What Ethereum staking pays in 2026: rates, fees, what you keep
Ethereum's network rate is 2.46% on September 14, 2026. What you keep runs 1.60% to 2.46% depending on where you stake. The numbers, with sources.
The Editors · 9 min read · Updated
Ethereum paid a network staking rate of 2.46% on September 14, 2026, on 43,135,294 ETH staked, which is 35.35% of all the ether in existence (validatorqueue.com, beacon chain data read September 15, 2026). That is the headline number, and it is the one you are least likely to receive.
Three things sit between it and your account, and all three are knowable today. A new validator waits about 31 days in the entry queue earning nothing. Your provider takes a cut ranging from 0% to 35%. Then the IRS taxes the rewards as ordinary income the moment you can move them.
Run those and the same 2.46% lands between roughly 1.60% and 2.46% depending only on where you stake. That spread, 86 basis points, is bigger than the whole drop in the network rate over the past year, which was 38 basis points. Where you stake now moves your return more than the network does.
What the network pays
The beacon chain rate on September 14, 2026 was 2.46%, down from 2.84% on the same date in 2025 and 3.95% in 2023 (validatorqueue.com, read September 15, 2026).
The fall is mechanical. Ethereum's issuance scales with the inverse square root of the total staked, so every ether that joins shrinks the slice for everyone already in. In September 2023 the network held 25.4 million ETH and paid 3.95%. It now holds 43.1 million and pays 2.46%. Nothing broke. The pool got bigger.
Staking ether does not pay in dollars. It pays in ether. A 2.46% rate on an asset that falls 20% against the dollar is a dollar loss, and no fee schedule on this page changes that.
What each route actually pays
Every figure below is the rate the provider itself published on September 14, 2026. The two Coinbase rows are our arithmetic: the network rate of 2.46% less Coinbase's posted commission. Coinbase does not publish a net APY in its fee disclosure.
Dollar columns use 32 ETH at $2,539.74, the price Rocket Pool's API reported on September 14, 2026. That stake is worth $81,272.
| Route | Rate | On 32 ETH, per year | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo validator | 2.46% | $1,999 | none, after hardware |
| Lido (stETH) | 2.225% | $1,808 | 10% of rewards |
| Rocket Pool (rETH) | 2.168% | $1,762 | 5% base node commission |
| Coinbase One Premium | 1.84% | $1,494 | 25.25% of rewards |
| Coinbase standard | 1.60% | $1,300 | 35% of rewards |
Sources, in order: validatorqueue.com; Lido's stETH APR endpoint, which returned 2.225% with a seven-day average of 2.26%; Rocket Pool's mainnet API, which returned an rETH APR of 2.1677% and a 5% node commission; and Coinbase's pricing and fees disclosure, which states a 35% standard commission on ETH and 31.75%, 28.5% and 25.25% for the Basic, Preferred and Premium tiers of Coinbase One.
Two of those numbers check each other. Lido's published 2.225% is already net of its 10% protocol fee, half to node operators and half to the DAO treasury (Lido docs, read September 15, 2026). Gross that back up and you get 2.472%, within two basis points of the independent network reading of 2.46%. The liquid staking tokens are not underperforming the chain. They are handing you the chain minus a published fee.
Rocket Pool is the odd one. The same API call returns a beacon chain APR of 2.641% and an rETH APR of 2.168%, a gap of 17.9% against a headline commission of 5%. The difference flows to node operators, who earn the full rate on their own bonded ether as well as commission on yours.
The 31 days nobody prices in
On September 14, 2026 the entry queue held 1,783,270 ETH, worth about $4.5 billion, and the wait was 30.96 days. The exit queue was empty (validatorqueue.com, read September 15, 2026).
So a solo validator activating today earns nothing for a month. Over the first twelve months that turns 2.46% into 2.25%, or $1,829 instead of $1,999. From year two it stops mattering.
The queue has been shortening all year. It was 2,884,107 ETH and 50 days on June 15, 2026, and 2,286,511 ETH and 39.7 days on August 15 (same source). Anyone reading this page months from now should check the live figure rather than trust this paragraph.
Liquid staking tokens and exchanges skip the wait, because you buy into a position that is already validating. That is worth something real, and it is part of what the fee buys.
