How to burn SPL tokens on Solana, and what burning does

The short answer

To burn SPL tokens on Solana you send the token program a Burn or BurnChecked instruction signed by the token account's owner. It subtracts the amount from your token account and from the mint's total supply in the same step, and there is no instruction that reverses it. You can do it with spl-token burn <TOKEN_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS> <TOKEN_AMOUNT> for the network fee of 5,000 lamports, or with a browser tool such as SOLTidy's Burn Tokens, which charges a flat 0.005 SOL per burn.

What does burning a token on Solana actually do?

A token burn is an instruction of the token program that destroys tokens: it lowers the balance of one token account and the supply field of its mint by the same amount. Nothing moves anywhere. The tokens stop existing, and anything that reads the mint, from wallets to Solscan, sees the lower total.

Both token programs support it. The original SPL Token program (TokenkegQfeZyiNwAJbNbGKPFXCWuBvf9Ss623VQ5DA) and Token-2022 (TokenzQdBNbLqP5VEhdkAS6EPFLC1PHnBqCXEpPxuEb) share the same two burn instructions:

• Burn is instruction 8. It takes the token account, the mint, the authority and a raw amount.
• BurnChecked is instruction 15. It adds the mint's decimals, and the program rejects the transaction with MintDecimalsMismatch if they are wrong. That protects against a client that misreads 1 token as 1,000,000 or the reverse, which is why most tools and the CLI use it.

Before either one runs, the program checks that the account is not frozen, is not a wrapped SOL account, holds at least the amount, and belongs to the mint you passed. If any check fails, the whole transaction fails and nothing is burned. You can read these checks yourself in the SPL Token processor and the Token-2022 processor.

How is a burn different from sending tokens to a dead address or closing the account?

A burn reduces supply; a transfer to a dead address only parks the tokens; closing an account deletes an empty account and returns its rent. They often get mixed up, so here they are side by side:

Action	Instruction	Token balance	Mint supply	Rent	Reversible
Burn	Burn (8)	Goes down by the amount	Goes down by the amount	Account stays open, rent stays locked	No
BurnChecked	BurnChecked (15)	Goes down, decimals verified	Goes down by the amount	Account stays open, rent stays locked	No
Send to incinerator or dead address	Transfer / TransferChecked	Moves to the other account	Unchanged	You usually pay rent for the recipient's new token account	No, unless someone holds the key
Close account	CloseAccount (9)	Must already be zero	Unchanged	Returned to you	Account can be reopened, tokens are not involved
Burn, then close	BurnChecked + CloseAccount	Zero, account removed	Goes down by the amount	Returned to you	No

The incinerator, 1nc1nerator11111111111111111111111111111111, is an address with no known private key that people use as a burn address. Tokens sent there still count toward supply. One detail most guides miss: both token programs skip the authority check on Burn and CloseAccount for token accounts owned by the incinerator or the System Program, so anyone can later burn tokens sitting in such an account, and its rent can only be closed to the incinerator. Until someone does, the supply figure still includes them. How this plays out for liquidity pool tokens, and why screeners treat the two differently, is in burned vs locked liquidity on Solana.

Who can burn SPL tokens?

Only the token account's owner, or a delegate the owner approved, can burn tokens from that account. Holding the mint authority does not give anyone the power to burn tokens in your wallet.

• The owner can burn any amount up to the balance.
• A delegate set with Approve can burn up to its approved delegated_amount. Each burn uses up that allowance, and the delegate is cleared when it reaches zero. If you have approved something you no longer use, revoking token approvals removes that power.
• The mint authority can only create tokens with MintTo. It has no burn power over holders. What the mint and freeze authorities can and cannot do is covered in mint authority vs freeze authority.
• A Token-2022 permanent delegate is the exception. If the mint was created with the permanent delegate extension, that address can burn or transfer tokens from any account of the mint, with no allowance limit. It is worth checking for before you buy a Token-2022 token, which Token-2022 explained for traders walks through.

A frozen account can't be burned from by anyone, owner included. The program returns Account is frozen until the freeze authority thaws it.

