Tokens in your Solana wallet sit in token accounts, and each token account holds a SOL deposit. There are two ways to get that deposit back: close the account, or burn what's in it and then close it. Only one of them destroys anything, and which one you need comes down to a single question: is the account empty?
Should you burn or close a Solana token account?
Close it if it's empty: closing returns the account's SOL deposit and destroys nothing. Burn only when it still holds tokens you're done with, since Solana won't close an account with a balance. The burn permanently destroys those tokens; closing the emptied account then returns its deposit.
Through Sol Incinerator, closing is by far the more common of the two: empty-account closes outnumber token-account burns more than four to one, with 196,058,091 closes against 41,946,826 token accounts burned between August 2022 and October 6, 2026, according to our closure data and burn statistics.
What does each one do on-chain?
Closing runs the token program's close instruction, which only works when the token balance is zero. It sends every lamport in the account to the address named in the transaction (your wallet, in a cleanup) and deletes the account. The token itself isn't touched: its mint, its supply and everyone else's balances stay as they were. Any approval you'd granted on that account disappears with it, since the delegate is stored on the account.
Burning runs the burn instruction. It subtracts tokens from your account and from the mint's total supply, so those tokens stop existing. A burn moves no SOL by itself; the deposit comes from closing the account the burn just emptied. When you burn a token's whole balance, Sol Incinerator closes the account in the same transaction, so the deposit comes back with the burn.
Wrapped SOL is the exception to both rules. You can't burn it, and closing a wSOL account unwraps it, so the wrapped balance comes back along with the deposit. Our wrapped SOL guide covers it.
Burning vs closing at a glance
| Close an empty account | Burn, then close | |
|---|---|---|
| Works when | The token balance is zero | The account holds tokens you don't want |
| What happens to the tokens | Nothing; there are none left | Destroyed, and the token's total supply drops |
| SOL back, before fees | The account's deposit | The same deposit for a token; more for standard and programmable NFTs |
| Our fee | 2% base, with a per-account minimum | Worked out the same way for a token account; standard and programmable NFT burns have their own minimums |
| Other costs | Solana's network fee | Solana's network fee, plus whatever the tokens could have sold for |
| Can you undo it? | Yes, by reopening the account with a new deposit | No |
| Sol Incinerator mode | Fun Mode (default) or Pro Mode | Pro Mode; LP tokens need Dev mode |
When is closing alone enough?
When you've sold, swapped or sent your whole balance, the account can stay behind, empty, still holding its deposit. Closing it is all it takes, and nothing you own is touched. That's what Sol Incinerator's default Fun Mode does: it finds your empty accounts, shows what they hold, and closes the ones you select. Our account cleanup guide walks through it step by step and covers accounts that won't close.
Watch for one thing: a token showing $0 isn't necessarily empty. A dust balance, or a token with no price feed, displays as zero dollars but still counts as a balance, and Solana won't close the account. That's a sell-or-burn decision.
When do you have to burn first?
Burn when the account still holds tokens and you've decided you don't want them:
- Dead memecoins and spam tokens that nobody will buy.
- Non-transferable tokens, a Token-2022 feature. You can't sell or send them, so burning is the only way to empty the account.
- NFTs from collections with no bids (more on NFTs below).
If a token still has a market, swap it instead. You keep the sale value, and the account is then empty and can close normally. Sending tokens to Solana's incinerator address isn't a shortcut either: it strands them without lowering the supply, as our burn address guide explains. And a frozen account can't be burned until whoever holds the token's freeze authority thaws it.
What do you get back, and what does it cost?
A token account returns the same deposit whether you close it or burn and close it. Burning a fungible token doesn't add any SOL beyond that; it only clears the balance that was blocking the close. The deposit's size depends on when the account was opened, because Solana cut its rent rate in two steps in September 2026. A standard SPL token account holds 0.00203928 SOL if it was opened before the cuts and its surplus hasn't been withdrawn, and 0.00148844 SOL if opened at today's rate (checked October 7, 2026). Accounts opened between the two cuts hold something in between.
You keep most of that deposit with our 2% base fee, and for a token account the fee is worked out the same way for a close as for a burn. A per-account minimum raises the effective rate on accounts opened since the cuts and on Token-2022 accounts, whose minimum is higher. Solana's network fee is separate. If your transaction qualifies, Gasless Pay covers it automatically and takes its charge from the SOL coming back. Before you approve anything, the preview shows what's expected to reach your wallet.
What can't be undone?
A close is easy to reverse. It deletes the account, not the token, so you can open a new one with our Reopen Token Account tool using the token's mint address, or a sender's transaction can create it when they send you that token. Either way, the new account needs a fresh deposit at the current rate, which you can get back again the next time you close it. Our guide to reopening a token account covers the details.
A burn is permanent. The tokens are gone, the mint's supply stays lower, and nobody can restore them, including us. Burning an NFT destroys the NFT itself, so it's gone from the chain, not just hidden from your wallet.
Fun Mode or Pro Mode?
Sol Incinerator keeps burning out of its default mode, so a cleanup can't destroy anything by accident.
- Fun Mode (the default) closes empty accounts and withdraws eligible surplus deposits from accounts you keep. It can't burn.
- Pro Mode adds burning for tokens, NFTs, editions, compressed NFTs, Core assets and .sol domains. Assets above a USD value threshold are hidden by default, and large burns ask for an extra confirmation. LP tokens have their own tab in Dev mode.
Bigger selections can take more than one wallet approval in either mode.
Keeping a token but still want something back? Accounts opened before the September cuts hold more than today's required reserve, and Fun Mode can withdraw the surplus while the account and its tokens stay put. On a standard account from before the cuts, that's up to 0.00055084 SOL before fees. Our guide to reclaiming excess SOL without closing accounts explains which accounts qualify.
How are Token-2022 accounts different?
The decision is the same: close the empty ones, burn balances you don't want. A few details change:
- The usual 170-byte Token-2022 account holds a little more:
0.00207408 SOLfrom before the cuts,0.00151384 SOLat today's rate. Extensions that store extra data raise it. - An empty account that still holds withheld transfer fees can't close until those fees are harvested to the mint, which anyone is allowed to do.
- If the token's pause authority has paused it, burns fail until it's unpaused.
Our SPL Token vs Token-2022 guide explains extensions and how to tell which program a token uses.
Why do standard NFT burns return more?
You can't close an NFT's token account on its own, because the NFT is still in it. Getting SOL back from an NFT you don't want means burning it, and for a standard or programmable NFT, that's where burning returns more than a close. A standard NFT burn returns SOL from its token account, metadata account and edition account together, and a programmable NFT adds a token record, so several deposits come back at once.
Two caveats. Since Solana's September 2026 rent cuts, the metadata account gives back only the deposit Solana requires today, with the rest staying in the burned account, so older NFTs return less than they used to. And compressed NFTs have no accounts of their own, so burning one returns 0 SOL. Our NFT burn guide has the averages for each NFT standard. If you're keeping an NFT, Fun Mode may still be able to withdraw surplus from its token account; see reclaiming SOL from an NFT without burning it.
Start with the empty accounts
Connect your wallet and let Fun Mode show you what your empty accounts hold. Closing them gets SOL back without touching anything you own. Then go through what's left and decide, token by token, whether anything is worth burning.
Sol Incinerator
Close empty token accounts for their SOL in Fun Mode, then burn only what you're done with in Pro Mode.