Arbitrum, the Ethereum layer 2 network collected $1.20 million in gas fees over the 90 UTC days to 15 September 2026, and Polygon collected $7.03 million. On Arbitrum vs Polygon fees that's a 5.9x lead for Polygon, even though ARB and POL closed the Tuesday 15 September session within 1.7% of each other on market cap.
Annualise those 90 days and Polygon's gas take equals 2.86% of POL's $997.18 million cap, against 0.48% of ARB's $1,013.84 million. The same window in 2025 ran the other way, with Arbitrum at $3.32 million and Polygon at $0.84 million. Polygon's lead dates from January 2026, when its monthly fees jumped from $0.69 million to $3.83 million.
Arbitrum (ARB) | Polygon (POL) | |
What it is | Ethereum rollup network | Ethereum scaling network |
Market cap, 15 Sep close | $1,013.84M | $997.18M |
Gas fees, 18 Jun to 15 Sep | $1.199M | $7.031M |
Fees as % of cap, annualised | 0.48% | 2.86% |
TVL, 15 Sep | $1,403.8M | $808.1M |
Stablecoins, 15 Sep | $4,015.3M | $3,364.6M |
On Phemex | ARBUSDT perp Listed | POL spot Listed, perp delisted |
What Are Arbitrum and Polygon?
Arbitrum runs on top of Ethereum as what its own documentation calls a child chain, so Ethereum settles the results and keeps the transaction data available. Its two public chains are Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova, and ARB is the token that governs them. Our Arbitrum explainer walks through the rollup design and where the token fits.
Polygon is the harder one to label. Its main network, which the Polygon documentation calls Polygon Chain, is an EVM-compatible blockchain that executes transactions away from Ethereum and anchors its state back to Ethereum through periodic checkpoints. Its validators stake POL, the token CoinGecko still lists as POL (ex-MATIC), so the fairest description is an Ethereum scaling network and not a rollup in the strict sense.
That design gap matters for a cost comparison, because the two networks charge for different work. Our guide to Ethereum layer 2 solutions sets out how rollups and checkpointed chains split the job with Ethereum.
Arbitrum vs Polygon Fees Over 90 Days
DefiLlama's daily fee series for each chain puts the 90 UTC days from 18 June to 15 September 2026 at $7.031 million for Polygon and $1.199 million for Arbitrum. The ratio is 5.86, and the 5.9 in the headline is that figure rounded to one decimal.
The flip is what makes the number interesting. Across the same 90 days a year earlier, from 18 June to 15 September 2025, Arbitrum collected $3.317 million and Polygon $0.836 million. Arbitrum out-earned Polygon in every calendar month from June to December 2025 and peaked at $3.26 million in October. Polygon has out-earned Arbitrum in every calendar month from January to August 2026.
Over the full 365 days to 15 September 2026, Polygon's total reached $27.95 million against Arbitrum's $11.28 million. That 2.48x lead understates the gap on the current run rate, because Arbitrum still led in the first three and a half months of that window, from mid-September to December 2025.
Our top 10 layer 2 tokens for 2026 lists both ARB and POL among its ten names. On fees earned per dollar of token value, the two sit far apart. Polygon's annualised gas take is 2.86% of its cap and Arbitrum's is 0.48%, so a dollar of POL buys you a claim on a network earning roughly six times as much gas as a dollar of ARB.
Why Polygon Gas Fees Jumped in January 2026
Polygon gas fees came to $0.69 million in December 2025, then $3.83 million in January 2026 and $4.96 million in February. Coin360 reported on 14 January 2026 that Polymarket's 15-minute crypto prediction markets had pushed Polygon's January fees past $1.7 million, which it called a 14-month high. DefiLlama's series sums the 1 to 13 January stretch at $2.07 million, so the report and the data agree on the direction and the rough size.
Polygon hasn't fallen back to its 2025 pace since, and that persistence is what you're paying for when you value POL on its fees. Its weakest month from March to August 2026 was April at $2.02 million, close to three times the December 2025 total. August came in at $2.22 million.
Arbitrum gas fees went the other way over the same stretch. January 2026 brought $0.73 million, and every month from March to August landed between $0.36 million and $0.45 million.
That concentration is the specific risk in Polygon's lead. A large share of the jump arrived with one application's short-dated markets, so the 2.86% figure holds only while that fee flow does. The September data to the 15th reads $1.04 million for Polygon and $0.24 million for Arbitrum, which keeps the 2026 pattern intact through the anchor close.
