Which pool should your Bitaxe or NerdQaxe point at? We connected to every pool on this page ourselves and recorded how fast the connection opens, whether it speaks TLS and which share difficulty a new miner starts with. Fees come from the pools' own pages, found blocks from mempool.space, each with the date we looked.
Measurement
Measured on 28 Oct 2026 from a connection in Spain, 10 connection attempts per pool.
Connection times depend on where you are. From another country, and especially for pools with servers overseas, your figures will differ. How we measured
Who runs what
We run pool.opensourceminers.de ourselves. That is why there is no recommendation on this page: every pool is listed in alphabetical order, measured with the same script on the same day and judged by the same criteria. Where to point your miner is up to you.
Start diff. = the first share difficulty the pool sent after our login, without a difficulty request from our side; below it the difficulty after the request for 1,000 that AxeOS sends out of the box. Connect = time to open a TCP connection to the stratum port. Blocks = all blocks mempool.space attributes to the pool; both CKPool addresses belong to the same pool. Details and sources for each pool are further down.
Fee when you hit a block
A solo pool only charges when your miner finds a block, and then takes a share of it. We quote the rate the pool states itself, with a link and the date we read it.
Reachability and connection time
Ten connections per pool; the table shows the median. The figure mostly tells you how far away the server is. If a new job arrives 100 milliseconds later, that costs less than a thousandth of the hashing time when blocks come roughly every ten minutes.
Starting difficulty
It decides how soon the first shares show up on the pool page. We measure it twice: without a requested value and with the request for 1,000 that AxeOS sends out of the box.
Encryption
With TLS or Stratum V2, nobody along the way can read the traffic or swap the address in the username field. We only count TLS when a handshake with a valid certificate succeeds.
Verifiability
Public stats per address show whether the pool accepts your work. We check found blocks at mempool.space, independent of the pool's own site.
Open code
If a pool runs published software, you can read how it builds the coinbase and, if need be, run the same pool yourself.
AxeOS and NerdOS split the address in two: the URL field takes only the host, without "stratum+tcp://", and the port number goes into the port field. Other firmware usually wants the full stratum URL, which is listed as well.
- Stratum URL
stratum+tcp://solo.atlaspool.io:3333- With TLS
stratum+ssl://solo.atlaspool.io:4333- Username
- BTC address, for several devices address.worker1, address.worker2
- Password
- not required (x or blank)
- Fee
- 1.5%, of a block you find. Source: atlaspool.io/terms-of-service.html, retrieved 28 Oct 2026
- Software
- ckpool, according to the operator
- Stats per address
- atlaspool.io/dashboard.html?wallet=<address>
- Server location (by IP)
- Anycast address: the nearest site answers, so no single country
- Our measurement
- Connection 39 ms (between 36 and 106 ms). Login accepted, starting difficulty 2,000 (2,000 after the AxeOS request for 1,000), first job after 108 ms. Version rolling confirmed.
According to the pool the minimum difficulty is 2,000, so devices below roughly 400 GH/s do not show up in its dashboard. The server address is anycast, so the nearest site answers. Port 4334 is meant for rented rigs.
- Stratum URL
stratum+tcp://parasite.wtf:42069- Username
- BTC address.worker name
- Password
- anything, it is not checked
- Fee
- not pure solo, the finder gets 1 BTC; in block 958527 that was 1.0 of 3.13 BTC. Source: mempool.space/block/958527, retrieved 28 Oct 2026
- Software
- ckpool fork (GPLv3), para toolkit (CC0) · source code
- Stats per address
- parasite.space/user/<address>
- Server location (by IP)
- France
- Our measurement
- Connection 36 ms (between 33 and 194 ms). Login accepted, starting difficulty 9,999 (1,000 after the AxeOS request for 1,000), first job after 105 ms. Version rolling confirmed.
Not a pure solo pool. If your miner finds a block, 1 BTC goes to your address; the rest of the reward and fees goes to a pool address and, according to the project, on to the other miners via Lightning. That is what the coinbase of its blocks so far shows. Very powerful miners can use port 42068.
