Solo vs Pooled Payouts: PPLNS & FPPS Explained

Pooled and solo mining pay for the same work in different shapes: pooled schemes such as FPPS and PPLNS pay small, frequent amounts, while solo mining pays a whole block reward or nothing. This guide compares variance, payout cadence, custody and fees, with odds dated 27 October 2026, so you can pick the trade-off you can live with.

Category: Mining and the Network · Published 2026-10-28

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Two ways to get paid for the same work

Every mining pool answers one question: when and how do you get paid? There are two broad answers. Pooled mining pays you small, frequent amounts for the work your miner submits. Solo mining pays you nothing for that ongoing work, then hands you a whole block reward, minus any fee the pool takes, on the rare occasion your own miner finds a block.¹

A share is proof that your miner did a chunk of work: a hash that beats the pool's easier target. A block is the rare hash low enough to beat the network's own target, which wins a slot on the Bitcoin blockchain and its reward.¹ Pooled mining splits the blocks the whole pool finds into a steadier income shared among members. Solo mining keeps you a lone lottery player: your hashrate, your block, your reward. Neither is "better". They trade variance for size, and the right one depends on you. This post walks through that trade so you can self-select.

Variance: a steady trickle vs a rare flood

Variance is how bumpy your income is. Pooled mining smooths it: because the whole pool's hashrate finds blocks often, your slice arrives as a steadier trickle.¹ How steady depends on the scheme. Under FPPS (Full Pay Per Share), each accepted share earns a set amount, including an estimate of transaction fees, whether or not the pool finds a block that day. Under PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares), you are paid when the pool finds a block, according to your part of the last N shares before it, so your payouts still rise and fall with the pool's luck.² Either way, the point is a regular payment you can set against running costs; whether it covers them is a question for the mining calculator.

Solo mining is the opposite: all-or-nothing. You earn exactly zero until one of your miners finds a block, then you get the whole reward at once, minus any pool fee. Finding a block is a memoryless lottery: the expected time is a long-run average, not a countdown. At the network difficulty of 140.58 T on 27 October 2026, a Bitaxe Gamma at about 1.2 TH/s could expect a block about once every 16,000 years on average, and an Antminer S19j Pro at about 104 TH/s about once every 184 years.³ Those are averages, not predictions: you could hit tomorrow or never, and the swing is enormous for a small miner. The difficulty page has today's figure.

Tiny-miner solo wins are rare but real. As of 27 October 2026, SoloLuck's Solo Block Record listed 44 solo-mined blocks since 2022, found mostly by small home miners and each checked on-chain, among them block 957,382, found on 10 July 2026 by a single Bitaxe Gamma of about 1 TH/s.⁴ Solo asks you to stomach that swing in exchange for the whole prize.

Payout cadence and custody: who holds your coins?

Payout cadence is how often money actually lands in your wallet. In ordinary pooled mining the block reward is paid to the pool, which then pays each miner a portion.¹ Pools that work this way keep a balance for you and pay it out later, and some wait until it passes a minimum payout.⁵ That means the pool is custodial for a while: it holds your coins on your behalf between payouts. For most people that's fine, but it is a trust assumption: a custodial pool could freeze withdrawals, demand identity checks, or fail. Not every pooled design works like this. P2Pool and the old Eligius pool, for example, paid their miners directly in the block's coinbase transaction instead.⁵

Solo flips this. On a solo pool that writes your address into the block, there is no threshold and no waiting balance, because there is nothing to batch: you're either at zero or you just won a whole block. When you do win, the reward is paid by the block's coinbase transaction, the special first transaction that creates the new coins, directly to your own address.⁶ The pool never holds that payout. This is self-custody: control over your earnings, at the cost of patience. One caveat: a coinbase reward can't be spent until 100 blocks have passed, about 17 hours at the ten-minute average, so it stays immature until then.⁶

Fees: a cut of every payout vs a cut of a rare block

Fees differ in shape, not just size. A pooled pool takes a percentage of your ongoing rewards: a small cut of that steady trickle, every payout. It's small each time but continuous, and it's the price of the variance-smoothing service the pool provides. In the Bitcoin Wiki's comparison of active pools, read on 28 October 2026, listed fees ran from 0% to 4%, and pay-per-share schemes such as FPPS, which move the luck risk from miners to the pool, are described as carrying the highest fees.²⁵

Solo fees are event-based. A solo pool can only take its cut from a block you find, typically a percentage of the reward, and some take nothing at all.² On a pool that pays you in the coinbase, a fee taken from the block has to be a separate output of that same transaction. The coinbase of block 973,413, mined through a solo pool on 27 October 2026, shows the pattern: it splits the reward between two addresses, 3.07689054 BTC and 0.06279368 BTC (exactly 2% of the total, worked out by us), and adds a third, zero-value output for the witness commitment.⁷ That third output is there even when no pool takes a fee, because a block that contains SegWit transactions must commit to them in an output of its coinbase.⁸

So a coinbase transaction normally has more than one output, and the honest comparison isn't one headline percentage against another. It's "a small cut of frequent income" versus "a cut, if any, of a rare whole block". Check the fee a pool publishes before you rely on it.

