# What is rent on Solana? Rent deposits after SIMD-0437

> Rent on Solana is a refundable SOL deposit every account holds. The formula, the SIMD-0437 cuts of September 2026, and withdrawing excess lamports.


Rent on Solana is a refundable SOL deposit that every account holds to stay on-chain, and you get it back when the account closes. The SOL stays in the account the whole time; developers call it the rent-exempt minimum or the rent reserve. You pay it each time your wallet opens a token account for a token it has never held.

## How rent on Solana works

The minimum is (128 + the account's data size in bytes) × lamports per byte, and one SOL is a billion lamports. Until 3 September 2026 the rate was 6,960 lamports per byte. Solana's docs also write it as 3,480 lamports per byte-year for two years, the origin of the name "rent-exempt". The Token Program refuses to open an account below the minimum.

SIMD-0437 cuts the rate in five steps, each behind its own feature gate, ending 90% lower. In October 2026, solana.com's reduced-rent page listed them this way:

| Step | Lamports per byte | Status on solana.com, October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6,333 | Live on Mainnet, since 3 September 2026 |
| 2 | 5,080 | Live on Testnet |
| 3 | 2,575 | Expected in Agave 4.4 |
| 4 | 1,322 | Expected in Agave 4.4 |
| 5 | 696 | Expected in Agave 4.4 |

The same page expects steps 3 to 5 with Agave 4.4 in November 2026. Chainstack's documentation reports that step 2 activated on mainnet on 11 September 2026.

The first cut, for three common accounts:

| Account | Data size | Rate 6,960 (until 3 September 2026) | Step 1 rate 6,333 (from 3 September 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| System account (a plain wallet) | 0 bytes | 890,880 lamports (0.00089088 SOL) | 810,624 lamports (0.000810624 SOL) |
| SPL token mint | 82 bytes | 1,461,600 lamports (0.0014616 SOL) | 1,329,930 lamports (0.00132993 SOL) |
| SPL token account | 165 bytes | 2,039,280 lamports (0.00203928 SOL) | 1,855,569 lamports (0.001855569 SOL) |

The network sets the minimum when an account opens, so a new deposit follows whichever step is active that day.

## Old deposits and withdrawing excess lamports

Token accounts, mints and multisigs opened before 3 September 2026 keep the larger deposit: a 165-byte token account from August holds 183,711 lamports above the step 1 minimum.

The owner can withdraw that excess without closing anything. Solana's withdraw-excess-lamports instruction sends the lamports above the minimum to a destination the signer picks; the token account owner signs for a token account, the mint authority for a mint. The account stays rent-exempt and usable, its token balance untouched. Wrapped SOL accounts are not supported.

The plan has two safeguards, in solana.com's words. "A sixth feature gate exists specifically to reverse course": it would reset the rate to 6,960 "without disrupting existing accounts". And SIMD-0392 "allows rent to be raised again later if empirical state growth turns out to be a problem."

## Example on Cherry

SOL Reclaim is a [mini app](https://cherry.fun/learn/glossary/crypto-mini-app/) inside Cherry, the wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto; its storefront says "This mini app is managed by Cherry". It closes empty token accounts and returns their deposits to your wallet. Before your wallet opens to approve, the review screen shows "Rent recovered" and "You receive". The app's fee is taken from the reclaimed rent: it is the gap between those two lines. It does not withdraw excess from accounts you keep. Its room had 4,366 members in October 2026.

[SOL Reclaim on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@solreclaim)

The steps are in [how to reclaim SOL rent](https://cherry.fun/learn/guides/reclaim-sol-rent/); other [mini apps](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/mini-apps/) are in [the mini apps running inside Cherry](https://cherry.fun/learn/blog/mini-apps-running-inside-cherry/).

## Related terms

- Token account: holds one wallet's balance of one token, with its own rent deposit.
- Associated token account: the default token account for a wallet and a mint. Whoever pays to create it funds the deposit, and that payer can differ from the owner.
- [SPL token](https://cherry.fun/learn/glossary/spl-token/): the standard behind the mints and token accounts above.
- Token-2022: the newer token program. Its account with the immutable-owner extension is 170 bytes, 2,074,080 lamports at the 6,960 rate, more with other extensions.

## FAQ

### Do I get Solana rent back?

Yes. Closing an empty token account sends all of its lamports, the deposit included, to the destination named in the close, which is not automatically the wallet that paid for it. A token account you keep can also release the part of its deposit above the current minimum.

## Sources

- [Solana: Reduced rent (SIMD-0437)](https://solana.com/upgrades/reduced-rent)
- [Solana docs: Withdraw excess lamports](https://solana.com/docs/tokens/advanced/withdraw-excess-lamports)
- [Solana docs: Create a token account](https://solana.com/docs/tokens/basics/create-token-account)
- [Solana docs: Accounts](https://solana.com/docs/core/accounts)
- [Solana: Agave 4.2 release overview](https://solana.com/upgrades/agave-4-2-release-overview)
- [Chainstack: Solana rent reduction and reclaiming excess rent](https://docs.chainstack.com/docs/solana-rent-reduction-reclaim-excess-rent)
- [SOL Reclaim on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@solreclaim)