Solana vs Polygon: which is better for fees and throughput?

Solana wins on both counts: its fees typically stay under a fraction of a cent, and its real-world throughput runs into the thousands of transactions per second, while Polygon PoS lands closer to cents per transaction and tens of transactions per second in practice. Both numbers are far below each chain's advertised maximums.

When does Solana make sense?

High transaction volume with tight fee budgets

Solana fits applications sending frequent small transactions, such as payments, order books, or in-game actions, where fees adding up across thousands of calls would otherwise eat into the product. Its parallel execution model also helps when many transactions touch different parts of state at once instead of contending for the same few contracts.

When does Polygon make sense?

Ethereum compatibility and existing tooling

Polygon fits teams that already have Solidity contracts, Ethereum-native tooling, or users holding assets in the Ethereum ecosystem, since PoS lets that code and those integrations run largely unchanged. It also fits projects that value Polygon's periodic settlement to Ethereum for an added layer of security assumptions over a fully independent chain.

Who fits what?

Fee-sensitive, high-frequency applications generally lean toward Solana. Projects built around the existing Ethereum ecosystem, or that need EVM compatibility for contracts and wallets already in use, generally lean toward Polygon.