How Much Does It Cost to Launch a Token on Arc? Full Budget Breakdown

The cost to launch token Arc teams should budget for is 50 USDC in Arctools service fees, plus network gas of a few cents — also paid in USDC — plus whatever you choose to put into the liquidity pool. There is no percentage of supply, no subscription and no ETH to buy: the fee is flat per service, and gas on Arc is denominated in the same asset as everything else.

Pool capital is the only line item that is actually large, and it is a decision rather than a cost. Here is the full picture.

Cost to launch token Arc: the complete line-item budget

Fees below are Arctools' published flat fee of 50 USDC per service. Gas figures are illustrative metering at Arc's enforced 20 Gwei minimum maxFeePerGas; at that floor, 1,000 gas costs 0.00000002 USDC.

Item	Service fee	Gas (illustrative)	Notes
Token Launch	50 USDC	~0.024 USDC (1.2M gas)	Deploys the ERC-20
Liquidity Pool Creator	50 USDC	~0.010 USDC	Pair creation + initial liquidity
Liquidity Locker	50 USDC	~0.003 USDC (150k gas)	Optional but recommended
Revoke Ownership	50 USDC	~0.001 USDC	Optional
Token Snapshot	Free	Free	Read-only
Token Checker	Free	Free	Read-only
Multisender	50 USDC	~0.24 USDC per 1,000 wallets	Per airdrop run
Token Manager changes	50 USDC each	~0.001 USDC	Tax/limit updates
Token Burn	50 USDC	~0.001 USDC	Supply reduction
Liquidity capital	—	—	Your decision; the real number

A minimal launch — token plus pool — is 100 USDC of service fees and roughly 3.5 cents of gas. A launch with a locked pool and revoked ownership is 200 USDC and under a dime of gas. Everything beyond that is optional tooling you can buy per use.

The 50 USDC fee is per service, not per supply

This is the part worth being explicit about. Arctools charges a flat 50 USDC per service regardless of supply, tax complexity, number of fee recipients or number of multisender recipients. Other launchers in the ecosystem sometimes take a percentage of supply or a cut of trading fees instead of an upfront fee, which is not inherently worse — it just moves the cost, and it means the token's supply is not entirely yours.

If you want the flat-fee version of the argument: 50 USDC is 0.5% of supply for a token with a $10,000 FDV, and it stays 50 USDC when your FDV is $10,000,000. There is no scenario in which the service takes more of your token because the token did well.

Network gas: the arithmetic you can actually check

Arc's fee market enforces a minimum maxFeePerGas of 20 Gwei. Transactions priced below it are silently dropped by the mempool — no error, no receipt, no clue — which is why every Arctools write spreads the correct floor automatically. Because gas is paid in native USDC at 18 decimals, cost is linear and easy to read:

Operation	Gas	Cost at 20 Gwei
ERC-20 deployment	1,200,000	0.024 USDC
Uniswap V2 pair creation	250,000	0.005 USDC
Initial liquidity add	200,000	0.004 USDC
LP lock	150,000	0.003 USDC
approve	50,000	0.001 USDC
Token transfer	65,000	0.0013 USDC
Airdrop batch (200 rows)	2,400,000	0.048 USDC

Multiply any row by actual gas used to get the real figure; the only non-linear risk is that a more complex contract costs more to deploy. The full metering reference is Arc's gas and fees page.

For comparison, the same deployment on Ethereum costs 1,200,000 gas priced in ETH, at whatever the auction is paying that minute. The full comparison is in launch token Arc vs Ethereum.

Pool capital: the number that decides everything

Liquidity capital is not a fee — you keep ownership of it — but it is the largest cash requirement and the one that determines whether the token is tradable.

A constant-product pool's price impact for a buy of size dx against a USDC reserve y is approximately dx / (y + dx):

Pool USDC depth	500 USDC buy	2,000 USDC buy	10,000 USDC buy
5,000 USDC	9.1%	28.6%	66.7%
20,000 USDC	2.4%	9.1%	33.3%
100,000 USDC	0.5%	2.0%	9.1%

Read it as: your community's first meaningful trades will pay that much slippage. A 5,000 USDC pool is fine for a token whose typical trade is $50. It is not fine for a token whose treasury or early buyers will move $2,000 at a time.

There is no correct number, but there is a wrong one: a pool capital figure chosen without checking what your expected trade sizes cost to execute. Arc Bundle Launch models this for you before you sign, including the average entry your bundled buys would get.

Worked example: a 25,000 USDC launch

Line	Amount
Token Launch service fee	50.00 USDC
Deployment gas	0.02 USDC
Liquidity Pool Creator service fee	50.00 USDC
Pair creation + liquidity gas	0.01 USDC
Liquidity Locker service fee	50.00 USDC
Lock gas	0.00 USDC (rounding)
Initial pool capital	25,000.00 USDC
Total out of pocket	25,150.03 USDC
Of which unrecoverable fees	150.03 USDC

The 25,000 USDC is still yours, held as LP tokens. If you lock those LP tokens, you can claim them back at the unlock date along with every swap fee the position earned. The 150.03 USDC is the actual cost of launching, and it does not change if the token succeeds.

Costs after launch

Most launch budgets forget the second half of a token's life:

• Airdrops. 50 USDC per multisender run plus roughly 0.24 USDC of gas per 1,000 wallets, sent in batches of a couple of hundred. The snapshot that produces the list is free.
• Parameter changes. Each Token Manager update is a separate 50 USDC service use. Batch your thinking: changing taxes three times in a week is 150 USDC.
• Burning supply. 50 USDC per burn run.
• Adding liquidity later. 50 USDC per add. If you plan to add in stages, plan the stages.

If you are sequencing all of this, the Arc Mainnet launch checklist puts the steps in order so you are not paying for tools in the wrong sequence.

Where costs can hide

Three honest warnings about "cheap" launches:

1. A launcher that takes a supply percentage is not cheaper, it is deferred. You pay in the asset you are trying to distribute.
2. A free tool that asks you to sign a custom contract of unknown provenance may cost you the whole pool. Read what you sign; check the contract on the explorer.
3. Saving USDC on gas by setting maxFeePerGas below 20 Gwei does not save anything. It produces a transaction that never lands. Your wallet's "advanced" gas settings are the most common cause of an Arc transaction that appears to vanish.

Reducing the cost without cutting corners

• Launch with the token deployer alone if you are not ready to list; the pool can come later.
• Lock the portion of liquidity you want to commit publicly and keep the rest liquid, rather than paying to lock and unlock repeatedly.
• Skip taxes and burn mechanics unless they are core to the design. They cost you nothing extra at launch, but they cost credibility if buyers cannot sell.
• Use a retroactive snapshot for the airdrop, so you do not pay to reward sybil wallets.
• Do the free reads — snapshot, checker — before the paid writes. Both are free for the obvious reason: reading costs nothing, and knowing first saves transactions.

Current fee list and what each service includes: Arctools pricing. Arctools is not affiliated with Circle or the Arc Foundation.