You hit send, the wallet says “Pending,” and then nothing happens for an hour. Worse, every send you try after it lines up behind the first one and waits too.
That’s a stuck Ethereum transaction, and it’s fixable as long as it hasn’t confirmed yet. I’ll walk you through two ways out: pushing it through with a bigger fee, or killing it off by swapping in a 0 ETH transaction addressed to yourself. Bring the wallet that sent it (I use MetaMask for the examples), the transaction hash, and a bit of spare ETH for gas.
Table of contents
What you need before touching a stuck Ethereum transaction
It helps to know why this works. Each Ethereum account counts its sends with a nonce, which is just a number that goes up by one every time.
Most stuck transactions are stuck because the fee was too low to tempt validators. So you broadcast a second transaction that reuses the same nonce and pays more, and since a nonce can only be used once, just one of the pair will ever confirm.
- Have the sending wallet open and unlocked, on the account and network the transaction came from.
- Copy the transaction hash so you can search for it on Etherscan.
- Note the stuck transaction’s nonce. Etherscan lists it on the Transaction Details page.
- Keep some ETH in the account, since the replacement pays a bigger gas fee.
- If a hardware wallet protects the account, plug it in so you can approve the new transaction.
Quick vocabulary. Gas is the measure of how much work a transaction takes, and a gwei is a billionth of an ETH. What you pay splits into a base fee, which the protocol sets, and a priority fee, a tip that nudges validators to pick you.
Now the warning I’d put in bold if I could. Wrong network or wrong address means the funds are gone, and nobody can reverse it, so read the wallet address one character at a time before confirming anything.
How to cancel or speed up a stuck Ethereum transaction, step by step
I picked MetaMask because its help center spells out each button. If your wallet lets you edit the nonce and gas manually, the logic carries over.
Step 1. Make sure it’s really still pending
Search Etherscan for the transaction hash. Still pending? Then jot down the nonce shown on the Transaction Details page, because you can only replace or cancel something the network hasn’t confirmed.
People skip this. They try to cancel a transfer that already landed, and MetaMask’s help center doesn’t mince words: once confirmed, a transaction can’t be reversed.
Step 2. Close the browser, reopen it, unlock MetaMask
This is what MetaMask tells you to try before anything else. Quit the browser completely, start it again and unlock the wallet; on a phone, shut the app and relaunch it.
It’s free. And it makes sure you’re looking at a fresh view of your activity.
Step 3. Push it through with “Speed up”
From extension version 13.30 onward, MetaMask pops up a “Transaction submitted” notification once you send. Clicking that notification brings up the transaction detail view, and “Speed up” is there for as long as the transaction stays pending.
Under the hood, it rebroadcasts your transaction with the identical nonce and more gas. You won’t be charged twice. Only one version can confirm, though you’ll pay a higher gas bill than the first attempt would have.
Step 4. Changed your mind? Use “Cancel”
Go back to that detail view and pick “Cancel” if you’d rather the transfer never happen. MetaMask can only try this while the network still sees the original as pending.
Timing is the catch here. Should the original get confirmed first, the money has moved, and your cancel does nothing.
Step 5. Switch off Smart Transactions before doing it by hand
Sometimes the buttons won’t shift it. For the manual route in the extension, click the menu at the top right, head to Settings > Transactions and flip the Smart Transactions toggle off.
MetaMask wants that done before you edit a nonce on Ethereum Mainnet, Base, Arbitrum or BNB Smart Chain. Remember to flip it back on after the stuck transaction clears.
Step 6. Send yourself 0 ETH using the stuck nonce
Begin a send of 0 ETH with your own address as the recipient, then hit “Next.” On the review screen, switch on “Show advanced details,” type the stuck nonce into “Custom nonce,” and press “Confirm.”
Mobile is slightly different. Go to Settings > Advanced and enable “Customize transaction nonce”; after that, tap “Next,” tap “Edit” by the nonce, use the plus and minus buttons to set it, and tap “Save.”
Don’t confirm until the gas is right. The gas limit should match the original or sit a touch above it, while the priority fee needs to go up by 10% or more and the max fee by 30% or more. MetaMask’s own numbers make it concrete: a 30 Gwei priority fee turns into 33-35 Gwei, and a 150 Gwei max fee turns into roughly 200 Gwei.
If you forget to change the nonce, you’ve made things worse. According to Etherscan, you just end up with a second transaction sitting at pending next to the first.
Step 7. Deal with the oldest one first
Got a queue of pending sends? Begin with the lowest nonce and move upward, because MetaMask won’t let you cancel nonce 10 while nonce 9 is still waiting.
Step 8. Look for “Dropped & Replaced” on Etherscan
Don’t panic if the wallet briefly shows two pending entries. Track the newer hash on Etherscan.
Once it’s confirmed, the old hash gets labelled “Dropped & Replaced.” That label just means another transaction carrying the same nonce was confirmed in its place.
