What is rent on Solana? A plain-English explanation

Short answer: Rent is a refundable deposit proportional to an account’s size. Accounts that hold at least the rent-exempt minimum live forever; closing one returns the deposit.

A deposit, not a fee

Storing data on thousands of validators has a cost. Solana charges it as a deposit: every account must hold a minimum balance based on its size in bytes. It isn’t spent — it’s returned when the account is closed.

How it’s calculated

Minimum balance = (account size + 128 bytes of overhead) × the rent rate × 2 years. A standard token account is 165 bytes. Never hardcode the number: since SIMD-0437 the rate is changing, so tools like thedark ask the network for the current value.

Where your rent goes

Every token you’ve held, every NFT, every DeFi position opens accounts that hold rent. Token accounts are the easiest to recover because they can be closed by you alone once empty.