How to Choose a Mining Pool: Criteria and Checklist

Choose a mining pool by six practical criteria: payout scheme, fee, payout threshold and schedule, server location, transparency of statistics, and quality of support. There is no single "best mining pool" for everyone: the right choice for someone running ten ASICs in Novosibirsk may differ from the right choice for a farm operator near Moscow. Below you will find what to look at, which numbers to compare, and how to test a pool before pointing your whole fleet at it.

Why you need a pool at all

With a handful of ASICs, finding a Bitcoin block on your own is practically impossible. Your share of total network hashrate is tiny, and a block is found roughly every ten minutes by exactly one participant. You could mine for years without a single reward and then receive a whole block at once. A pool solves this: it combines the hashrate of thousands of miners, searches for blocks together, and distributes the reward in proportion to the work each miner contributed. You trade a rare, unpredictable jackpot for a steady, predictable stream of earnings, and you pay the pool a small fee for it.

So choosing a pool means choosing the terms under which you get that predictability. The mining itself is identical everywhere: your ASIC computes the same hashes. What differs is the economics, reliability and convenience.

Payout scheme: the main criterion

The payout scheme defines how a pool turns found blocks into your earnings. There are three main options: PPS and its extension FPPS, and PPLNS. A detailed comparison is in the article PPS, FPPS and PPLNS explained; here is the short version.

• PPS pays a fixed amount for every accepted share, regardless of whether the pool finds a block. The pool carries the luck risk.
• FPPS (Full Pay Per Share) works the same way but also includes an expected share of the transaction fees that end up in blocks. Earnings are smoother because they reflect more than the block subsidy.
• PPLNS pays you a share of blocks that were actually found, based on the last N shares. If the pool is unlucky you earn less; if it is lucky you earn more. Over a long period the average is comparable, but the variance is noticeably higher.

If predictability matters and you are calculating equipment payback, look at PPS or FPPS pools. If you have a large fleet and can tolerate swings for a slightly higher potential average, PPLNS is a legitimate option. RuPool uses FPPS for all coins.

Fees: compare the full cost

The pool fee is the percentage of earnings the pool keeps. At RuPool it is 1%, and the pool also covers network fees on payouts. That detail matters: a stated 1% fee and "1% plus a network fee on every withdrawal" are not the same thing. For small payouts the network fee can eat a visible share of the amount, especially when the Bitcoin network is congested.

When comparing pools, ask three questions. What percentage does the pool keep? Does it pay the network fee on withdrawals or pass it on to you? Are there any other deductions, for example for withdrawals, "premium" features or access to statistics? Only then compare the headline numbers.

Do not chase a 0% fee. If a pool advertises zero, ask how it earns money: the payout scheme may shift some risk onto you, or the pool may be taking its cut in another way. A low fee is a plus, but only when the rest of the terms are transparent.

Threshold, frequency and reliability of payouts

The payout threshold is the minimum balance a pool needs before it sends funds to your wallet. A threshold that is too high means waiting months for the first payout; one that is too low produces many small transactions, and network fees become noticeable. The best case is when you can set the threshold yourself.

At RuPool the user sets the threshold in account settings, and the minimum for each coin is shown on its pool page. Payouts are automatic and happen once a day: earnings accumulated before 03:00 Moscow time are paid out between 05:00 and 12:00 MSK, provided the threshold has been reached. If you plan cash flow around a farm, that certainty is useful because you know the window in which funds will arrive.

Check the same things with any pool: how often it pays, at what time, what happens during an outage, and whether payout transaction hashes are published. A pool that pays "whenever enough accumulates" with no schedule deserves caution.

Servers, latency and stratum endpoints

Your ASIC talks to the pool over the Stratum protocol, and the quality of that connection directly affects your rejected-share rate. The higher the latency to the server, the more likely the device submits a solution for an outdated job, which is then rejected. This is covered in detail in What is Stratum.

