Best Mining Pools for Solo Bitcoin Miners in 2026

Solo mining means one thing: when you find a block, you keep the full reward. At the current 3.125 BTC block subsidy plus transaction fees, that's a life-changing payout from a device sitting on your desk. But finding a block on your own — without a pool at all — is practically impossible because most software and pools don't support native solo mining directly.

The solution is a solo mining pool. These pools support a "solo mode" where you submit shares as proof of work, but if your hardware finds the winning hash, the entire block reward is yours. The pool provides valid work templates, routes your shares to the network, and handles the payout if you hit. You keep almost everything — typically 98% or more after fees.

What Makes a Pool "Solo-Friendly"?

Not every mining pool supports true solo mode. When evaluating a pool for Bitaxe or NerdQAxe miners, three things matter:

• Solo mode actually supported: The pool must offer genuine solo mining — where your payout is not shared with other miners. Some pools advertise "solo" but still split rewards. Confirm before you connect.
• Low fee: Since the block reward goes entirely to you, the pool fee comes directly out of your payout. A 2% fee on 3.125 BTC is small. A 10% fee would be unacceptable. Most reputable solo pools charge 0–2%.
• Reliable uptime: Every minute your miner is disconnected from the pool is a minute you're earning zero probability of a block. Infrastructure reliability matters more for solo miners than for pool miners — downtime doesn't just reduce expected income, it eliminates it entirely for that window.

Pool Comparison

CK Pool (Recommended)

CK Pool's solo instance at solo.ckpool.org is the default recommendation for most Bitaxe miners, and for good reason: it has the longest unbroken track record of any solo pool aimed at small SHA-256 miners. The pool was built by Con Kolivas — a longtime Linux kernel contributor — and has been paying out to lucky home miners for years. Multiple blocks have been found through CK Pool by miners running hardware similar to yours.

Connecting is straightforward. In LottoAxe OS, go to Settings → Pool and enter the following:

Set your username to your Bitcoin wallet address — this is where the payout goes if you find a block. Set the password to x (or anything; CK Pool ignores it). Save, and your miner connects within seconds.

The 2% fee only applies if you actually find a block. If you mine for months and find nothing, you pay nothing. When you do find a block, 2% of 3.125 BTC is 0.0625 BTC — a small price for battle-tested infrastructure that you know will pay out.

public-pool.io

public-pool.io is the open-source alternative. Zero fee. Fully auditable code on GitHub. No company behind it — it's community-maintained, and anyone can run their own instance or verify exactly how shares are tracked and rewards are assigned.

If you're philosophically opposed to paying any fee, or if you want to support the open-source side of the solo mining ecosystem, public-pool.io is a legitimate first choice. It's become increasingly popular in the Bitaxe community over the past year and has proven itself reliable. The stratum URL:

Same connection setup as CK Pool: Bitcoin wallet address as username, anything as password. No account registration required on either pool.

Does Pool Choice Affect My Odds?

No — and this is worth understanding clearly. Your probability of finding a block is determined by exactly one thing: your hashrate divided by the total Bitcoin network hashrate. The pool has zero influence on this number. A 500 GH/s miner on CK Pool has the exact same odds as a 500 GH/s miner on public-pool.io. The winning hash is the winning hash regardless of who routes your work.

What pool choice does affect:

• Uptime: If the pool is down, you're not mining. That's the only thing that reliably reduces your expected block-finding rate. Pick a pool with a strong uptime history.
• Latency: High latency between your miner and the pool can increase stale share rate slightly. For home miners running gigabit internet, this is rarely meaningful.
• Solo mode: Make sure the pool actually routes your work in solo mode. A pool that pools rewards is a fundamentally different product — you'd be sharing your payout with other miners, which defeats the entire purpose.

Use the LottoAxe odds calculator to see your real expected probability at your current hashrate, regardless of which pool you choose.

Pool Fee: What Does 2% Actually Mean?

At current Bitcoin prices and block reward levels, the math on a 2% pool fee looks like this:

The difference between 0% and 2% is 0.0625 BTC. Whether that 0.0625 BTC is worth the additional peace of mind from CK Pool's longer track record is a judgment call only you can make. Both pools are legitimate. Most miners start with CK Pool for the established reputation, then revisit the choice once they've been mining for a while and have their own read on both options.

Either way: the fee is small, the pool doesn't change your odds, and the important thing is that you're mining with a pool that supports genuine solo mode and has reliable uptime. Pick one and start hashing.