Due to the growing computational difficulty, crypto mining has become unprofitable for most individual miners unless they combine their hash power with others.
To successfully discover new blocks and earn rewards, you either need extremely powerful hardware for solo mining or join forces with other miners through a mining pool, where profits are distributed proportionally among participants.
In this guide, we’ll compare solo vs. pool mining, highlight which pools currently offer the best returns, and review the most profitable and beginner-friendly mining pools in 2025.
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What is a Cryptocurrency Mining Pool
Because thousands of miners compete for popular cryptocurrencies, the mining difficulty for coins like Bitcoin or Litecoin is extremely high.
Solo mining in such conditions is nearly impossible unless you operate large-scale industrial equipment. However, if you have spare computing power that isn’t sufficient for solo mining, you can still profit by contributing it to a pool and earning a share of the collective reward.
Pooling the hash power of many miners increases the probability of finding blocks and makes mining income more predictable. In this sense, pools act like supercomputers with the combined computing power of all participants connected to them.
In theory, anyone with a server can create a mining pool. But to make a new pool highly profitable, you need sufficient aggregate mining power. That’s easy to achieve for coins with low mining difficulty—which usually means they’re uninteresting and unprofitable. For popular coins, you either need strong in-house hash power or a large number of miners connected to your server. That’s not easy, since this market has existed for many years and already has plenty of reputable pools.
How a Mining Pool Works
A mining pool is essentially a network of servers that distribute the heavy computational work among all connected miners.
Each miner works in parallel to find valid hashes for a given blockchain. Once the pool finds a block, it submits it to the network for validation and receives a block reward, which is then shared among all participants based on their contribution.
Participation in such pools is voluntary and doesn’t require complex steps. You can use them after registration – or even without it.
There are also private mining pools that aggregate equipment only from a specific group of users. They’re created by owners of large mining farms who don’t want extra headaches running servers for third-party miners, which could reduce their farms’ security.
What You Need to Know: Registration and Basic Settings
Some cryptocurrency mining pools don’t require registration; others require creating an account linked to the user’s email address.
Before using a mining pool, you should understand how to connect to it, what fees it charges for its services, and the minimum withdrawal threshold.
Registering on a mining pool typically includes:
- creating a username and password;
- entering your email address and confirming it.
At the moment, the most profitable pools are ViaBTC and Binance Pool, so we’ll walk through the steps for registering a new user.
Registration window on the ViaBTC pool:
To use such a pool’s services, you typically need to:
- create workers for each miner (software miner or ASIC);
- specify wallet addresses for withdrawing earned coins;
- create a PIN code to modify payout-related settings.
Many modern pools offer advanced features such as two-factor authentication for payout protection, real-time performance statistics, and detailed income tracking.
You can even monitor your hash rate, payment history, and projected rewards through an online dashboard.
If you’re new to the process, we recommend checking our ViaBTC setup guide – it walks you through registration and miner configuration.
Most pools use a fixed payout model, but some allow you to choose between systems like PPS (Pay Per Share), PROP (Proportional), or PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares).
Before joining, compare their fees and pick the structure that offers the highest reward after deductions.
Pools also provide different ports with various difficulty levels – select one that matches your rig’s power. For example, low-end CPUs mining Monero should choose the lowest difficulty, while ASICs can handle higher or variable ones (VARDIFF).
If you plan to withdraw your earnings directly to an exchange, first check whether the pool supports addresses of centralized services.
Experienced miners know you can withdraw coins to an official project wallet from practically any pool (assuming it’s not a scam site) without issues. But when sending rewards to an exchange deposit, glitches sometimes happen. Some operators honestly warn about this. Beginners also often miss that the pool’s payout amount may be below the exchange wallet’s minimum deposit. In this case, exchange-run collective mining servers are very convenient.
One of the biggest and most trusted platforms is Binance Pool, launched in April 2020.
It allows miners to connect their hash power and automatically access the full ecosystem of Binance – including trading, conversion, and staking services.
Miners can instantly transfer their BTC earnings to their trading accounts, exchange them for fiat or other assets, or stake coins for passive income.
As of early 2025, Binance Pool remains in the global top ten by hash rate.
