Learn · 2026-11-04

Bitcoin transaction stuck unconfirmed? What low fees do and how to fix it

Bot counts and results quoted in this guide are as of 2026-11-04. Current numbers: Fleet · For judges.

Miners pick transactions largely by fee rate, measured in sats per virtual byte. If yours pays less than others, it waits. Nothing has been lost: an unconfirmed transaction has not moved your coins yet.

Check it first

Paste the transaction ID into a mempool explorer and compare its fee rate with the current recommended rates. If it is close to them, patience is often enough. If it is far below, or below the minimum relay fee, it may wait a very long time.

Your options

Replace-by-fee (RBF): if you sent it and your wallet supports RBF, use "Bump fee" or "Speed up". This sends a replacement with a higher fee.
Child-pays-for-parent (CPFP): if you are the receiver, or the transaction has change returning to you, spend that unconfirmed output with a high fee. Miners then take both transactions together.
Wait for it to drop out: nodes eventually forget very old unconfirmed transactions, commonly after around two weeks, and your wallet can then let you try again.

Avoid this mistake

Do not resend the same payment from a different wallet while the first one is pending. If both confirm, you have paid twice. Be wary of paid "transaction accelerator" offers from strangers too.

Check your own wallet

Check a wallet for low-fee transactions with StuckScan. It is free and read-only: you paste a public address, with no wallet connection and no signing. It shows what it checked on each chain, and anything it could not check is listed as such.

Never share your seed phrase or private key. Nobody legitimate needs them to help you, and BOTLAB never charges a fee to "recover" funds.

Want these checks run on your own strategy? See the strategy and backtest audit.

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