Solana Rent Reduction 2026: What SIMD-0437 Means for Your SOL

The Solana rent reduction, proposed as SIMD-0437, cuts the deposit every account must hold by 90%, rolled out in five steps. Two steps are already live on mainnet, so a new token account now needs 0.00148844 SOL instead of the old 0.00203928 SOL. Your existing accounts were not touched, though: every empty token account you opened before September 2026 still holds the full legacy deposit, and closing it gives all of that back.

Key takeaways

• SIMD-0437 lowers the rent rate from 6,960 to 696 lamports per byte, a 90% cut, in five feature-gated steps.
• Steps 1 and 2 went live on September 3 and September 11, 2026. A new token account now needs 0.00148844 SOL.
• Steps 3 to 5 are expected with Agave 4.4 around November 2026, which would bring the minimum to about 0.000203928 SOL.
• Old accounts keep their original deposit. An empty token account from before September 2026 still returns 0.00203928 SOL when you close it.
• Waiting doesn't make your old empty accounts worth more. Closing returns everything they hold, now or later.

What is the Solana rent reduction?

Every account on Solana has to hold a small, refundable deposit called the rent-exempt minimum. Solana no longer charges recurring rent, so the word "rent" is a bit misleading. It's a deposit, and you get it back when the account is closed. If you want the full background, read our guide to how Solana rent and rent-exempt deposits work.

The size of that deposit depends on how much data the account stores. The formula is (128 + account size in bytes) × lamports per byte, where 1 SOL equals 1,000,000,000 lamports. A standard SPL token account is 165 bytes, so it is charged for 293 bytes in total.

For years the rate sat at 6,960 lamports per byte. That works out to 2,039,280 lamports, or 0.00203928 SOL, for every token account. SIMD-0437 lowers the rate in stages until it reaches 696 lamports per byte, one tenth of the original.

The SIMD-0437 schedule: all five steps

The cut is split into five feature-gated steps instead of one big switch. Each step activates on mainnet at a specific slot. The table below shows the rate at each step and what it means for a standard 165-byte token account, using the formula above.

As of late October 2026, step 2 is the current rate. New token accounts need about 27% less SOL than they did in August. Steps 3 to 5 are not live yet. They are expected to ship with the Agave 4.4 validator release, around November 2026, and dates can move. Solana's own page on the reduced rent upgrade is the place to check for updates.

SIMD-0438: the safety valve

A lower deposit makes it cheaper to create accounts, which could make chain state grow faster. SIMD-0438 is the safeguard for that scenario. If state grows too quickly, it can reset the rate back to 6,960 lamports per byte.

In practice, this means nobody can promise the lower minimum will stay low forever. Keep that in mind before you build any plan that depends on future rates.

Why your old empty accounts still hold 0.00203928 SOL

The rent cut lowers the minimum a new account must hold. It doesn't reach into existing accounts and change their balances. Whatever lamports an account was funded with when it was created stay in it.

Almost every token account opened before September 2026 holds exactly 0.00203928 SOL. Closing an account returns its full lamport balance, not today's lower minimum. So an old empty account pays out 0.00203928 SOL when you close it, even though a brand-new account only needs 0.00148844 SOL.

Here's the gap in numbers:

• 100 old empty accounts return 0.203928 SOL when closed.
• 100 empty accounts opened after September 11, 2026 return 0.148844 SOL.
• Each old account holds 0.00055084 SOL more than the current minimum.
• If step 5 goes live as expected, each old account would hold 0.001835352 SOL more than the new minimum.

If you traded a lot of tokens before September, those old accounts are the ones worth the most to close. Our Solana rent calculator with wallet examples shows what that looks like for 10, 100 or 1,000 accounts.

Closing vs WithdrawExcessLamports: two ways to reclaim excess rent

Now that old accounts hold more than the minimum, there are two ways to get SOL out of them. They solve different problems, so it helps to know both.