Which Pool is Best for Mining
The best mining pools should offer:
- minimal fees (for mining and withdrawals);
- 24/7 availability and the ability to monitor workers;
- honesty, reliability, and long operating history (some pool operators are scammers who siphon off miners’ hash power or disappear with miners’ earnings);
- high computing power, which increases the probability of regularly finding blocks (with a low-power pool, your work may be wasted due to the low chance of finding blocks);
- low ping from the user’s equipment to the pool’s servers to ensure timely job assignments and minimize “stale shares”—shares that arrive after a block has been found and work on new hashes has begun;
- for low mining power, pay attention to the minimum payout threshold so you don’t have to wait too long.
To find a good pool, look up the most productive ones using block explorers. For example, on the BTC network site blockchair.com/bitcoin you can track the latest found blocks and who found them.
Ranking of the Most Popular and Profitable Pools in 2025
Below is a ranking of pools based on user experience.
| Pool name | Coins | Fee | Positives | Address/notes |
| ViaBTC | BTC, BCH, BSV, LTC, ETC, ZEC, DASH, XMR, CKB | 3%, lifetime 1% discount | Chinese TOP-3 pool since 2014 with large hashrate, many coins supported. | ViaBTC is a popular TOP-3 pool by output. Good support and stable mining servers. Full platform with wallet and coin exchange. |
| EMCD | BTC, BSV, BCH, LTC, ETC, DASH | Since March 17 a 1.5% fee on all coins | One of the largest pools in the CIS. FPPS+ rewards. Daily payouts. No minimum withdrawal. 24/7 support. | EMCD is a reliable pool by EMCD Tech. High, stable income and servers worldwide. iOS/Android apps for monitoring. |
| Whoolypool | ETHW, ETC, KAS, RVN and many others | 0.9% | PPLNS and SOLO mining, low fee, wide coin selection, responsive support. | WoolyPooly stands out as highly profitable, focusing on reduced fees for PPLNS and SOLO structures. |
| K1pool | ETHW, ETC, NEXA, RVN and many others | 1% | User-friendly interface, broad coin choice, low fees. | Operating for five years. Quick switching between coins/algorithms and BAT file generator. |
| F2Pool | BTC, LTC and many others | 3–5% | Chinese pool since 2013 with large hashrate, many coins supported. | f2pool.com – registration required, good ping in Russia’s Asian regions. |
| NanoPool | XMR, ETC, Zephur, Conflux, Ergo, RVN | 1% | Good ping, Monero payouts from 0.11 XMR. | nanopool.org – great no-registration pool. Handy interface and mobile monitoring apps. |
| Mining Pool Hub | BTC, BSV, BCH, LTC | 0.9% | Automatic switching to the most profitable coin for a chosen algorithm (or switch by algorithms) with conversion to a user-selected crypto. | miningpoolhub.com – registration required. |
| NiceHash | Multi-algorithm pool | 2–5% | Russian-language interface, automatic switching to the most profitable coins with conversion to Bitcoin. | nicehash.com – registration required. High withdrawal fees. Offers cloud mining. |
| Kryptex pool | ETH, ETC, RVN, ERG, UBQ, KAS | 1–1.5% | Operating since 2022 | pool.kryptex.com/ru – reliable pool, low ping. |
| HiveON | ETC, RVN | 0.5–1% | Russian-language interface, low fees, good ping | https://hiveon.net – Russian mining pool without registration. |
| Monero Mining Pool | XMR | 2% | Operating since 2014, French pool with low fee. Payouts from 0.3 XMR. | monero.crypto-pool.fr – no registration, lower difficulty than other pools. |
After “big Ethereum” moved to PoS, pools that only supported Ethash became less popular. Most miners work on SHA-256 and Scrypt, but if you already bought an ASIC for Ethereum, you can mine its forks ETHW and ETHF or reflash it for Ethereum Classic.
The largest and most profitable pools usually support multiple coins across different algorithms. If one asset loses popularity, miners simply switch to another without leaving the platform. Of course, you don’t have to stick to one service forever—but frequent hopping won’t help either. In any case, here’s a list of reliable pools worth a look.
ViaBTC
A popular pool with lots of help content. The main focus is Bitcoin and other SHA-256 assets.
Mining Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, ZEC, DASH, SKB, Horizen, and other coins is also available. You can order a “Transaction Accelerator” and “Signature Verification.” Pool fees depend on the coin and chosen payout method. Hedging, crypto-loans, and cloud mining are available. PPS+, PPLNS, and SOLO are supported. The pool has a low rate of “orphaned blocks” and fast hourly payouts. Official site: https://www.viabtc.com.
