Stellar Minimum Balance: 0.5 XLM per Entry, 1 XLM per Account

A Stellar account must hold a minimum balance of lumens that depends on how many entries it owns. The rule is (2 + number of subentries) × base reserve, and the base reserve is 0.5 XLM — confirmed by the latest ledger header on 21 October 2026, which reports base_reserve_in_stroops = 5,000,000. A brand-new account therefore needs at least 1 XLM, and each trustline, open offer, extra signer or data entry locks another 0.5 XLM. Lumens below that line cannot be sent. Transaction fees, by contrast, are tiny: 100 stroops, or 0.00001 XLM, per operation.

The formula and what counts as a subentry

minimum balance = (2 + subentries + sponsoring − sponsored) × 0.5 XLM
spendable = balance − minimum balance − fees for pending offers

Subentries are everything an account owns on the ledger besides itself:

• Trustlines — required to hold any asset other than XLM, such as USDC on Stellar or a local anchor's token. One trustline per asset.
• Offers on the Stellar decentralised exchange, each open order counts.
• Additional signers, for multisig setups.
• Data entries — small key-value pairs some apps store on accounts.

Sponsorship, introduced in 2020 with CAP-33, lets another account pay the reserve for your entries. Wallets that onboard users “for free” often sponsor the first XLM and trustlines; if the sponsor revokes, you need your own XLM.

The Stellar minimum balance calculator adds up any combination, including sponsored entries.

Creating a new account

A Stellar address (a G… public key) does not exist on the network until someone funds it with a Create Account operation. That operation must send at least the 1 XLM minimum. Sending a regular payment to an unfunded address fails with “op_no_destination”. When you withdraw XLM from an exchange to a newly generated address, the exchange's payment creates the account automatically if the amount is at least 1 XLM; smaller amounts fail. The destination does not exist guide covers that error in detail.

Fees: 100 stroops per operation

One XLM is 10,000,000 stroops. The base fee is 100 stroops per operation, so a simple payment costs 0.00001 XLM. A transaction can bundle up to 100 operations and pays the fee for each. When the network is congested, a fee auction starts and transactions offering more than the base fee go first; the fee you set is a maximum, and you pay the lowest fee needed to be included. Fees are not given to validators — they go into a fee pool.

Getting locked lumens back

1. Cancel open offers you no longer need: each frees 0.5 XLM.
2. Remove trustlines to assets you have sold. A trustline can be removed only when its balance is zero and it has no open offers.
3. Remove unused data entries and extra signers.
4. To recover the last 1 XLM, merge the account into another one with an Account Merge operation. It sends the entire balance to the destination and deletes the source account. Use your own account as the destination, not an exchange deposit address — many exchanges do not credit merges.

Memo and minimum balance: two separate issues

Exchanges and swap services receive XLM for many users on a single address and identify deposits by the memo. When you send XLM to a swap on KOT.CASH, the order page shows a deposit address and a memo next to it; both must be copied. A missing memo is the most common way XLM deposits go astray. The minimum balance, on the other hand, is only about your own account. The memo and tag checker shows every coin and network that uses a memo.

XLM on KOT.CASH

The liquidity provider accepts XLM on the Stellar network and credits it after one ledger — Stellar closes a ledger roughly every five to six seconds. The minimum for XLM to USDT is about 168 XLM at the moment. When you sell XLM, remember that you can only send the spendable part: if your wallet holds 200 XLM and two trustlines, at most 198 XLM minus the fee can leave the account. For payouts into XLM, receive to an account that is already funded or make sure the amount is above 1 XLM.

A quick check before selling XLM

Open your wallet's account details and count the trustlines and open offers; many wallets also display the reserved amount directly. Multiply the subentries by 0.5 and add 1 — that is the part that cannot leave. If you want to sell everything, decide first whether you will keep the account. Keeping it means leaving the minimum. Closing it means removing trustlines and offers and then merging into an account you control. Merging straight into a swap or exchange deposit address is risky because the operation is not an ordinary payment and many services do not credit it even with the right memo.