PPS vs PPLNS vs FPPS: Which Payout Model Pays More

Every payout model answers one question: who absorbs the pool’s bad luck, you or the operator. PPLNS leaves it with you and charges little. PPS, PPS+ and FPPS move it to the pool and charge roughly twice as much for it. On long-run averages the cheap model wins — the premium buys a steadier income, not more coins. The number that decides it for most miners is at the bottom of this page, and it is smaller than almost everyone assumes.

The four models at a glance

Four models cover almost every pool you will meet, and they differ on three things only: what you are paid for, whether transaction fees are included, and who eats a run of bad luck. Fee levels below are the common market pairs — the exact rate belongs to each pool and should be read on its own page before you point hardware anywhere.

Model	You are paid for	Transaction fees	Who carries bad luck	Typical fee
PPLNS	Your share of blocks the pool finds	Usually yes — but see below	the miner	~2%
PPS	Every valid share, at a fixed rate	No	the pool	~4%
PPS+	Every share at a fixed rate, plus a share of fees actually collected	Yes, as found	the pool (on the subsidy)	~4%
FPPS	Every share at a fixed rate that already includes an average of fees	Yes, averaged	the pool	~4%

Two more you will see occasionally: SOLO, where the pool only relays your work and the finder keeps the block — covered in our solo pool comparison — and PROP, an older scheme that pays a proportional share of each round and is trivially exploited by miners who join late, which is exactly why PPLNS replaced it.

The single idea behind all of them

A pool’s income arrives in lumps. Blocks come at random, and a pool that expects six blocks a day will sometimes have a day with two. Your hashrate, by contrast, is steady, and so is your electricity bill. Every payout model is a different answer to that mismatch, and the fee is the price of the answer.

PPLNS passes the lumps to you. You are paid out of blocks the pool genuinely found, so an unlucky week pays less and a lucky one pays more. The pool takes no risk and charges less.
PPS, PPS+ and FPPS smooth the lumps for you. You are paid per share at a fixed rate whether or not a block turns up, and the operator absorbs the difference — which is why the fee is roughly double.

That second promise is not free for the operator either. Guaranteeing payouts requires a cash reserve large enough to survive a losing streak; the classic analysis of pooled mining puts the reserve at R = B · ln(1/ε) / (2f), which on Bitcoin runs into hundreds of BTC. We work that number through in the guide on building a pool. It explains the market you are looking at: the pools offering guaranteed payouts on Bitcoin are the largest operators in the business, and small pools almost all run PPLNS.

PPLNS: paid out of blocks the pool actually finds

PPLNS stands for Pay Per Last N Shares. When the pool finds a block, it looks back over the last N shares submitted by everyone and splits the reward across them in proportion. There is no payment between blocks, because there is nothing to pay from.

Three consequences follow, and they are the whole character of the model:

Your income tracks the pool’s luck. Over months this averages out to the same expected value as a guaranteed model minus the smaller fee; over any single week it can swing either way.
Loyalty is rewarded structurally. Shares only earn when a block lands while they are still inside the window, so miners who stay through a quiet stretch are exactly the ones present when the next block arrives.
Leaving costs you the window. Switch pools and the shares still sitting in N are paid to whoever is mining when the block lands — not to you. Frequent switching quietly donates part of your work, which is the anti-hopping protection working as designed.

What N actually is. Pools define the window differently — a multiple of the

network difficulty, a fixed share count, or a time period. A longer window smooths your income and raises the cost of leaving; a shorter one does the opposite. Pools rarely advertise it, and it is a fair question to ask support before you commit hardware.

PPS and PPS+: a wage instead of a share

Pay Per Share turns mining into piecework. Every valid share you submit is worth a fixed amount calculated from the network difficulty and the block subsidy, credited immediately, regardless of whether the pool found anything that day. If the pool goes a week without a block, you are paid anyway, out of the operator’s reserve.

Plain PPS covers the block subsidy only. Transaction fees inside the blocks stay with the pool — that is the original trade, and it is why PPS+ appeared.

PPS+ pays the subsidy as PPS and the transaction fees as PPLNS. You get a guaranteed wage for the predictable part of the reward and a proportional share of the unpredictable part. ViaBTC, for example, publishes PPS+ at 4% and PPLNS at 2% on the same pool with the same hardware — one pool, two products, two price tags.

FPPS: what “full” adds, and what it is worth today

Full Pay Per Share goes one step further: the per-share rate already includes an average of recent transaction fees, so you are paid for fees the pool has not necessarily collected yet. Everything is guaranteed and everything is smoothed. F2Pool runs the same pairing as ViaBTC — FPPS at 4%, PPLNS at 2%.

The word “full” does the marketing here, so it is worth measuring exactly what it adds.

Over the past 1,008 blocks — one week of Bitcoin, to 13 September 2026 — miners earned

3,168.56 BTC in total, of which 18.56 BTC came from transaction fees. That is

0.586% of miner revenue: 3.125 BTC of subsidy per block against 0.0184 BTC of

fees. Source: mempool.space, and you can re-run it for the current week yourself.

So the thing FPPS guarantees on top of PPS is worth well under one percent of your income at today’s fee levels. It was worth several times that during the 2023–2024 inscription waves, and it will be again in the next fee spike — but a decision made today should use today’s number.

