How to Choose a Solana Validator: Commission, Uptime, MEV and Decentralisation

How to choose a Solana validator

To choose a Solana validator, check four things. Look at its fee, how well it stays online, whether it has raised its fee before, and how much stake it holds. A validator is a computer that helps run the Solana network. When you stake SOL, you pick one validator to back, and your rewards depend on how it behaves.

A good pick has a low fee that rarely changes, close to perfect uptime and a modest share of all stake. Backing a smaller, well-run validator also helps keep Solana decentralised. This guide walks through each check and how to run it on our validator list.

If you are new to staking, read how staking rewards are earned on Solana first.

Solana validator commission and MEV commission explained

Commission is the share of your rewards a validator keeps. Each Solana validator sets two fees. Inflation commission is taken from the new SOL the network pays out each epoch. That is most of your reward. MEV commission is taken from tips that traders pay through Jito JTO$0.371-10.1%, a smaller second stream.

Both fees can be set anywhere from 0% to 100%. A validator at 5% passes on 95% of the new SOL your stake earns. A validator at 100% keeps it all. Exchanges and custodians often run validators this way for their own SOL.

Here is what that means for you. Stake 100 SOL and the network pays you about 5 SOL a year before fees.

At 10% commission you would keep about 4.5 SOL of that. The gap looks small in one year. Over many years it compounds.

Fees across the network vary a lot. The median validator charges 5% inflation commission.

About 31% of staked SOL sits with validators that charge nothing at all.

Check MEV commission on its own. Many validators charge nothing on inflation but take a cut of Jito tips. Tips are only a small part of your yield, so this fee matters less. It still adds up on a large stake, and it shows how the operator thinks about fees.

0% commission Solana validators: how they pay their bills

A validator at 0% earns nothing from your rewards. It still has servers to pay for. Some cover the cost from another business, such as a wallet, an exchange or a data company. Others run at a loss to win stake, then raise the fee once they have it.

The Solana Foundation runs a program that lends stake to smaller validators. It asks them to keep inflation commission at 5% or less and MEV commission at 10% or less, according to its delegation criteria. Those caps are a fair guide to what an independent operator needs to charge.

A modest fee from an operator with a long, steady record often beats 0% from a new name. Ask how the validator pays for itself. If you can't find an answer, assume the 0% won't last.

Solana validator commission hikes and commission cheating

A commission hike is when a validator raises its fee after you have staked. It is allowed, and anyone can see it on-chain. But nobody tells you. Since SIMD-0249, a new fee reaches your payouts about two epochs after the change. That gives you time to move, but only if you look.

Solana Compass's commission data counts 95 fee rises over the last 100 epochs, a span of several months.

Commission cheating is worse. A cheating validator shows a low fee most of the time. It switches to 100% just before an epoch boundary, when the network records the fee it will use, then drops back. Most dashboards show the low number, so the theft stays hidden. Solana Compass tracks fee changes inside each epoch as well as between them. You can see them in the commission change data on our staking statistics page.

To protect yourself, look at a validator's fee over time, not only today's rate. You want a flat line over many months. Splitting your stake across two or three validators also limits the harm if one changes its terms.

Solana validator uptime, skip rate and delinquency

Uptime is whether a validator is online and voting. A validator that goes offline is called delinquent. Stake on it earns nothing until it comes back. Skip rate is how often a validator misses its turn to make a block. Lower is better.

Downtime is the fastest way to lose rewards. In late October 2026, the Solflare (Legacy) validator went offline. About 1.5 million SOL was still staked to it. Solflare offered to cover missed rewards for stakers who moved to its new validator. In the deadline week, most of that stake had still not moved.

The Foundation's program asks validators to keep skip rate within 5 points of the network average. Good ones sit well below that. In October 2026 the Alpenglow upgrade changed how validators vote. Old vote scores no longer compare like for like. So look at recent epochs, not long averages that mix the two.

You don't need to watch your validator every day. Check it once a month. Move if it has been offline for more than an epoch or two with no explanation.

Stake concentration and decentralisation on Solana

Stake concentration is how much staked SOL sits with a few big validators. It matters because a small group with enough stake could stop the network. Under Alpenglow, validators holding more than 40% of stake between them could halt it. The Nakamoto coefficient counts the smallest number of validators that together hold more than a third of stake. Higher is safer.

On Solana Compass's data, that number is 18 validators.

The ten largest validators hold 25% of all active stake.

Location adds a second risk. Fidelity's research team found about 40% of stake hosted in Frankfurt and Amsterdam in its October 2026 report. If one big data centre or host fails, many validators can drop at once.

Staking outside the top group, in a less crowded data centre, spreads that risk. It costs you nothing, because your rewards depend on the validator's fee and uptime. Its size does not change them. Each validator's page on Solana Compass shows its share of stake and where it is hosted.

Solana validator clients: Jito, Agave and Firedancer

The client is the software a validator runs. Most Solana stake runs on Jito's client. It is a version of the Agave client from Anza, with extra code that collects MEV tips and shares them with stakers. A validator without it earns no tips for you.

Firedancer is a separate client that Jump Crypto wrote from scratch. Validators that run it add client diversity. That means one software bug is less likely to take down the whole network. Fidelity's report counted about 15% of stake on Firedancer-based setups before Alpenglow.

For most stakers, the client is a tie-breaker. If two validators look alike on fees and uptime, the one on a less common client does a little more for the network.

Native staking, stake pools or liquid staking: which suits you

Picking a validator only matters if you stake natively. That means you back one validator from your own wallet. You keep full control and pay no extra fees. In return, you choose and check on the validator yourself.

A stake pool spreads your SOL across many validators using set rules. You give up some control and do less checking. Our guide to Solana stake pools explains how pools pick validators and what they charge.

Liquid staking goes a step further. You get a token, such as JitoSOL, that you can trade or use in DeFi while your SOL stays staked. If you want your SOL to stay usable, read how liquid staking works on Solana before you pick a validator at all.

How to compare Solana validators on Solana Compass

Solana Compass ranks every active validator on one page. You can run all of the checks above in a few minutes. Here is the order we suggest.

1. Open our list of every active Solana validator. It ranks them by Compass Score, a mix of performance, fees and decentralisation.
2. Rule out validators with 100% commission, a very large share of stake or a crowded data centre.
3. Open the pages of two or three that remain. Compare commission, MEV commission and skipped slots.
4. Check that each has stayed online and kept the same fee for months.
5. Compare realised yield, which is what stakers there earned after fees.

Then stake from your wallet. Our guide to staking SOL in Phantom, Solflare, Backpack or Ledger covers the wallet steps. The staking rewards calculator shows what a given fee means for your SOL.

Solana Compass also runs a validator, which you will see on the list. We have run the Solana Compass validator since September 2021. At the time of writing it charges 0% inflation commission and 10% MEV commission. You can check its record on its page like any other. It is one option among many, and the same checks apply to it. Our Solana Compass staking page explains how to stake with us.

Switching Solana validators: what it costs

Moving your stake to another validator is free apart from a tiny network fee. It does take time. You deactivate your stake, wait for it to unlock at the end of the epoch, then stake it with the new validator. Stake changes on Solana happen at the end of each epoch, about a day apart.

Your stake keeps earning until it unlocks, so a patient move costs you about one epoch of rewards at most. Paying for an instant unstake is faster but costs a fee. Our guide to unstaking and withdrawing SOL explains both routes.

If you are thinking about running a validator yourself, our breakdown of what Solana validators earn and spend shows the numbers from the operator's side.