Foundry USA pool review 2026: fee tiers, FPPS, payouts, who it fits
Foundry USA is worth a look if you run a professional or institutional operation, can pass KYC/AML checks and are fine negotiating a fee you will not see published. It pays FPPS in BTC only and is the largest pool by blocks found. A hobbyist with one to three ASICs will usually find open-registration pools simpler.
POOL BTC is an independent comparison site. We are not a pool, we have no account with Foundry, and this is not financial advice. Everything below comes from Foundry's own pages and from public block data on mempool.space. Where Foundry says nothing, we say that too.
What is Foundry USA Pool?
Foundry USA Pool is a US-based bitcoin mining pool run by Foundry Digital LLC. Its pool page describes it as "institutional-grade" and lists KYC/AML of pool members, SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 1 Type 2 accreditation, address whitelisting and dedicated account managers. You join by getting in touch with the team, not by signing up.
By block count it is the biggest pool on the network. On mempool.space, checked 2026-10-03, Foundry USA found 259 of 1,020 blocks over the last 7 days (25.39%) and 1,097 of 4,394 blocks over the last 30 days (24.97%). AntPool came second on both windows with 21.18% and 20.23%. Those shares come from blocks attributed to each pool, so they move a little from week to week.
How much does Foundry USA charge?
Foundry does not publish a fee percentage. Its knowledge base says the fee depends on a pricing tier, set each quarter from the average daily hashrate of your whole Group in the previous quarter. Adjustments can take up to 10 business days into the new quarter. You learn your actual rate from Foundry after onboarding.
The tier page explains the mechanics but gives no table of tiers and no numbers. The main pool page promises a "clear & consistent fee structure", yet the structure itself is not public. Some third-party pool trackers show Foundry with a 0% fee. We found nothing on Foundry's own pages that confirms that figure, so we do not use it.
What this means in practice: you cannot compare Foundry against a 1% or 4% pool until you have a quote. The FPPS formula is public, so once you have a number, the comparison is simple arithmetic.
How does Foundry's FPPS payout work?
Foundry pays every member on Full Pay Per Share. Each UTC day it sums PPS earnings for every accepted share, multiplies by an FPPS rate that adds transaction fees, then deducts the pool fee. Earnings are credited at 01:00 UTC and auto-withdrawn between 09:00 and 17:00 UTC.
The FPPS rate formula on the knowledge base is: FPPS rate = 1 + (sum of block transaction fees / sum of block subsidies) for that UTC day. Foundry drops the three highest-fee and three lowest-fee blocks of the day before summing, so one fee spike does not distort the rate much. The pool even tells members how to recompute the rate themselves from Blockchair's daily block files. That is unusual openness for a pool that hides its fee.
FPPS means the pool carries the luck risk. You get paid for valid shares whether or not Foundry finds a block that day. Foundry also says it cannot guarantee payouts come from freshly minted coins; only part of each payment will.
What is the minimum payout, and where do sources differ?
Foundry's payout threshold page states 0.01 BTC (1,000,000 sats) per address on regular days and 2,730 sats per address on the last day of each month. Both numbers are real; they apply on different days. If one address on a sub-account is under the threshold, the whole sub-account waits.
Other Foundry pages describe this differently, which is why you see both figures quoted around the web:
| Foundry page (read 2026-10-03) | What it says |
|---|---|
| What are the minimum payout thresholds? | 0.01 BTC per address on regular days; 2,730 sats per address on the last day of each month |
| When do payouts occur? | Earnings must be above 0.01 BTC; mentions no month-end rule |
| How can I close my account? | Balances above 2,730 sats on archived sub-accounts are paid at month end |
We read the threshold page as the full rule and the payout-timing page as a shorter summary. Two more conditions apply: the payout address has to be whitelisted, and new addresses take about 48 business hours to approve per Foundry's sub-account guide. Amounts are also combined per address across sub-accounts when the threshold is checked.
Which coins can you mine on Foundry USA?
Only bitcoin. Foundry's mining FAQ says you can currently mine BTC on Foundry USA Pool and that support for other networks is in the works. There is no auto-switching between coins. Foundry runs a separate Zcash pool, but that is a different product, not part of the BTC pool covered here.
Foundry USA vs AntPool, F2Pool and OCEAN
AntPool and F2Pool are the closest large FPPS rivals, and OCEAN is the opposite philosophy: a published fee, no account and non-custodial payouts. Foundry is the only one of the four with no public fee and a KYC gate.
| Pool | Fee | Scheme | Minimum BTC payout | Access | Share of blocks, 7 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundry USA | Not published, set by quarterly tier | FPPS | 0.01 BTC; 2,730 sats on the last day of the month | Application, KYC/AML | 25.39% |
| AntPool | 4% (FPPS) | FPPS / PPS / PPLNS | 0.005 BTC | Open registration | 21.18% |
| F2Pool | 4% (FPPS), 2% on PPLNS | FPPS / PPLNS | 0.005 BTC | Open registration | 16.18% |
| OCEAN | 2%, 1% with DATUM | TIDES | 0.01048576 BTC on-chain, Lightning option | No account, payout address only | 2.55% |
Sources: Foundry's knowledge base (2026-10-03); AntPool and F2Pool fees and thresholds per their official fee pages as last checked by POOL BTC on 2026-08-18; OCEAN fee per ocean.xyz (2026-10-03); OCEAN threshold per our OCEAN vs Foundry USA comparison; block shares per mempool.space, 7 days to 2026-10-03. Terms change, so check with the pool before you move hashrate.
