eth_gasPrice

eth_gasPrice gives you the node's single suggested price per unit of gas, in wei of ETH, for Ethereum mainnet. It predates EIP-1559: on London-and-later Ethereum the node derives this figure from the current base fee plus a typical tip and collapses it into one number, the way a legacy type-0 transaction expects. It's a fast, no-parameter read of "what's gas roughly costing right now." Hit https://ethereum.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY (chain ID 1) and you get back something like 0x4a817c800 — 20 gwei. For modern type-2 transactions you'll usually want the richer eth_feeHistory data instead, but this remains the quickest pulse-check.

Use cases

Quick fee pulse. One CU, no params — a fast read to see whether Ethereum gas is sitting at a few gwei or spiking into the hundreds before you decide to transact.
Legacy transactions. Fill the gasPrice field on a type-0 transaction for tooling or hardware wallets that still build pre-1559 transactions.
One input to a fee oracle. Blend this single value with eth_feeHistory percentiles to cross-check your estimator rather than trusting either source alone.

Parameters

This method takes no parameters. Pass an empty array [].

Response

Type	Description
string (hex)	Hex-encoded gas price in wei (e.g. "0x4a817c800" = 20 gwei).

Example request

1curl https://ethereum.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
4  -d '{
5    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
6    "method": "eth_gasPrice",
7    "params": [],
8    "id": 1
9  }'

Try it live in the Ethereum playground.

Errors & troubleshooting

Code	Message	Cause
`-32603`	`Internal error`	Node could not estimate current gas price.

Common pitfalls

On post-London Ethereum this is a synthesized number (base fee plus an assumed tip) and tends to run high. For a type-2 transaction you'll overpay if you copy it into maxFeePerGas; reach for eth_maxPriorityFeePerGas and eth_feeHistory instead.
The value is wei. To show "20 gwei" divide by 1e9; to show an ETH cost divide by 1e18. Skipping the conversion and printing the raw wei integer is a common UI bug.

Supported networks

Mainnet — Chain ID: 1
Sepolia — Chain ID: 11155111