The lowest-fee PEARL mining pool in 2026

If your only question is "which PEARL pool takes the smallest cut?", here's the direct, live answer in 2026 — plus the catch most miners miss: the lowest fee is not automatically the best deal once you factor in the minimum payout.

Lowest fee, ranked (2026)

1. PearlHash — 3% (cut from 10% on May 20, 2026 — now the lowest fee on the network), ~1 PRL minimum, epoch-based auto-payouts. The first PEARL pool to cross 1 EH/s — deep dive.
2. MinePRL — 4.4%, no minimum payout. The lowest minimum-payout friction on the network — useful for very short rented sessions.
3. Akoya — 5%, PPLNS, ~10 PRL minimum.
4. AlphaMine — 5%, PPLNS (also a 5% solo port), ~1 PRL minimum.

Fees change; the figures in the live visual above and on /pools are authoritative. As of May 21, 2026, PearlHash has the lowest pool fee on PEARL at 3%, MinePRL is second at 4.4% (still uniquely "no minimum payout"), and Akoya / AlphaMine are tied at 5%.

The catch: fee alone doesn't decide cost

Two pools can have the same headline fee and very different real economics, because minimum payout interacts with how you mine:

• Low fee + high minimum can be worse for a small or rented-GPU miner than a slightly higher fee with no minimum — if you stop the pod before clearing the threshold, you mined for nothing. The gap narrowed in May 2026 (PearlHash cut its minimum from ~100 PRL to ~1 PRL), so the spread is now mild: the highest is Akoya at ~10 PRL, while MinePRL (none), AlphaMine (~1 PRL) and PearlHash (~1 PRL) clear almost instantly. Only a very short rented session is at risk now, and only on Akoya.
• So the genuinely cheapest pool for you = lowest fee among pools whose minimum you'll actually clear in a session. For most small/rented miners that points squarely at MinePRL (4.4%, no minimum) — the minimum is no longer a tie-breaker against the others, the fee is.

Cheapest setup ≠ cheapest pool

The pool fee is single digits; the dominant cost of PEARL mining is the H100 itself. Picking the lowest-fee pool saves you a few percent of revenue — picking the wrong GPU rental strategy can cost you the whole margin. Read the cheapest way to mine PEARL and what PEARL mining actually costs — the fee is the small lever; the GPU is the big one.

How to actually minimize what you pay

1. Pick the lowest fee among pools whose minimum payout you'll clear (live table above / /pools).
2. Rent the H100, don't buy it — and start on RunPod's free signup credit so your first test costs $0 (how), then scale on the cheapest reliable host (Vast.ai for the lowest unit price).
3. Stop the pod when profitability flips — per-second billing only saves money if you actually shut down.

Bottom line

The lowest-fee PEARL mining pool as of May 21, 2026 is PearlHash at 3% — recently cut from 10%, an unusual case where the largest pool on the network is also the cheapest. MinePRL at 4.4% is the runner-up and still uniquely friction-free with no minimum payout, which matters for very short rented sessions. Confirm live fees on /pools, then see the PearlHash exahash story and the full pool comparison to finalize.