F2Pool
Another pool that requires registration. Experienced miners know it well; it’s been operating since 2013. Over twenty coins are available, and terms seem decent, but the lack of a Russian interface is off-putting. This is especially annoying if you know it used to be there; now only Chinese, Ukrainian, English, and Spanish are available. Official site: https://www.f2pool.com.
Poolin
This pool offers Chinese, English, and Russian interfaces – and even Arabic. The coin selection is relatively small: Bitcoin, LTC, and about ten more coins. ETC+Zilliqa dual mining is supported. You can mine ETC and ETHW anonymously. Official site: https://www.poolin.com.
AntPool
This pool was founded by Bitmain Technologies, the largest manufacturer of industrial crypto-mining devices. It ranks among the five largest mining pools in the history of the crypto industry. Twenty coins are available. You can choose between FPP, PPS, PPLN, and other payout modes. Official site: https://www.antpool.com.
HiveON
A pool created by the developers of the Hive OS mining platform. Only three coins are available here: Bitcoin, ETC, and RVN. You can mine with zero fees using the Hive OS operating system. Official site: https://hiveon.net.
EMCD
One of the largest services in Eastern Europe, EMCD.io offers not only mining workplaces but also a P2P exchange to swap crypto for fiat, and other services. EMCD was recognized as Mining Pool of the Year by TerraCrypto. Storing crypto in the pool’s wallet earns additional dividends. BTC, BCH, LTC, ETC, Dash, Dogecoin, and other coins are supported. Official site: https://emcd.io/pool/
Kryptex pool
Here you can mine cryptocurrency using the official GUI app, or mine anonymously with third-party software. Coins for ASICs and CPUs are supported. Thirty cryptocurrencies are available. You can monitor the process via a Telegram bot. Official site: https://pool.kryptex.com/
Whoolypool
This pool offers a wide selection of cryptocurrencies and low service fees. There’s plenty of help content, which is convenient for beginners. Official site: https://woolypooly.com/
K1pool
K1 requires registration; anonymous mining isn’t supported. Miners receive payouts to an internal wallet; login is protected with two-factor authentication. Official site: https://k1pool.com/en/.
Which pool to choose
Let’s look more closely at how to choose a mining pool.
Key selection criteria
When selecting the best mining pool for a specific coin, always research carefully.
Forums and official pool websites are good sources of reputation and performance data.
To minimize stale shares, it’s best to connect to a pool server located closest to you – this reduces latency and improves payout stability.
You can check server speed directly from your mining software or by using the ping command in the terminal. The lower the latency, the better your efficiency.
Still, low ping isn’t everything. If a pool’s total hash rate is small, the chances of finding blocks (and earning rewards) also drop. It’s about finding the right balance between low latency and high pool performance.
Checking ping with the pool us1.ethermine.org
To do this, open a command prompt (in Windows press Win+R, type cmd, press Enter) and run: ping us1.ethermine.org (the part after ping is the pool server address). The lower the ping, the better. Keep in mind, though: if a pool has low ping but low hashrate, the probability of finding blocks – and therefore getting paid – will be small, wasting time and resources.
To evaluate which pools dominate, consult blockchain explorers for the cryptocurrency you plan to mine. They often show which pools contribute the most hash power, helping you choose reliable options with steady payouts.
There are pools that offer bonuses – these are usually new pools trying to attract miners to boost their hashrate. When choosing them, understand they could be scams, or the new platform might fail to gather enough power for productive work, leading to wasted time and resources.
You can review the most powerful Bitcoin mining pools at https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools or btc.com/stats/pool:
hashrate distribution statistics
When deciding which mining pool to choose, you can focus on the most popular ones with many years of good reputation among miners.
Conclusion
We’ve compiled a list of the most profitable and reputable mining pools for 2025, including key factors to consider when selecting your setup.
If you prefer simplicity and don’t want to analyze each pool manually, consider universal services such as NiceHash or Mining Pool Hub. They automatically allocate your computing power to the most profitable coins but charge slightly higher fees.
Choosing a pool wisely is as important as selecting your mining hardware – it determines not only your payout rate but also your overall mining stability and profitability.
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