Why Does Revoke.cash Charge Gas for Revoking Approvals?
Revoking approvals costs gas because every revocation action essentially initiates a transaction on the blockchain, changing the approval amount from "unlimited" or a large number to "0". Anytime you write data to the blockchain, you must pay gas fees to miners/validators. This has nothing to do with the Revoke.cash tool itself.
Why Revoking Approvals Incurs Gas Fees
Every time you authorize a DApp to spend your tokens, you sign an on-chain transaction that writes the message "allow a certain contract to spend X amount of my coins" into the blockchain. Revoking is the opposite: you sign another transaction to set that allowance to 0.
Any operation that writes to the blockchain requires gas fees. This fee is not collected by Revoke.cash; it's charged by the blockchain network—just like you have to pay miner fees when transferring tokens. The official FAQ states it clearly: each revocation transaction incurs a gas fee, just like any other blockchain transaction.
Technically, It's the Same Transaction, Just Setting the Amount to 0
In ERC-20 token smart contracts, authorization and revocation use the same function. The only difference is: when approving, you set the amount to a positive number (e.g., 1000 USDT); when revoking, you set it to 0. For NFTs, it changes true to false.
So revoking itself is not a special operation; it's a standard on-chain transaction. It consumes similar computational resources as your initial approval, and naturally you pay roughly the same amount of gas.
Difference Between Single and Batch Revocations
Single revocations (one by one): Each approval you revoke requires a separate transaction. If your approval list has 10 items to remove, you'll pay gas 10 times.
Batch Revoke: Starting from Q4 2025, using smart wallets (like Ambire, Safe) allows you to bundle multiple revocations into one single transaction, requiring only one gas fee. However, the batch revoke feature itself charges a $1.50 service fee to support the ongoing development of Revoke.cash. Single revocations remain free.
When Can You Revoke Without Gas?
In summer 2025, Revoke.cash launched a "Summer Safety" campaign in partnership with Candide. On smart wallets supporting EIP-4337 (like Ambire, Coinbase Smart Wallet), you could enjoy one free batch revocation per week, covering networks like Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, etc. However, such promotions are time-limited; whether they are still active should be checked on the official website.
How to Confirm That Revocation Is Complete
On the Revoke.cash page, after initiating a revocation, your wallet will pop up a transaction confirmation window. Confirm and wait for on-chain inclusion. Once the transaction succeeds, that approval record will disappear from the list or show an allowance of 0. If you use batch revoke, the page will indicate which approvals are involved in this batch; after confirming all, a single transaction completes all revocations.
