Tx Doctor / Bitcoin troubleshooting / Transaction stuck (unconfirmed)
Bitcoin issue: Transaction stuck (unconfirmed)
The transaction reached the mempool but its fee rate is below what miners are packing right now, so it sits unconfirmed until the fee market drops or it eventually gets evicted.
Why it happens
- The fee rate (sat/vB) was set below the current block-space market when it was sent.
- The wallet estimated fees during a quiet period and a burst of activity followed.
- A batch transaction with many inputs pays more in weight than the sender expected.
- Child-pays-for-parent (CPFP) cannot help because the destination is not spendable yet.
How to fix it
- If RBF is enabled on the transaction, re-send it from the wallet with a fee 10–20% above the current fastest rate.
- No RBF? Spend one of its outputs back to yourself with a high fee (CPFP) — some wallets expose this as 'speed up'.
- Do nothing if it is not urgent: a low-fee transaction usually confirms within days as the market cools.
- Check the mempool fee dashboard before re-sending to pick a realistic sat/vB.
What it looks like in the wallet or explorer
Unconfirmed for 2 hours · fee rate 4 sat/vB · mempool fastest: 21 sat/vB
Seeing this right now? Paste the transaction hash — the tool finds the chain and decodes what actually failed.
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