What solo looks like in practice

Where a solo pool takes your Bitcoin address as your Stratum username, often with a dot and a worker name after it (bc1q…yourAddress.rig1), the part after the dot is a label for your own tracking, with no effect on odds or payout. Every worker under one address adds its hashrate toward that address, and a block found by any of them pays the reward there. How to read solo-mining statistics covers worker names in more detail.

A pool also sets a share difficulty for each connection, far easier than the network's, and may adjust it automatically to suit your hardware (vardiff).² That only changes how often your miner checks in. Any hash good enough for a block also beats the pool's share target, so it gets submitted whatever your share difficulty is: in solo mining, share difficulty never changes your odds of a block.¹ Low latency won't make a small miner win either; it mainly cuts the work wasted on stale jobs right after a new block appears, as latency and stale work explains.

Which one fits you?

Be honest with yourself about two things: your hashrate and your temperament.

Pooled (PPLNS/FPPS) fits you if you want a predictable payout to set against electricity, you'd rather have a small, steady amount than a tiny chance at a big one, and you're comfortable letting a pool hold your coins between payouts. It's a completely legitimate choice, and for many home miners it's the sensible one.

Solo fits you if you accept the lottery, you value self-custody and mining straight to your own address, and you can mine without expecting income, treating any block as a windfall, not a paycheck. More hashrate makes the variance easier to stomach, but even single hobby boards such as a Bitaxe are run solo, and a few have found blocks.⁴

You can also do both: a steady rig on a pooled pool, and a spare Bitaxe pointed at a solo pool as a lottery ticket. Whichever you choose, your hashrate has the same expected value before fees; only the shape of the payouts changes.³ There's no wrong answer here, just the trade-off you can live with.

FAQ

Is solo mining just gambling?

In a sense, yes. It is a memoryless lottery where the expected time to a block is an average, not a countdown. The difference is that you keep your hardware and can keep mining, and a win pays the block reward, minus any pool fee, to the address you mine to. None of it should be counted on as income.

Does solo mining give worse odds than pooled?

No. Your chance of finding a block depends only on your hashrate against the whole network's, and that is the same whether you mine solo or pooled. Pooling does not improve your odds or your expected earnings before fees; it shares everyone's blocks so payouts arrive steadily instead of all at once.

Can a small miner like a Bitaxe realistically find a block solo?

It is rare, but it has happened. At the 27 October 2026 difficulty, a Bitaxe Gamma at about 1.2 TH/s could expect a block about once every 16,000 years on average, so don't expect income, yet single Bitaxe boards have found blocks, including block 957,382 on 10 July 2026. Treat it as a lottery ticket, not a plan.

Does a solo pool hold my coins?

It depends on how the pool pays. If it writes your address into the coinbase transaction of the block you find, the reward goes straight to that address and the pool never holds it, so there is no balance and no payout threshold. If a pool pays found blocks to its own wallet and forwards your share later, it is custodial. Check how a pool pays before you use it.

Does a solo pool take a cut when I find a block?

Some do and some don't, so check the fee the pool publishes. A pool that pays in the coinbase takes any fee as a separate output of that transaction, which you can see in a block explorer. Even with no fee, the coinbase normally has more than one output, because blocks with SegWit transactions carry a witness commitment output.

Key takeaways

Pooling changes how you are paid, not your odds: before fees, your hashrate has the same expected value pooled or solo.
FPPS pays for each accepted share whether or not the pool finds a block, while PPLNS pays when the pool finds one, according to your part of the last N shares.
Solo mining is a lottery: at the 27 October 2026 difficulty a Bitaxe Gamma could expect a block about once every 16,000 years on average, and that average is not a countdown.
A solo payout written into the coinbase goes straight to your own address, but it cannot be spent until 100 blocks have passed.
A coinbase transaction normally has more than one output, such as the SegWit witness commitment and, on pools that charge one, the pool's fee.

Sources

Some specific claims in this article are scheduled for further source review; citations may be expanded (see our editorial policy).

Solo vs Pooled Mining: Which Model Fits a Home Miner?

Two ways to get paid for the same work

Variance: a steady trickle vs a rare flood

Payout cadence and custody: who holds your coins?

Fees: a cut of every payout vs a cut of a rare block

What solo looks like in practice

Which one fits you?

FAQ

Key takeaways

Sources

Related educational reading

Two ways to get paid for the same work

Variance: a steady trickle vs a rare flood

Payout cadence and custody: who holds your coins?

Fees: a cut of every payout vs a cut of a rare block

What solo looks like in practice

Which one fits you?

💬FAQ

Key takeaways

Sources

Related educational reading

FAQ