What are the Ethereum disk space needs?

Question

How fast is Ethereum blockchain growing and how big is it likely to get in the future? Is it still about 1 GB per month? Are there any data pruning or compression algorithms in place or planned to be used?

Fun fact - as of Oct 2022, Ethereum smart contracts have risen from 0 smart contracts in 2015 to a high of 44,023 smart contracts during the 2018 bull market, to All-Time-Highs in 2022 with 117,922 smart contracts, a 50% increase since 2021. So basically, the # of blocks are increasing and at a faster and faster rate. (source: https://www.alchemy.com/blog/web3-developer-report-q3-2022) — A. Gupta, Oct 20 '22 at 20:51

q9f · Answer 1 · 2019-03-19T08:31:25.687

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Update on Dec 9th, 2018 / Block ~ 6_850_000 - It's quite an annoyance to keep this answer updated.

Geth (Go)

Last Update: May 14th, 2018 / Block ~ 5_600_000

Client / Mode         | Block Number   | Disk Space
======================|================|===========
geth light            | 5_600_000      | 363M
geth fast full        | 5_600_000      | 142G
geth full full        | ?_???_??? [1]  | 239G + [1]
geth full archive     | 4_980_000 [2]  | 671G

[1] My disk was full, I didn't expect this to run out of space and wasn't able to repeat this sync mode
[2] I didn't manage to sync the archive node within six weeks, unfortunately fully.
Geth 1.8.3
Ubuntu 16.4 LTS, VPS instance with SSD backed storage

Parity (Rust)

Last Update: May 14th, 2018 / Block ~ 5_600_000

Client / Mode         | Block Number   | Disk Space
======================|================|===========
parity light          | 5_600_000      |  89M
parity warp fast      | 5_600_000      |  82G
parity full fast      | 5_600_000      |  78G
parity full archive   | 5_600_000      | 1.1T

Parity 1.10.0
Ubuntu 16.4 LTS, VPS instance with SSD backed storage

Update: Nov 29th, 2017. Afri has written a blog post about this, esp. parity pruning modes: The Ethereum-blockchain size will not exceed 1TB anytime soon.

Some Sheet.

edited Mar 19 '19 at 08:31

answered Feb 02 '16 at 01:13

q9f

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If ethereum gets used as much as bitcoin is today (around 5tx/sec), that 28x the growth rate. Assuming people use more smart contracts and don't just speculate like they do with Bitcoin, you will see lots of smaller transactions.
There will be some consolidation as more transactions are mined in a block (which uses a bit fewer bytes per transaction), but overall, I would expect 600gb-1TB per year of block chain growth if Ethereum gets popular.
– Erik Aronesty Feb 02 '16 at 18:04
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@5chdn Assuming these figures are still correct, if I were to set up a new wallet and did my first sync using geth -fast, the bandwidth I would use for that first sync would be around 4.348GB ??? Is that right? – TryHarder Nov 22 '16 at 23:14
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Yes. Should be a little bit more by now. – q9f Nov 23 '16 at 11:31
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Post your ETH address, I'll send you a donation. – firescar96 Jul 09 '17 at 18:24
@nchinda2 0x006ed403807ae87b9f958f25c33862927ba1b57b :) – q9f Sep 18 '17 at 13:22
@5chdn shouldn't it be 1.75GB in case of light mode in Geth? I'm in the process of syncing at around block 300k with 140MB of data collected. Looks like it will finish slightly above 2GB. – iku Oct 26 '17 at 21:37
There should be the UI option to choose the location of the chaindata and type of sync... – Mars Robertson Nov 09 '17 at 23:28
It's late November 2017 now and my --syncmode "fast" blockchain on my computer is now 220GB in size. I'm concerned I won't be able to operate a full-node for much longer as it really needs SSDs. – Dai Nov 26 '17 at 05:49
Unfortunately, Geth does not continuously prune the database. You might want to consider using Parity. – q9f Nov 27 '17 at 09:58
What is the difference between geth full archive and geth full full node? @Waqar Lim – alper Aug 05 '19 at 08:01
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@alper one is a full node (pruned historical states) and the other one is an archive node (all historical states), see https://dev.to/5chdn/the-ethereum-blockchain-size-will-not-exceed-1tb-anytime-soon-58a – q9f Aug 06 '19 at 09:28

score 37 · Answer 2 · edited May 11 '16 at 02:19

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Currently, the network is growing at around 1GB per month. It's hard to anticipate how large it could grow and at what pace, but there are already efforts underway to implement state-tree pruning in various clients. These techniques will contribute towards so-called "light-clients".

