How to Get Free ETH in MetaMask?

If you want to test the cryptocurrency ecosystem without spending money on the token, you may consider the test networks provided by major modern cryptocurrencies. Ethereum has multiple test networks that give you free test ETH tokens. Let me help you understand the nature of these and teach you how to get free ETH tokens in MetaMask.

What is a Test Network?

A test network is an option provided for developers to simulate the production environment while developing decentralized applications based on the token networks.

You get virtual tokens that work almost exactly like the real ones. You can send and receive cryptocurrency tokens between addresses of the test networks. You can create, deploy and interact with smart contracts with the help of these networks and tokens.

Free ETH:

There are many Ethereum test networks that you can utilize to get free test ETH tokens and try transacting on the Blockchain. MetaMask gives you two test networks by default in the extension. But adding a new test network is just as easy as filling a form with 5-6 entries. There is also some test RPC server software like Ganache that gives you unlimited access to test Ether. But for the purpose of this video, we’ll see how to do it from the default test networks provided in MetaMask. If you want to add a custom network, you can get help from this article.

Procedure:

Open the MetaMask browser extension and click on the circular profile icon in the top right corner of the extension. Find the settings option from here and click on that.

Select the advanced settings option from settings and find the show test networks section by scrolling down. Once you find the option, check if it’s turned on or off. In case it’s off, just click on it to turn it on. This will make the test networks visible in the main menu.

Turning on the test networks toggle in MetaMask

You should be able to see those new test networks in the network section at the top center of the MetaMask extension. Just click on the option, and you should be able to find two test networks at the bottom of the list: Goreli and Sepolia. The Goreli test network’s faucet doesn’t work as intended sometimes. Therefore we’ll select the Sepolia test network from here.

Switching to the test networks in MetaMask

After selecting the Sepolia network, a clean interface will appear that looks like the Ethereum environment but isn’t really. This is your test network. We need to copy our address or the public key from here by clicking on the address you see below your account name. After that, to get the free test ether, we’ll select the buy button.

Copying the network public address in MetaMask

A new popup window will ask you to confirm the request to deposit Ether to the test network. Select get ether, and move on. After you select the “Get Ether” option, you’ll get redirected to a new page on the browser. Find an input at the bottom that says, “Enter an address or ENS name” and paste the address we copied in the last step(step 4). After entering the address, click on the checkbox that verifies if you’re a human.

Pasting the address in Sepolia faucet to get free test ether

Verify the captcha in the next step, and click on “Request Funds”.

Verifying sepolia captcha to request funds

A waiting animation will appear in front of you for some time. And after a while, you will be able to see partial SepoliaETH reflected in your wallet. You can start transacting with these on the Sepolia test network like regular cryptocurrency. You can learn how to do transactions on blockchain with MetaMask from this article(hyperlink).