What Is Rent Exemption in Solana?
Rent exemption is the minimum lamport balance an account must maintain to persist on-chain. Any account that holds at least this amount is “rent-exempt” and will never be purged. Accounts below this threshold are removed by the runtime.
How the minimum is calculated
The rent-exempt minimum depends on the account’s data size:
minimum = 0.00089088 SOL + 0.00000696 SOL × data_size_in_bytesUse getMinimumBalanceForRentExemption to query the exact amount for a given data size.
Common rent-exempt minimums
| Account type | Data size | Minimum (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| Wallet (system account) | 0 bytes | 0.00089 SOL |
| Token account | 165 bytes | 0.00204 SOL |
| Token mint | 82 bytes | 0.00146 SOL |
| Nonce account | 80 bytes | 0.00145 SOL |
Rent collection history
Solana originally charged per-epoch rent on accounts below the exempt threshold. Since 2023, all new accounts must be rent-exempt at creation. The runtime no longer debits rent from existing accounts — the rentEpoch field is historical.
FAQ
Can I get the rent back? Yes. Closing an account returns its lamports (including the rent-exempt minimum) to a specified destination. The owning program must support a close instruction.
What happens if my balance drops below the minimum? The runtime garbage-collects accounts below the rent-exempt minimum. For wallet accounts, this means you cannot transfer your entire SOL balance — you must leave the minimum or close the account.
Sources
Updated: