Stuck Bitcoin transaction? How to speed it up for free
A Bitcoin transaction gets stuck when its fee rate is below what miners take. Raise it yourself with RBF or CPFP, with no paid accelerator.
By Dimitar Zurnov · Updated 10 Oct 2026
A Bitcoin transaction is stuck when its fee rate is lower than what miners are taking for the next blocks, so it waits in line. You can usually speed it up without paying any service.
The sender can bump the fee on that same transaction (replace-by-fee), or the receiver can spend it in a high-fee child transaction (child pays for parent). Either way you pay miners a higher network fee, and nobody else. Paid accelerators are the last resort, and free "push" sites rarely help.
Is my transaction stuck, or just waiting?
Its page on Explore21 tells you in one sentence. Paste the transaction ID (the 64 characters your wallet shows) into the stuck-transaction lookup, and a waiting transaction reads like this example: "Waiting. At 2 sat/vB it's in line for the 3rd block from now, in about 30 minutes." A sat/vB is one satoshi of fee for each virtual byte of the transaction's size.
Our rule of thumb: if the page says more than 8 blocks of better-paying transactions are ahead of it, treat it as stuck and act.
The line changes all the time. As of block 970,812 (10 October 2026, 19:24 UTC), our node had 80,225 transactions waiting, 40.6 million virtual bytes, about 40 blocks' worth. The median transaction in the next block paid 1 sat/vB, and the node accepted anything from 0.1 sat/vB up. On a busy day the same transaction can wait for days.
Why does a transaction get stuck?
A transaction gets stuck because of its fee rate, not its amount. A block has room for about 1 million virtual bytes (BIP 141), and one is found roughly every 10 minutes. Miners fill it with the transactions that pay the most per byte. Sending 0.001 BTC or 10 BTC costs the same if the two transactions are the same size.
A transaction that paid a fair rate an hour ago can fall behind when a wave of better-paying ones arrives. It sits in the mempool, the waiting room every node keeps, until the line in front of it clears or until it is dropped.
Nodes also have a floor. Bitcoin Core keeps at most 300 MB of waiting transactions by default (Bitcoin Core source). When that fills, the lowest-paying ones are dropped and the minimum fee to get in rises. A transaction under that minimum may not even reach most nodes.
How do I speed it up with replace-by-fee (RBF)?
If you sent it from a wallet that holds the keys, bump the fee on that same transaction. The wallet signs a new version that spends the same coins with a higher fee, and it takes the old one's place. This is not a second payment: only one of the two versions can ever confirm. Wallets call it "Bump fee", "Increase fee" or "Speed up".
- Open the waiting transaction in your wallet.
- Choose bump fee (or increase fee, or speed up).
- Pick a fee rate that puts it in the next block or two. The Explore21 home page shows the current rates live.
- Sign and send. Search the new transaction ID: the old one disappears once the new one spreads.
The new version must pay more in total than the original, and the extra must cover its own size at the node's incremental relay fee. These are Bitcoin Core's replacement rules, which grew out of BIP 125. As of block 970,812 that extra was 0.1 sat/vB on our node. A small bump replaces the transaction, but only a bump to the current rate gets it mined.
Nodes no longer care whether the original "signalled" RBF. Full replace-by-fee became the default in Bitcoin Core 28.0 in October 2024, and 29.0 removed the option to turn it off. Wallets are another matter. Some only bump a transaction that signalled RBF when it was sent, and Bitcoin Core's own wallet did so until version 30.0. If your wallet has an RBF setting, leave it on.
Bitcoin Core (bumpfee), Electrum, the Blockstream app and Nunchuk can all bump a fee this way.
How does child pays for parent (CPFP) work?
The receiver spends the stuck payment in a new transaction with a high fee, and that fee pulls both into a block. You can't replace a payment you received: only the sender's keys can sign a new version. But the output that pays you, the coins it sends to your address, is yours to spend.
Send that output to yourself with a high fee. A miner can only take the child together with its parent, so the two are judged by their combined fee rate.
The child pays for both. Say the stuck parent is 200 vB and paid 2 sat/vB (400 sats), and you want the pair at 10 sat/vB. A simple child is about 110 vB, so the pair is 310 vB and needs 3,100 sats in total. The child pays the missing 2,700 sats, about 24.5 sat/vB on its own.
The sender can do the same with the change that came back to them. Electrum and Nunchuk support CPFP for both sides.
What if the parent paid less than the nodes' minimum and never got in? Since Bitcoin Core 28.0, nodes can relay such a parent together with one child as a package, as long as the child has no other unconfirmed parent (Bitcoin Optech). It is new and not yet guaranteed to reach every node.
What if the payment came from an exchange?
Usually you can't bump it yourself: ask the exchange's support to bump it, or use CPFP on the output that pays you. An exchange often pays many withdrawals in one transaction (batching) and holds the keys, so only the exchange can replace it. The output that pays you is yours, though, so the child is yours to send if your wallet supports CPFP.
Do Bitcoin transaction accelerators work?
Paid accelerators can speed up a transaction, but they cost extra and do not promise confirmation. The mempool.space Accelerator, for example, takes a fee outside the transaction and passes the request to mining pools it works with. It works when those pools mine the next blocks and take the deal.
ViaBTC's free accelerator takes transactions of at most 0.5 KB that already pay at least 0.0001 BTC per kB (about 10 sat/vB), a limited number per hour. When we checked on 10 October 2026, its counter showed 0 free transactions left for that hour.
Free "push to miners" sites resend your transaction to more nodes. That helps only if it never reached the network in the first place. It does not change the fee rate, so it does not move a transaction up the line.
If you do try a service, check three things. It states the price before you pay. It says plainly that confirmation is not guaranteed. And it never asks for your seed phrase or private keys: a site that does is a scam.
What happens if I just wait?
Often nothing bad. Fees rise and fall during the day and the week, and a transaction that pays the minimum gets mined when the line clears. If it doesn't, each node drops it from its own mempool after 336 hours (14 days) by default (Bitcoin Core source). A full mempool can drop it sooner.
Dropped does not mean cancelled. Your coins have not moved, but the signed transaction still exists, and it can still confirm if anyone broadcasts it again. Before you pay again, search its ID to check it is gone. A replacement that spends the same coins is the safe way to pay again, because only one of the two can confirm.
In Bitcoin Core, once the transaction has left your node's mempool, abandontransaction marks it abandoned and makes its coins spendable again. It refuses while the transaction is still in the mempool.
How do I avoid a stuck transaction next time?
- Look at the fee rate for the next block before you send. The Explore21 home page shows it live.
- Use a wallet that can bump fees, and leave RBF on, so a low guess is easy to fix.
- If it can wait, pay less and keep the bump for later. If it can't, pay the next-block rate.
- When you can, keep a change output: it is your way to use CPFP.
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