What the Arbitrum Gas Fees Series Leaves Out
DefiLlama's methodology for the Arbitrum series defines fees as gas paid by users and nothing more. Arbitrum's Timeboost documentation describes a transaction ordering policy, live on Arbitrum One and Nova, that sells a time advantage through an express-lane auction. Those auction proceeds aren't gas, so they fall outside the $1.199 million and the 0.48% built on it.
So this page calls Arbitrum's number a gas figure and never Arbitrum revenue. The Polygon series uses the same user-paid definition, which keeps the 5.9x comparison like for like, and it also means Arbitrum's full take from its chains runs higher than the series shows.
Does Arbitrum TVL Lead Polygon?
Capital tells the opposite story. Arbitrum TVL stood at $1,403.8 million on DefiLlama's 15 September data point, 1.74 times Polygon's $808.1 million. Stablecoins on Arbitrum came to $4,015.3 million against $3,364.6 million on Polygon, a narrower 1.19x.
Put the fees against the capital and the split sharpens for you as a holder. Polygon's annualised gas take equals 3.53% of its TVL, while Arbitrum's equals 0.35%. Arbitrum holds more money, and Polygon charges for more activity on each dollar parked there.
Our Arbitrum vs Base comparison measures Arbitrum against a different rollup on value and activity, and Arbitrum's capital lead is the part of its case that travels across both matchups.
ARB vs POL Price Since September 2025
On ARB vs POL price, both tokens lost most of their value over the year to 15 September 2026. The ARBUSDT perpetual fell from 0.4923 to 0.1515, down 69.2%. POL on the sPOLUSDT spot pair fell from 0.2572 to 0.0927, down 64.0%. Year to date, ARB is down 18.9% from its 31 December 2025 close of 0.1867, and POL is down 7.9% from 0.1007.
The last 30 sessions reversed the order. ARB closed at 0.0728 on 15 August 2026, the lowest close in a 1,000-bar series that starts on 21 December 2023, and it rose 106.1% across the 30 sessions from 16 August. POL gained 23.9% over the same 30 sessions on the spot pair.
The Tuesday 15 September session split the pair hard. ARB gained 13.40%, the largest one-session gain of the 116 perpetuals with a 15 September bar, while POL spot lost 4.14%.
Both charts printed a 50/200 golden cross inside two days, ARB's perpetual on 14 September and POL's spot pair on 15 September. Our September 2026 Arbitrum price prediction traces how ARB's previous golden crosses played out. Neither cross and neither fee trend explains a single session, and the 15 September moves carry no cause in the data used here.
Can You Trade ARB or POL on Phemex?
The ARBUSDT perpetual is Listed, with up to 50x leverage and funding every eight hours in the product's own interval field. For POL the picture is split. The POLUSDT perpetual is delisted and so is the older MATICUSDT contract, which leaves the sPOLUSDT spot pair as the only POL market on the venue.
That means the fee winner in this comparison has no live perpetual on Phemex, and the capital winner does. If you want futures exposure to the Arbitrum vs Polygon gap, you can only hold the ARB side of it. A long ARB position is a bet on the network with more capital and the smaller gas take. A POL view has to go through the spot pair, with no leverage and no funding to collect or pay. The ARB contract settles funding every eight hours, so a position you hold for a full day pays or collects it three times.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much ARB and POL was in circulation at the 15 September close?
About 6.68 billion ARB and 10.71 billion POL. Both figures come from dividing CoinGecko's market cap by its price at the 00:00 UTC instant on 16 September 2026, the instant that carries the 15 September close.
How long does a Timeboost express lane last?
A default round runs 60 seconds, according to Arbitrum's documentation. Transactions outside the express lane take a default 200-millisecond delay on their arrival timestamp before the sequencer orders them.
How many validators can Polygon Chain run?
Up to 105 active validators at a time. The Polygon documentation sets the minimum stake at 10,000 POL, a level raised by the governance proposal PIP-4.
What else did Polygon's January activity show?
Coin360's 14 January 2026 report put Polygon's daily transactions above 5.3 million and its active users at 1.4 million during the same fee surge.
Bottom Line
Polygon wins this comparison on the stated metric, gas fees earned per dollar of market cap, by 2.86% to 0.48% over the 90 days to 15 September 2026. Arbitrum wins on TVL, on stablecoins and on the 30-session price move.
The market prices the two tokens within 1.7% of each other, which says traders are treating Polygon's fee lead as borrowed from one application and Arbitrum's capital lead as its own. If Polygon's monthly fees hold above $2 million through the October data, that discount starts to look like the mispricing in the pair.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