- Stratum URL
stratum+tcp://pool.opensourceminers.de:3333- Stratum V2
- port 3336 (large ASICs 4336), authority key on the pool page
- Username
- BTC address, a worker name after it is optional; add #group at the end for a SOLO Group
- Password
- anything, it is not checked
- Fee
- 0%, pure solo; 1% in a SOLO Group. Source: pool.opensourceminers.de, retrieved 28 Oct 2026
- Software
- ckpool with our own changes
- Stats per address
- pool.opensourceminers.de/#<address>
- Server location (by IP)
- Germany
- Our measurement
- Connection 34 ms (between 33 and 92 ms). Login accepted, starting difficulty 1,000 (1,000 after the AxeOS request for 1,000), first job after 97 ms. Version rolling confirmed.
We run this pool. Our changes to the ckpool code (among them SOLO Groups) are not published so far. Rented hashrate from our rental runs here too. Port 4334 is meant for large ASICs.
- Stratum URL
stratum+tcp://public-pool.io:3333- With TLS
stratum+tls://public-pool.io:4333- Stratum V2
- port 23330, currently with a temporary authority key according to the pool
- Username
- BTC address.worker name
- Password
- anything, for example x; according to the source code, d=1000 requests a starting difficulty
- Fee
- 0%, funded through affiliate links, according to the pool. Source: web.public-pool.io, retrieved 28 Oct 2026
- Software
- Public Pool (GPLv3) · source code
- Stats per address
- web.public-pool.io/app/<address>
- Server location (by IP)
- United States
- Our measurement
- Connection 123 ms (between 121 and 388 ms). Login accepted, starting difficulty 100,000 (1,000 after the AxeOS request for 1,000), first job after 373 ms. Version rolling confirmed.
The same software exists as an app for your own node, for example on Umbrel. Besides solo, public-pool.io offers shared mining split by submitted work (PPLNS) on separate ports.
- Stratum URL
stratum+tcp://stratum.ckpool.org:3333- Stratum V2
- stratum.ckpool.org port 3336, authority key on the pool page
- Username
- BTC address, a worker name after it is optional; the pool rejects an invalid address
- Password
- anything, for example x
- Fee
- 2%, of a block you find, transaction fees included. Source: solo.ckpool.org, retrieved 28 Oct 2026
- Software
- ckpool (GPLv3) · source code
- Stats per address
- raw.stats.ckpool.org/users/<address> (JSON)
- Server location (by IP)
- Germany
- Our measurement
- Connection 34 ms (between 33 and 35 ms). Login accepted, starting difficulty 10,000 (1,000 after the AxeOS request for 1,000), first job after 100 ms. Version rolling confirmed.
According to the pool, stratum.ckpool.org picks the server with the shortest connection by itself and fails over to another one if it goes down. The older address solo.ckpool.org still accepted connections on 28 Oct 2026 (server in the US by IP) but is no longer listed on the pool page. Port 4334 is for rented rigs only, says the pool.
- Stratum URL
stratum+tcp://eusolo.ckpool.org:3333- Username
- BTC address, a worker name after it is optional
- Password
- anything, for example x
- Fee
- 2%, same pool as Solo CKPool. Source: solo.ckpool.org, retrieved 28 Oct 2026
- Software
- ckpool (GPLv3) · source code
- Stats per address
- raw.stats.ckpool.org/users/<address> (JSON)
- Server location (by IP)
- Germany
- Our measurement
- Connection 34 ms (between 33 and 135 ms). Login accepted, starting difficulty 10,000 (1,000 after the AxeOS request for 1,000), first job after 251 ms. Version rolling confirmed.
One of the CKPool servers you can pick by hand, located in Germany according to the pool page. Same pool and fee as stratum.ckpool.org, but without automatic failover if this server goes down.
Which pool found a block can be read from the block itself: the pool leaves a tag in the coinbase. mempool.space evaluates these tags and keeps a list per pool. The figures below come from there, retrieved on the day of our measurement.
