Stargate Bridge Fee Percentage, Hop, and Across: Real Comparison (2026)

Stargate, Hop, and Across have been three of the most widely used cross-chain bridges. They all claim to be cheap, fast, and secure. They are also meaningfully different under the hood — and the right choice depends entirely on your amount, route, and risk tolerance.

Update (October 2026): Hop’s quote API stopped responding in July 2026, so BridgeFees.com no longer compares Hop. We keep Hop in this comparison because its model explains the tradeoffs, but in practice the choice is between Stargate and Across.

How they actually work (in plain English)

Stargate Finance

Stargate uses LayerZero messaging to unify liquidity pools across chains. When you deposit USDC on Ethereum, the same USDC comes out on the destination chain — no wrapped tokens, no intermediate swaps. This matters: many bridges deliver a wrapped version (like "USDC.e") that you then have to swap again. Stargate’s unified liquidity model is its main selling point.

Strength: Excellent liquidity for large transfers. Delivers native tokens.
Weakness: Dependent on LayerZero’s security assumptions.
Fee percentage: Stargate V1 pools charged a flat 0.06% (6 bps). Stargate V2 sets a dynamic fee per route (sometimes a rebate), plus a LayerZero messaging fee paid in native gas, according to the Stargate fee docs.

Hop Protocol

Hop uses an AMM-based model with liquidity providers on each chain. You swap your asset for "hUSDC" (a bridge intermediate), which then gets swapped back to native USDC on the destination — the model that made Hop popular for bridging USDC from Ethereum to Polygon. The AMM model means fees scale with the size of your trade — great for small transfers, worse for large ones that cause slippage.

Strength: Mature, battle-tested contracts.
Weakness: Slippage on large transfers. Limited chain support compared to Stargate. Hop’s quote API stopped responding in July 2026, so BridgeFees.com no longer compares Hop.

Across Protocol

Across uses an optimistic verification model with relayers. A relayer front-runs your transfer with their own capital and gets reimbursed from a central liquidity pool on Ethereum after a short dispute window. The result is quick delivery for the user, which is why it is popular on fast lanes like moving ETH from Ethereum to Base.

Strength: Often competitive for small-to-medium amounts. Relayers front the capital, so delivery is designed to be quick.
Weakness: Limited to major EVM chains. Requires the relayer network to be healthy.

Side-by-side: how the fees are built

For a $1,000 USDC transfer from Ethereum to Arbitrum, the total you pay depends on how each bridge builds its fee. According to each provider’s official docs:

• Across: an LP fee plus a relayer fee (covering destination gas, capital cost and risk), plus an optional app fee. The LP fee is zero when repayment is on the deposit chain. The Across fee docs publish no fixed fee range or fill time.
• Stargate: V2 sets a dynamic fee per route (sometimes a rebate), plus a LayerZero messaging fee paid in native gas on the source chain. The Stargate fee docs publish no transfer time.

The same structures apply to a $10,000 transfer, but the size of the trade can shift which bridge quotes lower, so check a live quote for your exact amount.

Pattern: Across is often competitive for small-to-medium amounts, Stargate’s deep liquidity can help with very large ones, and Hop no longer returns quotes.

Security models: what are you actually trusting?

Stargate

You trust LayerZero’s two-oracle model (default: Google Cloud + Polygon Labs). If both are compromised, messages can be forged. In practice this has never happened, but it is a centralized-ish trust assumption.

Hop

You trust a set of independent "Bonders" who front liquidity. A malicious bonder cannot steal your funds — worst case is delayed confirmation. This is arguably the most decentralized of the three.

Across

You trust the UMA optimistic oracle for dispute resolution after a short dispute window. Relayers can freeze if UMA is attacked, but user funds are ultimately recoverable because the canonical state lives on Ethereum.

All three have been audited. None has been hacked as of early 2026. If you are moving life-savings amounts, split the transfer across two providers to limit single-protocol exposure.

Which should you pick?

Use Across if

• You are moving a small-to-medium amount.
• Speed matters.
• The route is a mainstream EVM pair — the Ethereum → Optimism ETH route, or Ethereum ↔ Arbitrum/Base/Polygon.

Hop in 2026

• Hop’s quote API stopped responding in July 2026, so BridgeFees.com no longer compares Hop; we found no official sunset notice.
• If Across and Stargate are both down or unusually priced, compare other bridges on BridgeFees.com rather than Hop.

Use Stargate if

• You are moving a large amount (liquidity advantage).
• Your destination is an emerging chain that Across does not support (e.g., Aptos, Sui, certain L2s).
• You specifically want native tokens, not wrapped.

Why you should never just pick one

The "cheapest bridge" changes often. Relayer liquidity shifts, LP capital rotates, new chains go live. The only sane strategy is to compare quotes live before every transfer, then pick the cheapest one that meets your speed and token requirements.

That is the whole point of an aggregator. BridgeFees.com shows you quotes from Across and other major bridges in parallel, without any wallet connection. A quick check beats overpaying.

Bottom line

Across is often competitive for typical retail transfers. Stargate’s deep liquidity can help for large amounts. Hop is no longer quoted. And the only way to know which is cheapest right now is to compare quotes side by side — that is exactly what aggregators are for.

Fee structure for each bridge at a glance, based on each provider's official docs: Stargate bridge fees, Hop Protocol fees, Across Protocol fees.