Option 1: withdraw the excess and keep the account open

The Token Program has an instruction called WithdrawExcessLamports. It moves only the portion above the current minimum out of an account, and the account stays open. It works for Token and Token-2022 token accounts, mints and multisigs. It doesn't work for wrapped SOL.

This is useful for accounts you still use, like a token account that holds coins you plan to keep. At today's step 2 rate, it would free 0.00055084 SOL from a legacy token account. That amount would grow as steps 3 to 5 activate.

Option 2: close the empty account and get everything back

CloseAccount deletes an empty token account and sends its entire lamport balance to a destination you choose. For an old account, that's the full 0.00203928 SOL, about 3.7 times what withdrawing the excess would return today.

The catch is that the token balance must be exactly zero. You can't close an account that still holds tokens.

SOLclaimer does the first one. It finds your empty token accounts, closes them, and returns the full deposit to your own wallet for a flat 0.5% fee. It does not currently offer withdraw-excess, so if you want to pull the excess from accounts that still hold tokens, you'd need a different tool or to build that instruction yourself.

Should you wait for the rest of the Solana rent cut?

For empty accounts, no. Closing an empty account returns every lamport it holds, and the remaining steps won't add anything to the old accounts already in your wallet. An account holding 0.00203928 SOL today will still hold 0.00203928 SOL in December. Waiting only delays getting it back.

There's also a small bonus to closing now. If you later buy a token whose account you closed, your wallet opens a new account at the current, lower deposit. You got 0.00203928 SOL back and the new account costs 0.00148844 SOL today, and less still if the later steps go live.

Waiting only makes sense for WithdrawExcessLamports on accounts you plan to keep, since the excess grows as the minimum drops. Even then, SIMD-0438 means the lower rate isn't guaranteed to stick.

How to claim your SOL from old token accounts

You don't need to understand slots or feature gates to get your deposits back. The process takes about a minute:

1. Open the SOLclaimer claim tool and paste any wallet address to scan it read-only, without connecting.
2. Check the result: total reclaimable SOL, the 0.5% fee, and what you receive.
3. Connect the same wallet with Phantom, Solflare, Backpack or another Wallet Standard wallet.
4. Review the transaction in your wallet. You'll see compute budget settings, a CloseAccount for each empty account with your wallet as the destination, and one System Program transfer for the 0.5% fee. Nothing else.
5. Approve it and follow each signature on Solscan.

SOLclaimer scans both the SPL Token program and Token-2022. It skips frozen accounts and Token-2022 accounts whose close authority isn't you, so the transaction doesn't fail on accounts that can't be closed. If some empty accounts show up as blocked, our post on why some token accounts can't be closed explains each case. For the full walkthrough, see how to claim your SOL from empty token accounts.

Frequently asked questions

What is SIMD-0437?

SIMD-0437 is the Solana proposal that lowers the rent-exempt minimum by 90%, from 6,960 to 696 lamports per byte. It rolls out in five feature-gated steps, and two of them are live on mainnet as of September 11, 2026.

Is the Solana rent reduction live?

Partly. Steps 1 and 2 went live on September 3 and September 11, 2026, so a new token account currently needs 0.00148844 SOL. Steps 3 to 5 are expected with Agave 4.4 around November 2026 but are not live yet.

Do I get less SOL back from old accounts after the rent cut?

No. Existing accounts keep the deposit they were created with, and closing an account returns its full lamport balance. An empty token account from before September 2026 still returns 0.00203928 SOL.

Does SOLclaimer support WithdrawExcessLamports?

No. SOLclaimer closes empty token accounts and returns the entire deposit to your wallet. It does not withdraw excess lamports from accounts that stay open.

What is SIMD-0438?

SIMD-0438 is a safeguard that can reset the rent rate back to 6,960 lamports per byte if chain state grows too fast. It means the lower minimum isn't guaranteed to be permanent.

Claim your SOL now

Your old empty token accounts still hold the full pre-cut deposit, and the rest of the rent reduction won't change that. Scan any wallet for free and claim your SOL back in one signature, keeping 99.5% of what you reclaim.