How to check a Bitcoin transaction, and read the result

To check a Bitcoin transaction, paste its transaction ID into the search box above and search. The ID (also called the txid or transaction hash) is the 64 letters and digits your wallet or exchange shows for the payment. Explore21 looks it up on our own node and opens its page. That is the whole Bitcoin transaction check: one search, no account.

The page answers the first question in one sentence: whether the transaction is confirmed, and if not, where it stands in line. Below that it shows the confirmations, the fee it paid, and the coins it spent and where they went.

What does a BTC transaction lookup show?

Take a real one: 352f79be…ffbf67ad, a payment from 26 October 2026. Its page opens with:

• The amount at the top, 0.01855121 BTC. That is everything the transaction sent, change included, so it is often more than the payment itself.
• The sentence: "Confirmed in block 973,200, found by Foundry USA", followed by how long ago.
• Status: Confirmed, or Waiting while it is not in a block yet.
• Fee and fee rate: 0.00000184 BTC (184 sats), at 1.3 sat/vB.
• Size: 141 vB.
• Inputs and outputs: 1 in, 2 out.

Then come the confirmations, where it sits in its block, and a picture of its inputs and outputs. The sections below take them one at a time.

How many confirmations does a transaction need?

A confirmation is a block. The block that takes the transaction is its first confirmation, and every block found on top of it adds one. As of block 973,231 (26 October 2026, 11:42 UTC) our example had 32: block 973,231 minus 973,200, plus one for its own block.

Each block on top makes the transaction harder to undo, because undoing it means redoing all those blocks faster than the rest of the network. The Bitcoin paper works out how fast that chance shrinks. Most services wait for 6 confirmations, about an hour, and the page reads "6 or more: final for most purposes". Some exchanges credit small deposits sooner and wait longer for big ones: their deposit page says how many they need.

A transaction with 0 confirmations is still waiting. Until it is in a block, it can be replaced by a version that pays more, and it may never go through.

What do the fee and the fee rate mean?

The fee is what the sender paid miners, here 184 satoshis. The fee rate is that fee divided by the transaction's size in virtual bytes: 184 sats over 141 vB is 1.3 sat/vB.

The rate, not the amount sent, decides how soon a transaction gets in. Miners fill each block with the transactions that pay the most per byte. Block 973,200 held 5,135 transactions besides its coinbase, and half of its space went to ones paying 0.14 sat/vB or less. At 1.3 sat/vB, our example paid a higher rate than the transactions filling 88% of that block.

How do I read the inputs and outputs?

Inputs are the coins a transaction spends, and outputs are where the value goes. Our example spent one input of 0.01855305 BTC and created two outputs, 0.0026238 BTC and 0.01592741 BTC. The outputs add up to 184 sats less than the input. That gap is the fee: a transaction has no fee field, and the miner takes whatever the outputs leave.

One output often goes back to the sender as change. Nothing on the chain says which one, so the page doesn't guess. If you are the receiver, find your own address among the outputs and check the amount beside it. If you are the sender, the output to the address you paid is the payment, and the other one is usually your change.

Each input links to the transaction that created it, and each address to its own page, so you can follow the coins in either direction.

Waiting or confirmed: what is the difference?

Confirmed means the transaction is in a block. The page shows the block, the time and, with every new block, one more confirmation. A confirmed transaction can no longer get stuck.

Waiting means no miner has taken the transaction yet. Our node holds it in its mempool, the line of transactions not yet in a block. The sentence says where it stands, in words like these: "Waiting. At 2 sat/vB it's in line for the 3rd block from now, in about 30 minutes." That is the page's reading of the line at that moment, and it changes as better-paying transactions arrive. The page checks again every 30 seconds, so you can leave it open.

The line moves all the time. As of block 973,231 our node had 47,633 transactions waiting, 23.1 million virtual bytes, about 23 blocks' worth, and it accepted anything paying 0.1 sat/vB or more.

Where do I find the transaction ID in my wallet?

Open the payment in your wallet's history or activity list. The ID is in its details, labelled Transaction ID, TxID or transaction hash. Many wallets offer a "view on block explorer" link instead: the long string at the end of that link is the ID.

• Bitcoin Core: on the Transactions tab, right-click the payment and choose "Copy transaction ID".
• Electrum: on the History tab, double-click the payment. The ID is at the top of the window.
• An exchange: open the withdrawal in your history and look for TxID or transaction hash. If there is none yet, the exchange hasn't sent it.

No ID at all? Search your address instead. Its page lists the transactions that paid it or spent from it.

What if the search finds nothing?

The page says "No match". For a full 64-character ID, it adds that it couldn't find a block or a transaction with that ID on Bitcoin's main network. For anything shorter or longer, it asks for a block height, a block hash, a transaction ID or an address. The usual reasons:

• The ID is incomplete. It is exactly 64 characters: the digits 0 to 9 and the letters a to f, in either case. Copy it again rather than typing it.
• It was sent seconds ago. A new transaction takes a moment to reach every node. Wait a minute and search again.
• It was never sent, or it was dropped. Most exchanges show the ID only once they have broadcast the withdrawal. A transaction that paid too little can be dropped by nodes after about two weeks, or sooner when their mempool fills.
• It belongs to another network. Testnet transactions and other coins are not on Bitcoin's chain. A Lightning payment never shows up in a block explorer either: it happens off the chain.

When is a transaction stuck?

Treat it as stuck when the page says more than 8 blocks of better-paying transactions are ahead of it. That is our rule of thumb, not a rule of the network. At one block every 10 minutes on average, 8 blocks ahead means about 80 minutes, not counting better-paying transactions that arrive meanwhile.

A stuck transaction can usually be sped up without paying any service. The sender can raise the fee with replace-by-fee, or the receiver can pull it in with child pays for parent. Our guide on how to speed up a stuck transaction walks through both.

Sources

• Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, section 11, on how confirmations make a transaction harder to undo
• BIP 141, on virtual size and weight
• Bitcoin Core: getrawtransaction, the call that gives a transaction's confirmations
• Bitcoin developer guide: transactions, on inputs, outputs and the fee