Source: mempool.space mining pool statistics, retrieved 28 Oct 2026.
A share at difficulty D stands for about D × 2³² hashes. The higher the difficulty a pool starts with, the longer a small miner works before its first accepted share shows up. For a Bitaxe Gamma with 1.3 TH/s, on average:
- pool.opensourceminers.de (1,000): about 3 seconds per share
- AtlasPool (2,000): about 7 seconds per share
- Parasite Pool (9,999): about 33 seconds per share
- Solo CKPool (10,000): about 33 seconds per share
- Solo CKPool, Server Deutschland (10,000): about 33 seconds per share
- Public Pool (100,000): about 5.5 minutes per share
That is without a request from the miner. AxeOS asks for a difficulty of 1,000 by default (about 3 seconds per share at 1.3 TH/s); the table shows which pools went along with that in our measurement.
Your chance of a block stays the same. Every pool on this page then adjusts the difficulty to your hashrate (vardiff); the starting value only decides how soon the pool page shows that your miner is working.
Measured on 28 Oct 2026 from a connection in Spain, using our own script that reads host and port from our pool list. For every pool it resolves the host name and opens 10 TCP connections to the first IPv4 address, with a short pause in between. The table shows the median; the connection details also list the lowest and highest value.
Next the script attempts a TLS handshake with certificate validation, on the stratum port and on any TLS ports the pool names itself. Only a successful handshake with a valid certificate counts as "yes".
Finally it logs in the way a Bitaxe does: mining.configure for version rolling, mining.subscribe and mining.authorize with an example address from the Bitcoin documentation (BIP 173) and the password x. In the first pass it sends no difficulty request; the pool's first mining.set_difficulty is the starting difficulty. In the second pass the login is followed by mining.suggest_difficulty with 1,000, as in the AxeOS factory settings. The script submits no shares and disconnects afterwards.
The country of the server IP comes from ipinfo.io and the blocks found from mempool.space, both retrieved on the same day. We repeat the measurement with the same script and update the date.
Which solo pool suits my Bitaxe?
That depends on what matters to you. If you want to keep as much of a block as possible, look at the fee. If low latency matters to you, pick a server close by; a ping to the host shows how quickly it answers from your own line. If you want nobody to read along, choose a pool with TLS or Stratum V2. The table above puts it all side by side, with dates and sources.
Will my miner find a block sooner on a different pool?
No. Whether you hit a block comes down to your hashrate and the difficulty. What the pool controls is how much of the reward you receive, whether it stays online and how fast it hands out new work.
What does the starting difficulty mean?
It sets how much work a share stands for at the start. When it is high, a small miner submits shares rarely and the pool page stays empty for a while. AxeOS asks for 1,000 out of the box. In our measurement of 28 Oct 2026 every pool except AtlasPool went along with that; AtlasPool stayed at its floor of 2,000. After that every pool adjusts the difficulty to your hashrate (vardiff).
What do I enter as username and password?
The username field takes your own Bitcoin address. To tell several devices apart, add a dot and a label, for example bc1q….office. The pool pays out to exactly this address if you hit a block, so paste it straight from your wallet. None of the pools in this comparison checks the password; x is the usual entry.
Do I need TLS?
Not to mine; every pool here works without it. TLS encrypts the connection so nobody along the way can read it or swap the address in the username field. On 28 Oct 2026 a TLS handshake with a valid certificate worked at Public Pool and AtlasPool, both on port 4333. CKPool, Public Pool and pool.opensourceminers.de also offer encryption through Stratum V2, if your firmware supports it.
Do your connection times apply to me?
Only roughly. The measurement of 28 Oct 2026 ran from a connection in Spain. From Germany, Austria or Switzerland the values will differ, most of all for pools with servers overseas. For solo mining this hardly matters as long as the connection is stable.
Why is pool.opensourceminers.de not marked as a recommendation?
Because we run it ourselves. If we recommended it here, the comparison would no longer be fair. So it sits in the alphabetical list like every other pool, measured with the same script on the same day.