Solana rent explained: what an account costs in October 2026
Every Solana account has to hold a little SOL to exist. Today a wallet needs 0.00065 SOL and a token account 0.00149 SOL, and you get all of it back when the account closes.
What rent is
Every account on Solana lives in memory on every validator. To pay for that space, an account has to hold a minimum amount of SOL for its size. Solana calls this rent, and an account that holds the minimum is called rent exempt.
The name is misleading. Nothing is charged each month and nothing is used up. It is a deposit: the SOL sits in the account the whole time, and when the account is closed, every lamport comes back to a wallet you choose.
The minimum follows one formula:
minimum = (128 + size of the account's data in bytes) × lamports per byteA lamport is the smallest unit of SOL. One SOL is 1,000,000,000 lamports.
What an account costs today
These are the minimums for the three accounts most people meet: a plain wallet, a token account (one per coin you hold) and a token mint (made when someone creates a coin).
| Account | Data size | Minimum (lamports) | SOL | Before the 2026 cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wallet | 0 bytes | 650,240 | 0.00065 | 0.00089 |
| Token account | 165 bytes | 1,488,440 | 0.00149 | 0.00204 |
| Token mint | 82 bytes | 1,066,800 | 0.00107 | 0.00146 |
Read from Solana mainnet with getMinimumBalanceForRentExemption on 27 October 2026, epoch 1069.
So every coin in your wallet has its own token account holding 0.00149 SOL. A wallet with 40 coins, most of them sold or dead, can be sitting on 0.06 SOL of deposits.
Why the numbers dropped in 2026
Solana is cutting rent in five steps under a proposal called SIMD-0437. Each step lowers the lamports charged per byte and is switched on by its own feature gate, so any step can be paused if the network grows faster than planned. A companion proposal, SIMD-0392, lets rent be raised again if it ever has to be.
| Step | Lamports per byte | Token account | Wallet | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before | 6,960 | 0.00204 SOL | 0.00089 SOL | Until September 2026 |
| 1 | 6,333 | 0.00186 SOL | 0.00081 SOL | Live 3 September 2026 |
| 2 | 5,080 | 0.00149 SOL | 0.00065 SOL | Live mid September 2026 (today) |
| 3 | 2,575 | 0.00075 SOL | 0.00033 SOL | Planned |
| 4 | 1,322 | 0.00039 SOL | 0.00017 SOL | Planned |
| 5 | 696 | 0.00020 SOL | 0.00009 SOL | Planned, around November 2026 |
Token account and wallet amounts worked out from the formula above. Dates from solana.com/upgrades/reduced-rent.
If all five steps go live, opening a token account will cost a tenth of what it did in early 2026.
Old accounts keep what they hold
A cut only changes the minimum for new accounts. An account opened before September 2026 still holds the old, larger deposit, and closing it returns all of it. A token account you opened in 2025 gives back 0.00204 SOL, more than a new one costs today.
That is why apps that read a fixed number instead of the account’s real balance get rent wrong now. Raven reads what each account actually holds before it shows you what a clean up will return.
How to get it back
Rent comes back when the account closes. What that means depends on the account:
- A token account can be closed once it holds none of its coin. Sell or burn what is left first, then close it; the deposit goes to your wallet. See how to get SOL back from empty token accounts.
- A wallet closes when its balance reaches zero. Send everything, including the deposit, and the account stops existing. A wallet can hold zero or at least the minimum, never something in between, so a send that would leave 0.0003 SOL behind is refused by the network.
- A token mint belongs to whoever created the coin and is rarely closed.
Questions
Do I pay rent every month?
No. Every account has to hold the minimum once, as a deposit, and nothing is taken from it over time. You get it back when the account closes.
How much SOL do I get back from closing a token account?
Whatever that account holds: 0.00149 SOL for one opened after mid September 2026, 0.00186 SOL for one opened in early September, and 0.00204 SOL for anything older.
Why do some wallets keep 0.00089 SOL after I empty them?
Some apps still leave the old minimum behind when they empty a wallet. A wallet can be sent all the way to zero, and the deposit comes with it.
Will rent go down again?
Probably. Steps 3 to 5 of SIMD-0437 are planned for late 2026, each switched on separately, and each one lowers what new accounts need. None of them changes what old accounts hold.
Sources
Raven shows the rent every wallet holds and gives it back when you clean up.
Join the waitlist