How to speed up a stuck Bitcoin transaction

Check that it is still waiting

Look up the transaction ID on UTXOHub first. If it has confirmed, there is nothing to speed up. If it is still waiting, its page shows what each way to speed it up costs right now: for the next block and, if it is further back, for within about an hour. The figures are worked out from the payments waiting with it. A higher fee makes miners more likely to pick it, but no fee guarantees a time.

If you sent it: replace it with a higher fee

Open the payment in the wallet that sent it and look for Speed up, Bump fee or Increase fee. The wallet makes a new version of the payment that spends the same coins and pays a higher fee. This is called replace-by-fee. Nodes running Bitcoin Core accept the new version only if it pays at least the old version’s whole fee, plus a little more for its own size. Since Bitcoin Core 28.0, they accept a replacement by default even if the first version wasn’t marked as replaceable, but your wallet still has to offer the option. Before you approve it, check every address and amount: the new version has a new transaction ID, and the old one may still confirm first.

If you received it: spend it on with a higher fee

You can’t change a payment someone else sent, but you can spend the bitcoin it gave you, even before it confirms. Send that amount on, for example to another address in your own wallet, with a fee high enough to cover both payments. Miners look at the two together, and the second can only confirm alongside or after the first. This is called child pays for parent. Your wallet must let you choose that unconfirmed amount to spend, which some call coin control. The sender can do the same with the change from their payment.

What each way costs: an example

Replacing is usually cheaper, because spending it on adds a second payment that also needs space in the block. The made-up example below raises a 200-vB payment from 2 to 20 sat/vB.

If an exchange or another service sent it

Only the service can replace its own payment, so ask its support team through its official app or website, and give them the transaction ID. If it pays into a wallet you control, you can still spend it on with a higher fee. Don’t ask for the bitcoin to be sent again: if the first payment confirms too, both will have been paid.

Waiting is also an option

If nothing depends on the time, you can wait. The number of transactions waiting rises and falls, and a low-fee payment confirms once there is room for it. By default, nodes running Bitcoin Core drop a payment that has waited 336 hours, which is two weeks. That doesn’t cancel it: any wallet or node can send it out again, and it can still confirm. Don’t send a second payment just because the first is slow.

Are accelerators legit?

Some mining pools offer to put a waiting payment in the blocks they mine, sometimes for a charge. That works only when that pool finds a block, so no accelerator can promise a time. Free ones usually take a limited number of payments. A site that isn’t a mining pool can’t put a payment in a block itself: it can pass the ID to a pool, or send the payment out to the network again, which helps only if nodes have dropped it. You can do that yourself for free on UTXOHub if your wallet gives you the signed transaction. Before you pay anyone, compare the cost with bumping the fee in your wallet. An accelerator needs only the transaction ID, which is public. Anyone who asks for your recovery words or private keys to speed up a payment is trying to steal your bitcoin.

Which mining pools offer one

These need only the transaction ID, and each works only when one of the pools involved finds a block. As of October 2026:

• ViaBTC puts a limited number into its own blocks free each hour, if the transaction is no larger than 0.5 kB and already pays its minimum fee rate, and others for a charge. You need to sign in.
• AntPool and F2Pool charge, and say other pools they work with give the transaction priority too.
• SpiderPool charges, and you need an account.
• mempool.space, a block explorer, sells an Accelerator that passes the transaction ID to mining pools it works with.
• MARA Pool’s Slipstream is different: it takes a whole signed transaction, meant for large or unusual ones that most nodes won’t pass on, and MARA says ordinary transactions should go to the network as usual.
• Fake accelerator sites have copied pool names: in 2020 Bitdefender reported four fake accelerators, one named after ViaBTC, whose addresses had collected over 15 BTC. Use the links below or the pool’s own site.