Deep page
Running a node: what it keeps, what it costs
A node is the program that checks everything itself: every block, every signature, every coin. Wallets and explorers trust nodes; nodes trust nobody. This page says what a node has to keep to do that job, and what the keeping costs, stated the way the sources state it.
What a node keeps
Headers, kept for good. Every block header, the small fixed-size summary of each block, is kept permanently; headers are how a node proves the shape of the whole history cheaply.
The UTXO set, kept current. The set of all unspent outputs is the live state every new payment is checked against. It grows with use, not with time.
Recent block bodies, kept briefly. Full payment data is kept for a window, then pruned. Pruning is safe because the UTXO set plus the headers carry everything a new payment needs; the pruned past is history, not state.
The two bills, side by side
The storage bill
Headers plus the UTXO set plus a rolling window of bodies. It grows slowly and predictably, and pruning is what keeps it that way: without pruning, ten blocks a second of bodies would bury a home machine; with it, the disk a node needs stays in ordinary laptop range. (This site prints no exact disk figure: the sources state the mechanism, not a number, and a number printed here would age with the UTXO set.)
The bandwidth bill
Every new block must arrive, ten a second at full rate, plus the payments waiting in the mempool and the traffic of serving other nodes. Bandwidth is the bill that scales with the network's speed rather than its age, and it is the one a home connection feels first.
Why run one
A payment checked on your own node is checked by rules you hold, on data you verified. Check it yourself sets one up and solo-mines with it.
Checked Nov 4, 2026. Pruning behavior per the node's own documentation and the DAG pages' treatment; figures deliberately limited to what those sources state.