The arithmetic: 2% PPLNS against 4% FPPS

Take 100 units of everything a block pays — 99.414 units of subsidy and 0.586 units of transaction fees, the real split this week. Run those 100 units through each model:

Model and fee	What reaches you, per 100 units mined	Income steady?
PPLNS at 2%, fees included	98.00	No — tracks pool luck
PPLNS at 2%, pool keeps the fees	97.43	No — tracks pool luck
FPPS or PPS+ at 4%	96.00	Yes
Plain PPS at 4%, no fees	95.44	Yes

The pattern is blunt: the two-point fee difference is worth about three and a half times more than the transaction fees FPPS guarantees. A model that pays from the same gross reward cannot out-earn a cheaper one on averages, no matter how it describes the split.

The decision rule. If a pool’s PPLNS pays out transaction fees, FPPS at a

higher fee never wins on averages — you are buying stability, and that is a legitimate purchase. If its PPLNS keeps the fees, FPPS wins only while its fee premium stays under roughly

0.6 percentage points. A 4% FPPS against a 2% PPLNS is not close.

Stability is worth paying for when a bad month breaks something — a hosting contract, a loan payment, a power bill you cannot defer. It is not worth paying for if you can ride out a quiet week, because over a year the cheaper model simply keeps more of your coins.

The detail one large pool does not advertise

Read the fine print on the pool you pick, because “PPLNS” does not mean the same thing everywhere. AntPool’s own support documentation states that under PPLNS the transaction fees inside the block go to the pool — described there as covering maintenance and bonuses — rather than to the miners who found it.

That is the 0.586% from the table above, quietly changing hands. It does not reverse the arithmetic, but it is a term most miners never read, and AntPool does not publish its fee rates publicly the way ViaBTC and F2Pool do — you sign up to see them. When a pool will not state its fee and its payout terms in public, treat the gap as part of the price.

Which model fits your situation

The right answer depends on what a bad month costs you, not on which model sounds more generous. Miners with fixed obligations buy smoothing and pay about two percent for it; miners who can absorb a quiet week keep that two percent instead. Five common situations, with the model each one points to:

You mine intermittently, or on cheap surplus power. PPLNS. The lower fee compounds, and variance costs you nothing you cannot absorb.
You have fixed monthly obligations — hosting, leasing, a power contract. FPPS or PPS+. You are buying predictability with about two percent of revenue, and that is a fair price for a business that must forecast.
You move hashrate between coins or pools often. Guaranteed models, or expect to donate the PPLNS window every time you leave.
You are a home miner with one or two machines. PPLNS on a pool with a low minimum payout. At small hashrates the fee difference is the only thing you can control.
You have enough hashrate to find blocks yourself. Compare against solo first — the solo pool comparison covers the fees and the odds.

How to check what a pool actually pays

Four questions settle what a pool really pays, and each has an answer you can check before committing hardware. Ask them in this order — the first two decide the money, the second two decide how and when it reaches your wallet:

Which models does the pool offer, and at what fee each? A pool selling two models at two prices is being honest about what it sells. Current fees for every pool we track sit on our pool pages alongside live hashrate.
Under PPLNS, do transaction fees reach miners? Ask support in writing if the docs are silent. The answer is worth about 0.6% of your revenue.
How long is the N window? It sets both your income smoothing and the cost of leaving.
What is the minimum payout, and who pays the network fee on it? On a small rig this decides whether you are paid weekly or monthly.

A note on the word “PPS”. Some pools label everything PPS, including schemes

that behave like PPS+ or FPPS. Judge by the mechanics, not the acronym: if the payout changes when the pool has an unlucky week, it is not a guaranteed model, whatever the marketing page calls it.

FAQ

Which payout model is most profitable?

On long-run averages, the one with the lowest fee — normally PPLNS at around 2%, against 4% for guaranteed models. All models pay from the same block reward, so a higher fee cannot produce more coins; it buys steadier arrival of the same coins.

What is the difference between PPS+ and FPPS?

PPS+ pays the subsidy as a guaranteed rate and passes on transaction fees as they are actually collected. FPPS builds an average of recent fees into the guaranteed rate itself, so you are paid for fees before the pool collects them. In practice the difference between the two is a fraction of a percent.

Does PPLNS pay less when the pool is unlucky?

Yes, and that is the model working as intended. A pool that expects six blocks a day will have days with two. Over months this evens out to the same expected income minus a smaller fee; over one week it can be well below or above.

Do I lose earnings if I leave a PPLNS pool?

You lose the shares still inside the N window, because they only pay when a block lands while they are in it. This is deliberate anti-hopping protection, not a penalty aimed at you — but it does make frequent pool switching expensive.

Are transaction fees a big part of mining income?

Not right now. Over the last 1,008 blocks they were 0.586% of total miner revenue. During fee spikes that figure has been many times higher, which is when models that guarantee fees earn their premium.

Why do guaranteed payouts cost about twice as much?

Because the operator is selling insurance and must hold a reserve to back it. The required reserve scales with the block reward and inversely with the fee, which is why only large, well-capitalised pools offer PPS-family payouts on Bitcoin.

Sources

AntPool support — Miners Settings & Fees — payout scheme definitions and the PPLNS transaction-fee policy
ViaBTC Help Centre — How are profits calculated — official PPS+ and PPLNS fee rates and payout rules
F2Pool — published FPPS and PPLNS fee pair
mempool.space — reward stats — subsidy and transaction-fee split over the last 1,008 blocks, 13 September 2026
Meni Rosenfeld, “Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems” (2011) — variance, scoring methods and the operator reserve formula