What is different about burning Token-2022 tokens?

Token-2022 uses the same Burn and BurnChecked instructions, but several extensions change whether a burn or the close after it succeeds. These are the ones I check for, verified against the Token-2022 program source as of November 2026:

Extension	Effect on burning	Effect on closing afterwards
Transfer fee	Burn works normally	Fails while the account holds withheld fees: "An account can only be closed if its withheld fee balance is zero, harvest fees to the mint and try again"
Permanent delegate	The delegate can burn from any holder's account	No change
Pausable	Fails while paused: "Transferring, minting, and burning is paused on this mint"	No change
Confidential transfer	A standard burn only touches the public balance	Fails until the confidential balance is zero
Non-transferable	The owner can still burn	No change
CPI guard (on the account)	The owner can't burn through another program's CPI, only in a direct instruction	No change

The transfer-fee case is the one people hit most. Harvesting the withheld amount to the mint is permissionless, anyone can do it, and then the account closes normally. The mechanics are in how to set and claim Token-2022 transfer fees, and the other close errors are in how to close Token-2022 accounts.

How do you burn SPL tokens with the spl-token CLI?

The spl-token command line burns tokens for network fees only, and it is the right choice if you already have the Solana CLI set up. The syntax, from the Token-2022 CLI source (clap_app.rs), is:

spl-token burn <TOKEN_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS> <TOKEN_AMOUNT>

1. Find the token account address, not the mint. spl-token accounts -v lists your accounts with their addresses.
2. Run spl-token burn <TOKEN_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS> 1000 to burn 1,000 tokens, or spl-token burn <TOKEN_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS> ALL to burn the whole balance. Amounts are in whole tokens, not raw units.
3. Optionally close the now-empty account to get its rent back with spl-token close --address <TOKEN_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS>. The CLI guide to closing token accounts covers the variants.
4. Check the new supply with spl-token supply <MINT_ADDRESS>.

A few details from the CLI source:

• Token-2022 detection. When online, the CLI reads the account you pass and uses whichever program owns it, so --program-2022 is optional for a burn. The flag forces the Token-2022 program ID and makes the CLI refuse accounts owned by the other program.
• BurnChecked by default. The CLI fetches the mint's decimals and sends BurnChecked. --use-unchecked-instruction switches to plain Burn.
• Other signers. --owner <KEYPAIR> burns from an account owned by a different keypair, and --multisig-signer handles multisig owners.
• ALL needs a connection. The ALL keyword requires online signing, because the CLI has to read the balance.

Can you burn tokens in Phantom, Solflare or Backpack?

You can burn NFTs in all three, but as of November 2026 none of them documents a burn button for fungible tokens. Phantom's help center describes burning Solana collectibles from the item's More menu. Solflare's help center describes burning unwanted NFTs after marking them unverified. Backpack documents a Burn function for regular NFTs. I could not find official documentation for burning a fungible SPL or Token-2022 balance in any of them, so treat third-party tutorials claiming otherwise with care and check your own wallet version.

For fungible tokens, that leaves the CLI or a site that builds the transaction for your wallet to sign. For NFTs, what to burn and what to just hide is in what to do with spam NFTs on Solana.

How does SOLTidy's Burn Tokens tool work?

SOLTidy's Burn Tokens tool builds one transaction with a BurnChecked instruction for the token and amount you pick, plus a flat 0.005 SOL fee transfer, and passes it to your wallet to sign. I built it for the case the wallets leave out: burning a fungible balance without a terminal. This is what the code does:

1. Lists your balances. It reads your SPL Token and Token-2022 accounts, skips empty ones and wrapped SOL, and labels each token from Metaplex metadata or the Token-2022 metadata extension. Token-2022 balances are marked as such.
2. Picks the right program. The BurnChecked instruction is sent to the program that owns your account, with the mint's decimals, so Token-2022 tokens work the same way as classic ones.
3. Shows the numbers. Before you sign you see your balance before and after, your share of the total supply (read from the mint with getTokenSupply), the new total supply and the fee.
4. Optionally closes the account. If the amount equals your full balance and "close" is on, which is the default, a CloseAccount instruction follows the burn in the same transaction and the rent comes back to you.
5. Requires a confirmation. The burn button stays disabled until you tick a box saying the tokens will be permanently destroyed. After it confirms you get a link to the transaction, which works as public proof of the burn.

