Gas Sponsorship
Sponsor gas. Keep your users.
Pay gas on behalf of your users so their first transaction, and every one after, just works. There is nothing to buy and nothing to bridge.
import { createSmartAccountClient } from "permissionless"
import { toSafeSmartAccount } from "permissionless/accounts"
import { createPimlicoClient } from "permissionless/clients/pimlico"
import { http, parseEther } from "viem"
import { base } from "viem/chains"
const pimlicoUrl = "https://api.pimlico.io/v2/base/rpc?apikey=API_KEY"
const pimlicoClient = createPimlicoClient({ transport: http(pimlicoUrl) })
const account = await toSafeSmartAccount({
client: publicClient,
owners: [owner],
version: "1.4.1",
})
// Gas is sponsored, so your user never sees a fee
const smartAccountClient = createSmartAccountClient({
account,
chain: base,
bundlerTransport: http(pimlicoUrl),
paymaster: pimlicoClient,
})
const txHash = await smartAccountClient.sendTransaction({
to: "0x...",
value: parseEther("0.1"),
})Why it matters
Gas fees are a conversion tax
Asking a new user to buy a volatile token before they can touch your product is the single biggest drop-off point in onchain onboarding. Teams that sponsor gas remove that step entirely, so signup to first transaction becomes one motion.
You decide what to sponsor and how much. Your users just see your product working.
User signs up
Social login or passkey, and they have never owned crypto.
User takes an action
Mint, trade, or send: your app submits it as a smart account transaction.
Pimlico sponsors the gas
Our paymaster verifies your policy and pays the fee on-chain.
Transaction confirmed
Included in under 2 seconds on L2s. The user saw none of this.
Control
Sponsorship without blank checks
Every sponsorship runs through your policies: cap spend per transaction, per user, or per campaign, and target specific chains or contracts. Change limits in the dashboard and they apply instantly, with no code changes or redeploys.
sp_onboarding_q3
New-user onboarding
Webhooks
Your rules decide every sponsorship
When dashboard policies aren't enough, Pimlico calls your server before sponsoring and you approve or reject each request in real time. KYC state, fraud signals, allowlists: any check you can code becomes a sponsorship rule.
// Pimlico calls your endpoint before sponsoring. You decide.
export async function POST(req: Request) {
const { data } = await req.json()
const { userOperation, chainId, sponsorshipPolicyId } = data.object
// Your rules: KYC status, fraud signals, allowlists — anything
const user = await lookupUser(userOperation.sender)
return Response.json({
sponsor: user.verified && !user.flagged,
})
}The graduation ramp
Sponsor first, stablecoins after
Sponsorship is the on-ramp, not the bill forever. The pattern most teams run: cover the first transactions under tight caps, then let users pay their own fees from the stablecoins they already hold.
When your caps are hit, users keep transacting on their own balance. One client and one policy engine cover both, so the switch is a config change, not a migration.
First transactions are sponsored
New users transact under your policy caps, with no balance needed at all.
They fund their account
Stablecoins land in the account, and there is still no native token to buy.
The same client switches to ERC-20 gas
Set the token in paymasterContext, and fees come out of the USDC, USDT, or 300+ other tokens they already hold on that chain.
Boosted Sponsorships
Sponsorship at its fastest: 34–43% quicker
When every millisecond of your flow counts, Boosted Sponsorships strip sponsorship down to its fastest form: pre-verified operations with no paymaster data attached, making them 34–43% faster end to end.
You settle gas by monthly invoice instead of per-operation on-chain deduction. Access is granted on request.
Your app submits a user operation
No paymaster data to fetch and no extra signature round-trips.
Pimlico sponsors off-chain
Three RPC calls disappear from the hot path entirely.
Settled by invoice
Gas is billed monthly instead of deducted on-chain per operation.
Proven at scale
The engine behind 100M+ sponsored transactions
In production
Teams that sponsor gas with Pimlico
Run it in production
Watch every sponsorship, end to end
Every sponsored operation is traceable in the dashboard from the moment it arrives: received, added to the mempool, submitted, and included on-chain, with millisecond timings and transaction hashes at every step.
When someone asks where a transaction went, you answer in seconds, not by grepping logs.
Track user operation
Received
2026-06-11 20:01:13.054
Added to Mempool
2026-06-11 20:01:13.054 (+0ms)
Submitted
2026-06-11 20:01:13.341 (+287ms)
Tx Hash: 0x223b701f...Included Onchain
2026-06-11 20:01:13.590 (+249ms)
Tx Hash: 0x223b701f...Spend tracking on the dashboard
Every sponsored transaction itemized by policy, chain, and time, so you always know exactly where your gas budget went.
Custom alerts
Set alerts on spend and budget thresholds and get notified before a limit is hit, not after sponsorship stops.
EIP-7702
Gasless for plain EOAs. No migration.
Your users don't have to migrate to a smart account to go gasless. With EIP-7702, Pimlico sponsors transactions straight from existing EOAs, including batched, sponsored calls from external wallets via ERC-5792.
EOA signs an authorization
An ordinary wallet, with no smart contract deployed and no assets moved.
Pimlico sponsors and bundles
The paymaster verifies your policy and pays the gas, same as any smart account.
Transaction confirmed
The account is unchanged: the user kept their address and their keys.
Works with your stack
Sponsor from every account and signer
Sponsorship plugs in beneath whatever smart account and signer you already chose. Each one below ships with a maintained, step-by-step guide.
Smart accounts
Social login
Passkeys
Key management
Sponsor gas on the networks your users are already on
Ethereum
Base
Arbitrum
Optimism
Polygon
BNB Chain
AvalancheWhere it runs
Built for the way your users transact
Frequently asked questions
How am I billed for sponsored gas?
Pimlico fronts the gas on-chain and bills you the actual cost plus a 10% surcharge on mainnet (none on testnets). You see every sponsored transaction itemized in the dashboard, and Enterprise plans get lower pre-negotiated rates.
Full pricing detailsCan I control how much I sponsor?
Yes. Sponsorship policies let you cap spend per transaction, per user, and per campaign, so a viral day never becomes a runaway bill. Policies are configured in the dashboard and apply instantly without redeploying.
Which chains does this work on?
Gas sponsorship works on all 100+ chains Pimlico supports, including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Gnosis. If you need a chain we have not launched yet, talk to us. We partner with new chains continuously.
Partner with us on gasDo my users need a special wallet?
No. Every major smart account works out of the box, including Safe, Kernel, MetaMask Smart Accounts, and Coinbase Wallet. With EIP-7702, plain EOAs get sponsored transactions too, no migration required. If you are starting fresh, permissionless.js creates accounts in a few lines.