Solana Staking APY: What Validators, LSTs and Exchanges Pay

Own stake, liquid token or exchange: what each pays

How you stake	APY	What comes off the network rate
Own stake account, validator charging 0%	5.0%	Nothing
Own stake account, median validator	4.9%	The validator's two commissions
Liquid staking tokens: JitoSOL, JupSOL, dSOL, mSOL, INF	4.8–5.4%	The pool's fee
Exchange token: BNSOL (Binance)	4.6%	The exchange's pool fee
Exchange token: bbSOL (Bybit)	4.7%	The exchange's pool fee
Coinbase staking	3.2%	35% of rewards (25.25–31.75% with Coinbase One)

A validator charging nothing passes on the full network rate, and only a handful of tokens beat it, by up to 0.4 of a point. Behind the biggest gains is money an ordinary delegator never sees: Jupiter runs its own nodes and hands holders the operator's share too, and INF also earns swap fees. Coinbase lands at the bottom because its 35% comes off everything the stake earns, whereas Binance and Bybit stake through tokens of their own and hand over most of the rate. Native vs liquid staking compares the tokens one by one, including what it costs to sell one before the epoch ends.

How much your validator changes it

Most validators land close to the network rate. Over the last 30 closed epochs, half of them paid delegators between 4.7% and 5.0%, and picking one from the top tenth over a median one adds only a few SOL a year on a 1,000 SOL stake.

The real losses sit at the other end. A tenth of validators paid less than 2.6%, nearly all of them because they charge 100% commission and hand delegators nothing; the largest of those is the validator of the exchange Upbit. Landing in that tenth costs at least 23 SOL a year on the same stake, so ruling out bad validators matters far more than hunting for the best one.

Commission comes in two parts, one on inflation rewards and one on MEV tips, and most wallets show only the first. Of the 220 validators charging 0% on inflation, 26 still keep part of the tips. MEV is the smaller part of the rate, so even a validator keeping all of it costs you about 0.9 SOL a year on 1,000 SOL. The validator leaderboard lists both commissions for every validator, and how to choose a validator covers the rest of the checks.

Where the rate comes from

Solana pays no interest in the lending sense. Nobody borrows your SOL. The yield is new SOL that the protocol mints and pays to stake, plus tips that traders pay block producers to order their transactions (MEV), which most validators share with the stake behind them.

Inflation currently adds 3.57% to the total supply a year, and only staked SOL receives it. With 68.2% of supply staked, that issuance works out to about 5.2% a year for each staked SOL. The rate actually paid lands a little lower, since a validator that misses votes leaves its part of the issuance unminted, and MEV tips add a little back.

Rewards arrive once per epoch, straight into your stake account, and start earning in the next epoch with nothing to claim. That automatic compounding is why APY is the right measure for native staking; quoted as a simple annual rate (APR), the same rewards look about 0.1 of a point lower. A new delegation earns its first reward one to two epochs after you stake, as how to stake Solana explains.

Why it falls every year

The issuance schedule started at 8% a year, shrinks by a fixed share every year and stops at a floor of 1.5%. Each step down lowers the staking rate with it, so a figure quoted a year ago is higher than today's. The rate also slips when more SOL gets staked, because the same issuance is split more ways.

In August 2026 validators voted to double that yearly decline, from 15% to 30%. The change, SIMD-0550, passed by a hair against a two-thirds requirement, and it starts from the epoch its feature gate is switched on, which has not happened yet. The rate will not drop at that moment. It will fall faster from there.

Both schedules end at the same floor, about 2.2% a year for stakers at today's staked share, and the faster one reaches it about 2.9 years sooner. Over six years the difference on 1,000 SOL comes to about 45 SOL. MEV tips are outside the schedule, so as inflation falls, the MEV commission of the validator you pick weighs more.

Your rewards in SOL

At 5.0%, 1,000 SOL staked with a 0% validator earns about 50 SOL in the first year. Five years at a constant rate would come to 275 SOL, but the inflation part keeps shrinking, so expect closer to 200 SOL. Enter your own stake and commission below.

Stake.Cake charges 0% on inflation rewards and 0% on MEV, so your stake earns the full network rate.

FAQ

Why do sites show different Solana staking APYs?

Mostly because they measure different things. A network rate is quoted before commission, while an exchange quotes what is left after its own cut. Some sites print APR and others APY. Some divide inflation by the staked share and stop there, which gives the schedule's rate rather than what was actually paid. And a wallet showing one validator's estimate is quoting that validator, which can sit anywhere between the top and the bottom of the range.

Is Solana staking paid in SOL or in dollars?

In SOL. The APY is how fast your SOL balance grows. What that balance is worth in dollars moves with the SOL price, which can outweigh a year of staking rewards in either direction.

Can I lose SOL by staking?

Solana does not slash stake when a validator goes offline, so a poorly run validator costs you rewards, not principal. On an exchange the exchange holds your SOL, and a liquid staking token adds the risk of the pool's smart contract.