Look at where the pool's servers are relative to your hardware. For Russia and the CIS, RuPool offers the auto-select address enter.rupool.pro and regional ones: msk2-ru.enter.rupool.pro (Moscow), nsk-ru.enter.rupool.pro (Novosibirsk), hel-fi.enter.rupool.pro (Helsinki) and ala-kz.enter.rupool.pro (Almaty). A practical approach is to measure ping to several regional endpoints from the site where your equipment runs and pick the fastest. Fallback ports and an SSL option are also valuable, since they help when an ISP blocks non-standard ports.

Transparency, support and convenience

The remaining criteria are easiest to verify in practice, and it is better to do that before connecting everything.

• Statistics. Can you see hashrate per worker, the rejected-share rate, and the history of earnings and payouts? Without that you cannot tell a device problem from a pool problem.
• Read-only access. The ability to give someone else, such as a hosting provider or a partner, view-only access to statistics with no password. At RuPool this is the watcher link.
• Apps and alerts. RuPool has mobile apps for iOS and Android, which is handy when the farm is in another city and you need to see quickly that a worker went down.
• Subaccounts. If you serve several clients or sites, you need separate accounting and wallets. At RuPool subaccounts are created in your account, each with its own wallets and statistics.
• Support. Check whether they answer questions and in which language. RuPool offers round-the-clock chat support and Telegram @rupoolpro_support.
• Referral program. Not a selection criterion, but a pleasant extra: RuPool pays 25–55% of the pool fee collected from your referrals; details are on the referral program page.

A 15-minute checklist for choosing a pool

1. Make sure the pool mines the coin and algorithm you need. RuPool currently supports Bitcoin (SHA-256) plus Litecoin and Dogecoin (Scrypt); Bitcoin Cash is "coming soon".
2. Find out the payout scheme and who carries the luck risk: you or the pool.
3. Write down the total cost: the pool fee plus anything charged for withdrawals.
4. Check the payout threshold, whether you can change it, and the payout schedule.
5. Measure latency to the nearest servers and confirm that fallback ports and SSL exist.
6. Register and look at the statistics: are they clear, is there link-based access, are there apps?
7. Ask support one specific question and judge the speed and quality of the reply.
8. Point one or two devices at the pool, not the whole farm. After a few days compare actual earnings with the estimate from the profit calculator.

What not to rely on

Advertising-style "best pools" rankings are often sorted by pool size. A large pool does find blocks more often, but under PPS and FPPS this barely affects you: you are paid for shares, not blocks. Size has indirect benefits, such as infrastructure stability, but also network-centralization concerns. Another false signal is promises of "higher profitability" with no explanation of the mechanics. Mining profitability is determined by coin price, network difficulty and electricity cost; a pool can influence only the fee, the payout scheme and the quality of the connection. Any guarantee of income is a reason to doubt a pool. Remember when you connect hardware that mining carries market risk and results are not guaranteed.

FAQ

Can I mine on several pools at once?

Yes. Most ASICs let you enter three pool addresses: if the primary one is unavailable, the device switches to a backup. Some miners also split a farm across different pools deliberately to reduce dependence on one provider.

Does pool size affect my income?

Under PPS and FPPS, hardly at all: you are paid for the shares you submit regardless of whether the pool finds a block right now. Under PPLNS size affects how often blocks are found and therefore the variance of payouts, but not the average return.

How can I tell whether a pool is honest?

Compare the numbers. The hashrate shown on the ASIC and the calculated hashrate on the pool should be close, earnings should agree with a calculator, and payouts should arrive on schedule with transactions visible on the blockchain. If discrepancies are systematic, ask support about them.

Should I move my whole farm to a new pool immediately?

No. Start with one device for a few days, check the earnings, the first payout and the stability of the connection, and only then move the rest. Connection steps are covered in "How to connect an ASIC to a pool".

Which pool should I pick for Litecoin and Dogecoin?

Look for a pool that supports merged mining of the two coins: a Scrypt ASIC does the work once and rewards in LTC and DOGE are credited together. At RuPool this uses a single LTC stratum, and there is no separate DOGE endpoint. The terms are described on the LTC and DOGE pool pages.