What you can't reclaim
Guide·3 min read·4 of 5
Most guides tell you what a tool does. Fewer tell you what it doesn't. Here's what won't come back.
Most guides tell you what a tool does. Fewer tell you what it doesn't. Here's what won't come back, no matter which tool you use.
Accounts with a balance, even a tiny one
A token account must be completely empty to close. A balance of 0.000001 tokens blocks it. Dust like this is common, especially from failed swaps or spam airdrops.
To close the account, you first have to get rid of the balance. That means either transferring it away or burning it. Burning is permanent.
Accounts where close authority was delegated
Normally the account owner can close it. But close authority can be assigned to another address. If that happened, you can't close the account yourself, even though it's associated with your wallet.
This is rare, but it exists.
Compressed NFTs
Compressed NFTs (cNFTs) don't hold a rent deposit the way standard NFTs do. They live in a Merkle tree, not in individual accounts. Burning them returns little or nothing.
If a tool implies you'll recover meaningful SOL from cNFTs, be skeptical.
Accounts an app is using
Some DeFi protocols use token accounts as escrow or as temporary holding accounts for open positions. Closing one of these can break a withdrawal later.
If you have open positions in a protocol, be careful about closing accounts you don't recognize.
Metadata accounts
An NFT creates more than one account. The token account holds the rent, but there's also a metadata account. Most cleaners close the token account only, which returns about 0.002 SOL. Reclaiming metadata rent requires a different instruction and not every tool does it.
This is why estimates of “how much you get back per NFT” vary between tools. Check what a tool actually closes.