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What is the correct algorithm to calculate gas limit for transaction with data in Ethereum?

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    It's not a duplicate! The attached QA has nothing to do with arbitrary data cost estimation.
    – Slava Fomin II
    Feb 16, 2018 at 14:33

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According to Ethereum Yellow Paper, in order to calculate gas limit for transaction with non-zero data you will need to use the following formula:

gasLimit = Gtransaction + Gtxdatanonzero × dataByteLength

where:

Gtransaction = 21000 gas

Gtxdatanonzero = 68 gas

dataByteLength — your data size in bytes

So, the final formula would look like this:

gasLimit = 21000 + 68 * dataByteLength.

If your data has 10 bytes, the gas limit would be:

gasLimit = 21000 + 68 * 10 = 21000 + 680 = 21680

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  • will it be different if I'm sending to a contract address?
    – tristantzara
    Jul 19, 2019 at 7:43
  • How I can calculate dataByteLenght of my transaction?
    – Giacomo Brunetta
    Jan 22, 2021 at 19:04
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    Keep in mind if you're sending to a smart contract, that smart contract's internal functions will require additional gas depending on what all they do.
    – Albert Renshaw
    Oct 13, 2021 at 4:19
  • What's a reliable way to estimate the gas if we are calling a function on the smart contract? There is a rpcProvider.estimateGas(txn) method I can use, but it will fail to estimate the gas sometimes on some complicated functions
    – Yao
    Jan 4 at 19:30

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