How reclaiming rent actually works
Behind "scan and reclaim" is one read of the chain and one signed transaction. No custody, no intermediate step where anyone but you holds the funds — here is exactly what happens between pasting an address and the SOL landing back in the wallet.
The four steps
- 1
Scan every token account the wallet owns
We read every account the wallet holds under both the SPL Token and Token-2022 programs and check each one's balance. This is a read-only RPC call — nothing is signed, and nothing about the wallet is modified. It is the same check the public scanner runs before you even connect.
- 2
Filter down to zero-balance accounts
Anything still holding a token, NFT or other asset is left untouched — those only come back through the burn flow. Everything left is an account doing nothing but holding its rent-exempt deposit.
- 3
Build one transaction, batched
A closeAccount instruction is added for every empty account found, batched into as few transactions as Solana's size limit allows — usually a few dozen accounts per signature. A wallet with more than that gets split into several transactions so it still finishes in one sitting.
- 4
Sign, and the deposit returns immediately
The wallet signs, the transaction lands, and every closed account's rent-exempt deposit is credited back — minus our fee — in the same slot. There is no delay and no separate claim step.
What if the wallet has no SOL to sign step 3 with?
A transaction needs a fee payer with a balance, which a drained wallet does not have. For wallets under 1,000 lamports we step in as fee payer ourselves and take 20% of the recovered rent instead of 10%. How the gasless mode works.
Questions
Does the tool ever touch an account that still holds tokens?
No. Rent recovery only ever targets accounts sitting at a zero balance. Anything still holding a token, NFT or other asset is left exactly as it is — those show up under the burn flow instead, which is a separate, explicit step.
Can closing accounts leave my wallet half-finished, or fail partway through?
No. Every close instruction for a batch lives inside one atomic transaction, so it either lands completely or not at all — there is no partial state where some accounts closed and others did not.
How many accounts can be closed in one transaction?
As many closeAccount instructions as fit under Solana’s transaction size limit — usually a few dozen. A wallet with more empty accounts than that gets split into several transactions, each requesting its own signature, so it still completes in one sitting.
How much should I expect back?
Roughly 0.002 SOL per empty account before fees, though older accounts sometimes hold less. The scan shows the exact figure for your wallet, broken down account by account, before anything is signed.
Exact fee figures, backed by real mainnet transactions you can verify yourself, are on the fees page.
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