The fee is the same for one token or a billion. One limit to know: the Burn Tokens tool doesn't harvest Token-2022 withheld fees, so if a transfer-fee account won't close, burn with the close option off and close it afterwards with the closer, which does harvest them.

Should you use Burn Tokens or the Token Account Closer?

Use Burn Tokens to burn a chosen amount of one token, especially as a project reducing supply; use the Token Account Closer to clear many worthless balances and get their rent back. The closer is built for wallet cleanup: on its Tokens tab you can add accounts that still hold tokens, and for each one it adds a BurnChecked of the full balance followed by CloseAccount. It also harvests Token-2022 withheld fees to the mint first, so those accounts close too.

	Burn Tokens	Token Account Closer
Best for	A chosen amount of one token	Full balances of many worthless tokens
Partial burns	Yes, any amount	No, the whole balance
Closes the account	Optional, only for a full burn	Always
Accounts per transaction	One	Up to 12
Harvests Token-2022 withheld fees	No	Yes
SOLTidy fee	Flat 0.005 SOL per burn transaction	5% of the SOL recovered

On the closer, only empty accounts are selected by default, and it shows a red warning whenever you add one with a balance. Burning returns nothing for the tokens themselves, so if a token still has a market, selling dust for SOL pays you something first. LP tokens have their own considerations, covered in how to burn LP tokens on Raydium and handled by the Burn LP Tokens tool. NFTs return more rent when their metadata accounts close too, which is what the NFT Burner does.

What does burning tokens cost?

Burning costs the Solana network fee of 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature, plus any priority fee, and SOLTidy's tools add their own fee on top. Here is the full picture:

Method	Network fee	Tool fee	Rent back if you close
spl-token burn + spl-token close	0.000005 SOL per transaction	None	Full deposit
SOLTidy Burn Tokens	0.000005 SOL	0.005 SOL per burn transaction	Full deposit, same transaction
SOLTidy Token Account Closer	0.000005 SOL per batch	5% of the SOL recovered	Deposit minus 5%

The rent deposit for a standard 165-byte SPL token account is 0.00148844 SOL at today's rate, or 0.00203928 SOL if it was opened before Solana lowered rent. Token-2022 accounts with extensions are larger and hold a little more. For a one-off burn by someone comfortable in a terminal, the CLI is cheapest and entirely adequate.

How do projects burn supply, and how do explorers show it?

A project burns supply by having the wallet that holds the tokens, usually a treasury or team wallet, burn them with the same instruction anyone else uses. There is no special project-level burn: the team holds tokens in a token account like everyone else.

The new total shows up as soon as the transaction confirms, because explorers such as Solscan and SolanaFM read total supply straight from the mint account's supply field. The transaction contains a visible Burn or BurnChecked instruction on the mint, which anyone can check with a transaction decoder. Price aggregators that publish circulating supply may lag behind.

Two things make a supply burn mean something. First, it has to be a real burn, not a transfer to a dead address, for the reasons in the table above. Second, the mint authority should be revoked, because a mint that can still issue new tokens can undo any burn with a fresh MintTo. Revoking the mint authority is the usual companion step, and how to launch a Solana token covers where it fits in a launch.

Bottom line

Burning an SPL token is the token program's Burn or BurnChecked instruction: it lowers your balance and the mint's supply together, it can't be undone, and only the owner, an approved delegate or a Token-2022 permanent delegate can do it. Sending tokens to the incinerator is a transfer and leaves supply unchanged. If you have the CLI, spl-token burn <TOKEN_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS> <TOKEN_AMOUNT> does the job for network fees only. If you'd rather do it in the browser, Burn Tokens burns any amount of an SPL or Token-2022 token for a flat 0.005 SOL and can close the emptied account in the same transaction, and the Token Account Closer burns and closes many worthless balances at once.