A Phantom swap listed an Account Creation cost. A transaction failed with "insufficient funds for rent." Or your wallet has less SOL to spend than you expected. All three come from Solana's rent, the deposit every account has to hold. Phantom doesn't keep it, and once an account is empty, you can get it back.
What is rent in Phantom?
Rent is Solana's refundable storage deposit, not a Phantom fee. Every account, including each token account in your wallet, has to hold a minimum SOL balance. Phantom shows it when a transaction opens a new account, and closing an empty account returns the deposit.
Solana's own account documentation says to treat this balance "as a refundable account storage deposit: the full balance can be recovered when the account is closed." Nothing is charged over time. The size depends on how much data the account stores and on Solana's current rent rate, which dropped twice in September 2026.
So the same kind of account can hold different amounts. A standard token account opened today holds 0.00148844 SOL; one opened under the original setting holds 0.00203928 SOL (both checked October 7, 2026). Our rent calculator works out the figure for any account size, and our guide to Phantom wallet fees covers what Phantom itself charges.
Where does Phantom show rent?
Phantom rarely uses the word "rent" itself. These are the places it turns up, with labels as they appear in Phantom's browser extension (version 26.31.0) on October 7, 2026 (the mobile app may word them differently):
- Swaps. When a swap needs a new token account, usually because you've never held the token, the fee details can include an Account Creation line. Phantom describes it as the cost of creating an associated token account "when you receive a new SPL token for the first time." Unlike the network fee, that SOL isn't spent. It becomes the deposit in your new token account.
- Transaction previews. When an app's transaction opens accounts for you, the SOL leaving your wallet in the preview can include their deposits on top of the network fee.
- Collectible burns. Phantom's burn screen lists a Rebate: "A small amount of SOL will be automatically deposited into your wallet for burning this token." That rebate comes from the deposits in the accounts the burn closes.
- Native staking. A stake account's details include a Rent Reserve. When you withdraw after unstaking, Phantom's staking guide says "Your SOL returns to your wallet, and the stake account closes," and that reserve comes back with it.
Why does Phantom say "insufficient funds for rent"?
A transaction can leave an account at exactly zero or at or above its minimum, but not in between. Solana's runtime documentation says the account paying the fee "cannot end up between 0 and the rent-exempt minimum." Break that rule and the transaction fails with an insufficient-funds-for-rent error. An app may show Solana's full wording, "Transaction results in an account (0) with insufficient funds for rent", where account (0) is the fee payer, usually your wallet. If a send from Phantom fails this way, Phantom's status screen gives the reason as "Insufficient funds for rent."
Your wallet address is an account with no data, so its minimum is small: 0.00065024 SOL at today's rate (it was 0.00089088 SOL under the original setting). Two everyday sends break that rule on the network, and we confirmed both with unsigned mainnet simulations on October 7, 2026:
- Sending a tiny amount to a brand-new address. Sending
0.0001 SOLto an address that had never held SOL failed. Sending exactly0.00065024 SOLwent through. - Leaving a sliver behind. A send that would have left
0.0001 SOLin the sending wallet after the network fee failed. Leaving the minimum, or emptying the wallet to exactly zero, worked.
Phantom's browser extension (version 26.31.0, checked October 7, 2026) checks both cases before you sign, using the original 0.00089088 SOL figure rather than today's lower one. Its Max amount keeps 0.00089088 SOL in your wallet after the network fee, which is why Phantom won't send your whole balance, and a SOL send to an address holding less than that must be at least 0.00089088 SOL. If an app's transaction fails with this error on account (0), add a little SOL or spend less and try again. Phantom's network fee guide suggests keeping about 0.02 SOL on Solana for fees, well above either figure.
Where is the rest of your SOL?
Most tokens you've held, standard NFTs included, sit in token accounts of their own, and each of those accounts holds its deposit separately from your wallet's SOL balance. Selling or sending all of a token can leave that account behind, empty but still holding SOL. Hiding a token in Phantom only changes what you see; the account and its deposit stay where they are.
If you've traded a lot of tokens, those leftover deposits add up, and they stay locked until the empty accounts are closed.
How do you get rent back from your Phantom wallet?
Connect Phantom to Sol Incinerator and stay in Fun Mode, the default. On your phone, open the site in Phantom's in-app browser.
- Close empty token accounts. Fun Mode finds your empty token accounts and closes the ones you choose, so their deposits come back to you. Nothing you hold is burned.
- Withdraw surplus from older accounts you keep. An account opened before or between the September rent cuts holds more than it needs today, unless that surplus was already withdrawn. For a standard token account opened under the original setting, that's
0.00055084 SOL(0.00203928 − 0.00148844, before fees). Fun Mode withdraws that surplus from eligible accounts while they stay open and keep your tokens. - Check the preview and approve in Phantom. Our 2% base fee lets you keep most of what comes back. Closing a token account carries a minimum fee, higher for Token-2022, so accounts opened since the rent cuts and Token-2022 accounts pay a higher effective rate. The preview shows what's expected to reach your wallet after costs, and a large cleanup may ask for several approvals.
Out of SOL? Gasless Pay is automatic: when your cleanup qualifies, we pay the upfront network fee and recover its charge from the SOL you reclaim.
Accounts that still hold unwanted tokens need those tokens gone first. Swap anything with a market, and burn the rest in Pro Mode only if you're sure, since a burn is permanent. Our Phantom burn guide walks through it, and the account recovery guide covers accounts that won't close.
