name: Flow Blockchain FinOps
description: >-
  Flow does not charge for API access itself. The primary costs on the Flow
  blockchain are transaction fees, paid in FLOW tokens, based on compute units
  (CU) consumed by each transaction. Read-only operations such as querying
  blocks, accounts, events, and executing Cadence scripts are free. Storage fees
  apply as a reserved balance requirement proportional to the data stored in an
  account.
costs:
  - type: transaction-fees
    description: >-
      Transaction fees are paid in FLOW tokens and calculated by multiplying
      the total compute units consumed by the current compute-unit price. Fees
      consist of an execution fee (variable, based on code complexity and storage
      I/O), a fixed inclusion fee, and a surge factor applied during congestion.
    currency: FLOW
    model: compute-units
    examples:
      - operation: Empty transaction
        computeUnits: 0
        approximateUSDCost: "$0.0001"
      - operation: Fungible token transfer
        computeUnits: 19
        approximateUSDCost: "$0.00086"
      - operation: Mint small NFT
        computeUnits: 25
        approximateUSDCost: "$0.0011"
      - operation: Create new account
        computeUnits: 45
        approximateUSDCost: "$0.0019"
      - operation: Deploy contract (~50 KB)
        computeUnits: 319
        approximateUSDCost: "$0.0129"
    notes: >-
      All fees approximate and based on current compute-unit price. Fees apply
      regardless of transaction success or failure. A payer account with
      insufficient FLOW balance will cause the transaction to fail.
  - type: inclusion-fee
    description: Fixed per-transaction fee covering inclusion in a block, node-to-node transport, and signature verification.
    amount: 0.0001
    currency: FLOW
    model: fixed
  - type: storage-fees
    description: >-
      Flow uses a reserve-based storage model. Accounts must maintain a minimum
      FLOW balance proportional to the data they store. The balance is not
      spent — it is reserved and returned if storage is freed.
    currency: FLOW
    model: reserve-based
    rates:
      - storage: 100 MB
        reservedBalance: "1 FLOW"
      - storage: minimum account
        reservedBalance: "0.001 FLOW"
    notes: >-
      Transactions fail if they would reduce an account balance below 0.001 FLOW
      or cause the account to exceed its storage capacity.
  - type: api-access
    description: The public Flow REST API via community access nodes is free with no subscription or usage fees.
    amount: 0
    currency: USD
    model: free
    notes: >-
      Third-party providers such as QuickNode offer paid plans for higher
      throughput and SLA guarantees. Running a private access node incurs
      infrastructure costs only.
optimization:
  - Minimize unnecessary function calls in Cadence to reduce execution effort
  - Limit loop iterations to required subsets
  - Use reference borrowing instead of load/save operations
  - Create accounts and add keys only when necessary
  - Use the Flow emulator or testnet to measure compute units before deploying to mainnet
references:
  - title: Flow Transaction Fees Documentation
    url: https://developers.flow.com/build/cadence/basics/fees
  - title: FLIP 351 - Transaction Fee Update
    url: https://github.com/onflow/flips/blob/main/governance/20251119-transaction-fee-update.md
  - title: FLIP 336 - Dynamic Transaction Fees
    url: https://github.com/onflow/flips/blob/main/governance/20250727-dynamic-transaction-fees.md