What a speed-up or cancel costs, and the fee rules
You’ll pay gas either way. Speeding up and cancelling are both ordinary transactions as far as the network cares, and the new one has to outbid the old by a minimum margin or nodes simply won’t take it. I checked every figure below in September 2026.
| What the rule covers | The number (checked September 2026) |
|---|---|
| How much MetaMask says to raise the priority fee | 10% or more above the original |
| How much MetaMask says to raise the max fee | 30% or more above the original |
| Gas limit on the replacement | The same as before, or a little higher |
| Geth’s built-in price bump for replacing a transaction | 10 percent by default |
| Gas used by a simple ETH send, a 0 ETH cancel included | 21,000 units |
| Biggest jump the base fee can make from one block to the next | 12.5% per block |
| How long Geth holds a transaction that can’t execute yet | 3 hours by default |
| What 1 gwei is worth in ETH | 0.000000001 ETH |
For a live number, open the Etherscan Gas Tracker. It gives Standard, Fast and Rapid prices in gwei, broken into base and priority fee, which makes it easy to set a replacement fee that clears today’s base fee.
How long until a stuck transaction clears?
Usually, not long. Ethereum ticks along in 12-second slots, with 32 of them making up an epoch of roughly 6.4 minutes, and Etherscan says that on a normal day transactions tend to confirm within seconds.
Busy days are another story. When volume gets extremely high, a cheap transaction can hang around for hours or even days.
Your replacement fights for block space on price like every other transaction out there. I’d set its fee in line with what the Gas Tracker shows rather than guessing low again.
Once a block picks it up, that block goes on to be justified and then finalized. For an everyday transfer, though, the first confirmation already tells you which of your two transactions made it.
When the fix doesn’t work: common problems
- If your later sends are all waiting behind the first, sort out the lowest pending nonce and the others can go through after it.
- A replacement that nodes keep ignoring probably didn’t raise the fees enough, so go past MetaMask’s 10% priority fee and 30% max fee margins.
- No nonce field in sight? Switch Smart Transactions off in Settings > Transactions, then enable “Show advanced details” on the review screen.
- Sometimes the original beats your replacement to a block. Etherscan says you’ll then have two confirmed transactions, so look up both hashes before sending anything else.
- When MetaMask lists a pending transaction that Etherscan has never heard of, that’s the one case for “Delete activity and nonce data” under Settings > Developer tools (or “Reset account” on mobile), ideally after MetaMask Support suggests it.
- A nonce that doesn’t line up with the explorer can come from the wallet talking to a node that hasn’t fully synced, which Etherscan lists as one cause of wrong nonces.
That reset sounds scarier than it is. It works on the current network only, MetaMask says you will not lose value in your accounts, and all it wipes is the wallet’s own memory of pending transactions, while the blockchain stays exactly as it was.
Staying safe while you fix a stuck transaction
- Type the hash into Etherscan yourself rather than clicking a link a stranger hands you.
- A cancellation should go to your own address, so hold it up against the address your wallet shows.
- On a hardware wallet, read the address, amount and fee on the device’s screen before approving.
- Watch out for address poisoning, a trick where a lookalike address sneaks into your history and gets pasted into your next send.
- Fixing a stuck transaction never requires your seed phrase. Whoever asks for it is after your coins.
- Planning a big transfer later? Send a small test first, and glance at the Gas Tracker so you don’t lowball the fee.
If MetaMask is your daily driver, I think a hardware wallet is worth it here, because every one of those checks then happens on a screen malware can’t reach. My shortlist is in best hardware wallets for MetaMask.
Questions people ask about stuck Ethereum transactions
Is it possible to cancel an Ethereum transaction after it confirms?
No. Confirmation is final, and there’s no undo. You only get the replace-or-cancel option while it’s pending.
Do I pay gas to cancel?
Yes. Cancelling means sending yourself 0 ETH, and that new transaction has to offer more gas than the stuck one to take its place.
By how much should I raise the fee on a replacement?
MetaMask’s guidance is a 10% or bigger increase on the priority fee and 30% or more on the max fee. Geth, for comparison, defaults to a 10 percent price bump.
Where did the Speed up button go?
First check the transaction hasn’t already confirmed. On extension 13.30 or newer, you reach the button through the Transaction submitted notification, and if it still won’t show, the custom nonce route does the same job by hand.
Does resetting MetaMask cancel a pending transaction?
Nope. Delete activity and nonce data only erases MetaMask’s own records on the network you’re on. Nothing changes on-chain, and MetaMask says your balance is safe.
Etherscan says Dropped & Replaced. What happened?
Another transaction from your account, using the same nonce, got confirmed first and took over from the old one.
The short version
Check Etherscan to be sure the transaction is still pending, then try MetaMask’s “Speed up” or “Cancel.” When those don’t do it, send 0 ETH to yourself on the same nonce with the priority fee up at least 10% and the max fee up at least 30%, starting from the oldest nonce. New to moving coins around? Start with how to send crypto to another wallet, and if you’re still choosing a wallet, MetaMask vs Coinbase Wallet lays out the differences.
This article is for general information only and is not financial, legal, or investment advice. Prices and features change; check the vendor’s official page before buying.
