With the recent Ethereum updates, fees are clearer and more cheaper.

So is Solana cheap? On paper, yes.
In real life usage, not always.

This isn’t hate. It’s just pointing out a UX issue Solana really needs to fix.