For a wider list of what each pool charges, see our pool fee ranking.
Example: what a fee gap means for one S21 Pro
This is an illustration, not a forecast. We take an Antminer S21 Pro at 234 TH/s and a hashprice of 40.93 USD per PH per day (Hashrate Index, 2026-09-21). Gross revenue = hashrate in PH/s x hashprice x 365. Fee cost per year = gross revenue x fee.
0.234 PH/s x 40.93 USD x 365 days = about 3,495.83 USD gross per year, before power.
- At a 1% fee: 34.96 USD a year.
- At a 4% fee: 139.83 USD a year.
- The gap between them: 104.87 USD a year per machine.
Foundry's own rate is unknown until you get a quote, so put your number in place of 1% or 4%. On a 1,000-machine site the same 3-point gap would be about 104,874 USD a year, which is why large operators bother negotiating. Electricity, uptime and hashprice changes are left out. Our mining calculator adds power cost and your tariff.
Payout timing for this one machine: at a BTC price of 84,839 USD the machine grosses about 0.000113 BTC a day, so reaching 0.01 BTC would take roughly 89 days. The 2,730 sat month-end rule means a balance that small still gets paid at the end of each month.
How do you connect to Foundry USA?
Connecting goes through Foundry's team, not a public sign-up form. Stratum addresses are not on the public pages: the knowledge base says they sit at the bottom of the Account Overview page in your dashboard, under "Mining Addresses" and "Region". Here is the order Foundry's pages describe.
- Contact Foundry through the "Join the Pool" form on foundrydigital.com and complete KYC/AML onboarding.
- Log in to the pool dashboard. A user with the owner role creates a sub-account with a name, a payout address label and a BTC address (legacy and segwit are accepted).
- Wait for the payout address to be whitelisted by Foundry's finance and compliance teams, about 48 business hours.
- Copy the stratum address for your region from Account Overview. Foundry says its servers are spread across the continental US and Europe, with backups in each region.
- Point your miners at it. Earnings start accruing immediately; auto-withdraw has to be on for daily payouts.
Large sites can run a stratum proxy. Foundry offers a reference implementation to interested partners but says it does not directly support it.
Who is Foundry USA a good fit for, and who should skip it?
Foundry fits companies that want FPPS from the biggest pool, compliance paperwork, audit logs, sub-accounts and an account manager, and whose hashrate is large enough to earn a better tier. It suits a single home miner badly, because of the application process, unpublished pricing and the 0.01 BTC daily threshold.
Foundry does not publish a minimum hashrate on its public pages (checked 2026-10-03), so we cannot say a small miner would be refused. But nothing in the process is built for one: you apply, pass KYC, wait for whitelisting and only then learn your fee. With one to three ASICs, a pool that posts its fee and lets you register in minutes is easier to evaluate. See our Trustpool review for one example of that model.
What are the risks?
Concentration is the biggest structural one. A single pool finding about a quarter of all blocks gives one company a big say in which transactions get mined. As a member, your own risks are narrower:
- Fee opacity. You cannot verify you are on the best tier, only that the formula is applied.
- Custody. Earnings sit with the pool until withdrawal, unlike OCEAN's coinbase payouts.
- One address blocks the rest. If one payout address on a sub-account is below the threshold, nothing on that sub-account pays out.
- Single-jurisdiction compliance. A US-based, KYC-gated pool follows US rules, which may or may not suit you.
FAQ
What fee does Foundry USA charge?
It does not publish one. The fee depends on a pricing tier set each quarter from your Group's average hashrate in the previous quarter. You get the rate from Foundry after onboarding.
Is Foundry USA FPPS or PPLNS?
FPPS for all members. Daily earnings are PPS base times an FPPS rate that adds transaction fees, minus the pool fee, credited at 01:00 UTC.
What is the Foundry USA minimum payout?
0.01 BTC per address on regular days and 2,730 sats per address on the last day of each month, per Foundry's threshold page read on 2026-10-03.
Does Foundry USA require KYC?
Yes. Foundry's pool page lists KYC/AML of pool members, and joining starts with a contact form rather than open registration.
Can I mine coins other than BTC on Foundry USA Pool?
No. The knowledge base says only bitcoin can currently be mined on the pool.
How big is Foundry USA?
On mempool.space it found 25.39% of blocks over the 7 days to 2026-10-03 and 24.97% over 30 days, more than any other pool.