Getting out is the mirror image. The exit queue read zero on September 14, 2026, against 2,614,325 ETH and a 45-day wait on September 15, 2025. Today the door out is open and the door in is crowded.
What tax takes
The fair market value of staking rewards goes into gross income in the year you gain dominion and control over them, meaning the moment you can sell or move them. That holds whether you run the validator yourself or stake through an exchange (IRS Revenue Ruling 2023-14, issued July 31, 2023).
Two consequences follow. Rewards are taxed as ordinary income at your marginal rate, not at capital gains rates. And the value on the day you received them becomes your cost basis, so selling later triggers a second, separate gain or loss.
As an illustration, and nothing more: a US filer in the 24% federal bracket keeps about 1.87% of a 2.46% gross rate, and about 1.22% of Coinbase's 1.60%. State tax comes out of what is left. Your bracket is your own.
Staking through an ETF
The funds are now a real option, and their economics are published.
The Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF (ticker ETH) charges a 0.15% sponsor fee. Over the six months to June 30, 2026 it booked $16.9 million of staking reward income against net assets of $1.35 billion (Form 10-Q, period ended June 30, 2026). On period-end assets that is 1.25% for the half year. The fund grew over those six months, so average assets were lower and the realized rate was higher than that.
Grayscale's larger Ethereum Staking ETF (ticker ETHE) carries a 2.5% sponsor fee. Its first staking distribution, announced January 5, 2026, paid $0.083178 per share for rewards earned between October 6, 2025 and December 31, 2025 (Form FWP). Against a network rate near 2.5%, a 2.5% annual fee is the whole yield. We looked at how the newer bank-sponsored funds price the same trade in Morgan Stanley's ETH and SOL ETFs stake for you.
Where the published rates disagree
Three sources, all read on the same day, gave three different network rates: 2.46% from validatorqueue.com, 2.56% from StakingRewards, and 2.641% from Rocket Pool's API. We are reporting the gap instead of picking one. The readings differ by averaging window and by whether execution-layer tips and MEV are counted alongside consensus issuance. Any rate you see quoted without that context is missing about 20 basis points of definition.
Validator counts disagree harder. validatorqueue.com counted 911,853 active validators on September 14, 2026; StakingRewards showed roughly 802,000 the same day. And the count has fallen since September 2024, when it was 1,071,653, while staked ether rose from 34.2 million to 43.1 million over the same stretch.
That is not a contradiction. Since the Pectra upgrade a single compounding validator can hold an effective balance of up to 2,048 ETH instead of 32, and operators can merge validators without exiting (ethereum.org, read September 15, 2026). Validator count stopped being a proxy for staked ether in May 2025. Use the ETH figure.
The minimum to run your own is still 32 ETH (same source).
Who this page is for
Anyone holding ether and deciding where to stake it, or whether the rate still justifies the lockup. The arithmetic here is deliberately boring: the network sets a rate, the provider takes a cut, the queue costs you a month, and the IRS takes ordinary income. Three of those four are your choice.
If you want the story of how the rate got this low, we covered why yields fell as staking hit a record share of supply. For the same what-do-you-keep treatment applied to dollar-denominated crypto yield, see how to make money with stablecoins in 2026.
What changed
- September 15, 2026. First published. Network rate, staked total, validator count and both queues from validatorqueue.com as of September 14, 2026. Provider rates from the Lido and Rocket Pool APIs the same day. Coinbase commissions from its pricing and fees disclosure. ETF figures from Grayscale's 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2026 and its January 5, 2026 distribution notice.
Sources
- validatorqueue.com, beacon chain entry and exit queues, staked supply and network APR (read September 15, 2026)
- Lido, stETH APR endpoint (read September 15, 2026)
- Lido, tokens integration guide, protocol fee
- Rocket Pool, mainnet API payload (read September 15, 2026)
- Coinbase Help, pricing and fees disclosures
- StakingRewards, Ethereum asset page (read September 15, 2026)
- Internal Revenue Service, Revenue Ruling 2023-14 (July 31, 2023)
- Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF, Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2026
- Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF, staking distribution announcement (January 5, 2026)
- ethereum.org, solo staking (read September 15, 2026)
This is not financial advice.