In linked chart above, Block size evolution estimating block size in bytes over time that can be used to estimate velocity (rate). The most appropriate graph depends on what you mean specifically by block growth rate.

edited May 11 '16 at 02:19

kenorb

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answered Jan 21 '16 at 01:46

Taylor Gerring

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which one (or combination?) of the charts linked above shows the block growth rate? None of the individual charts seems to show this directly. – zanzu Feb 18 '16 at 17:03
"Block size evolution" will be an estimate of block size in bytes over time that can be used to estimate velocity (rate). The most appropriate graph depends on what you mean specifically by "block growth rate" – Taylor Gerring Feb 18 '16 at 17:09
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I tried to find a definition of what etherchain.org means by "block size evolution", but I failed to find any. My interpretation (possibly wrong) is that this represents size of individual blocks averaged on a daily basis. To translate this to an estimate of the blockchain size growth rate over a month (which is what I meant to write in my previous message), we'd need to multiply this by the number of blocks added in a month. – zanzu Feb 18 '16 at 17:18

score 20 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 06 '21 at 20:33

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As of 11/01/2016, ethereum blockchain (ETH, i.e. supporting DAO fork) downloaded in full mode occupies 75GB on my drive. Client is geth (go-ethereum), version 1.4.18, built from source cloned from https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum, running on CentOS Linux release 7.2.1511.

edited Dec 06 '21 at 20:33

Community

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answered Nov 01 '16 at 22:57

GoodMirek

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As of today should be, as of mm/dd/yyyy for each and every answer... – Eugen Sunic May 03 '18 at 20:39

score 18 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 17 '17 at 13:34

I've stumbled upon the links bellow :

1- provides an online chart which presents the Ethereum's blockchain current size evolution alongside the Bitcoin blockchain's size.

http://bc.daniel.net.nz/

2- provides details about the Ethereum network including the blockchain size https://bitinfocharts.com/ethereum/

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 30 '16 at 14:18

Benchmarks done on Homestead in june 2016

Geth 1.4.9 on i7 3720QM 16GB ram and SSD

-----------------------------------------
|      -    |  Full  |  Fast  |  Light  |
|-----------|--------|--------|---------|
| Disk      |  22GB  | 4.8GB  |  600 Mo |
| Time      |  5h    | 21m    |  21m    |
-----------------------------------------

Parity 1.2 on i7 3720QM 16GB ram and SSD

-------------------------------------------
| -         | Archive  |  Fast  |  Light  |
|-----------|----------|--------|---------|
| Disk      |  22GB    | 3.7GB  |  2.5GB  |
| Time      |  2h      | 1h30   |  2h     |
-------------------------------------------

I wonder why my results disk space needs from one month ago are higher than yours now... — q9f, Jul 01 '16 at 09:04

score 9 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 02 '16 at 01:40

As of February 1, the blockchain size is ~940k blocks, with a new block being created every 17.2 seconds. This means, on average, the blockchain increases by 152,790 blocks every month.

A rough average block size, at this time, is around 1,225 bytes. With this average block size, the blockchain size increase is 187MB per month (152,790 blocks x 1,225 bytes).

Reference used: https://www.etherscan.io

score 6 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 04 '18 at 17:48

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I'm syncing a node in full mode. At the moment it' on block 5005306 (end of January 2018) and it is 700Gb. It's probably been running for more than 20 days

answered Mar 04 '18 at 17:48

Diego

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Did you use geth or parity. If geth did you use --gcmode=archive option? – medvedev1088 Mar 04 '18 at 18:02
geth with the syncmode=full option. I did not use the gcmode option. I dindt even know what it was before your commet. It seems something new on geth 1.8? Im using 1.7 – Diego Mar 04 '18 at 20:20
Yes in Geth 1.8 there is automatic pruning enabled by default. gcmode=archive disables it. – medvedev1088 Mar 04 '18 at 20:35
am I correct in assuming that's new to 1.8? because on 1.7 sync mode full is enough to avoid prunning – Diego Mar 04 '18 at 22:00
Yes that’s correct. – medvedev1088 Mar 04 '18 at 22:38

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 08 '23 at 12:11

2023 update.

You can now use chainstats, a page made by Chainstack, a blockchain infrastructure provider (full disclosure, I'm a dev advocate at Chainstack and worked on this page).

This app displays the current size of all the public network Chainstack support based on the Protocol, node type (full or archive), and blockchain client.

It is automatically updated when the size changes in the resources required by the servers.

What are the Ethereum disk space needs?

8 Answers8

Geth (Go)

Parity (Rust)

Geth 1.4.9 on i7 3720QM 16GB ram and SSD

Parity 1.2 on i7 3720QM 16GB ram and SSD

Linked

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