A token named after an airdrop you never entered, an NFT saying you've won a prize, a coin you've never heard of: anyone can send these to a Solana address, and they arrive without asking. They can't do anything on their own. Burning clears them out for good, and a spam token's account gives you back the SOL deposit it holds.
What should you do with spam tokens in your wallet?
Don't open a spam token's links or try to sell it. Leaving it alone or hiding it does no harm, and burning removes it for good. Burning a spam token and closing its account returns the account's SOL deposit, minus fees; a compressed spam NFT returns nothing.
| Choice | What changes | SOL back | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leave it | Nothing | None; any deposit stays in the account | Anything you can't identify yet |
| Hide it | Only what your wallet app shows | None | Frozen tokens, or junk you just want out of sight |
| Burn it | The token is destroyed and its token account, if it has one, is closed | The account's deposit, minus fees; nothing for compressed NFTs | Spam you've identified and want gone |
Hiding is the quick fix. Phantom hides tokens that look like spam on its own, and reporting one as spam hides it too. Solflare's FAQ, asked how to delete scam NFTs, suggests either burning them with sol-incinerator.com or hiding them in the Solflare app (both checked October 7, 2026).
Hiding is still only a setting inside your wallet app. The token stays on-chain, explorers still list it and our scan still finds it. Hidden isn't the same as harmless, either: Phantom notes that unhiding a token doesn't make it safe or verified.
Why shouldn't you click, sell or swap a spam token?
The token itself is inert. Receiving it doesn't expose your recovery phrase, connect your wallet to anything or approve anyone to move your assets; Does Receiving a Scam Token Give It Access to Your Wallet? goes through that in detail.
The risk is the next step. Spam is advertising: its name, image or description points you to a site, and some spam tokens use a website address as their name. That site asks you to connect and sign a transaction that can move your assets or hand someone else authority over them. Phantom's advice is blunt: don't click links in token names or NFT descriptions, and don't try to swap, sell or send unknown tokens.
Selling is tempting when a spam token shows a dollar value. That price comes from third-party data and can be missing or wrong, and a swap is one more transaction you'd sign for a token you know nothing about.
Already clicked through or signed something? Burning the token won't undo that. Start with what to do after connecting to a scam site.
What do you get back for burning spam?
Spam coins sit in ordinary token accounts, and each account holds a refundable SOL deposit. The sender paid that deposit when they opened the account in your name, but you're its owner, so closing it pays the deposit to you.
The amount depends on when the account was opened, because Solana cut its rent rate twice in September 2026:
| Spam you burn | What comes back (before fees) |
|---|---|
| SPL token | 0.00148844 SOL if its account was opened at the current rate (checked October 7, 2026), 0.00203928 SOL if opened before the September cuts |
| Token-2022 token | 0.00151384 SOL or 0.00207408 SOL for the usual 170-byte account; more when extensions add data |
| Standard NFT, not compressed | More than a token account, because SOL also comes back from its metadata and edition accounts; see the NFT burn guide |
| Compressed NFT | 0 SOL |
An account opened between the two cuts holds an amount in between. Most of each deposit is yours: we take a 2% base fee from what a burn returns. Token accounts also carry a minimum fee, set higher for Token-2022, so our share is larger on accounts opened since the cuts and on Token-2022 accounts. Before you approve, the preview shows what's expected to land in your wallet.
Spam NFT airdrops are usually compressed, because compressed NFTs are cheap to mint in bulk. They live in a shared on-chain tree instead of their own accounts, so there's no deposit to give back (here's why). We charge no service fee on compressed NFT burns; you pay only Solana's network fee. Gasless Pay takes its charge from the SOL a burn returns, so it can't cover compressed NFT burns; keep a little SOL in your wallet for their network fee. People clear them out anyway. Compressed NFTs are the most-burned NFT type in our burn statistics: 9,731,020 burned through Sol Incinerator from June 2023 to October 6, 2026, and not one returned SOL.
Is it safe to burn a scam token?
Burning is something you do to your own account, and nothing happens until you approve it in your wallet. The scan that lists your assets is read-only.
For a spam coin, the burn uses the token program's own burn instruction on your account, then closes the account. Nothing goes to the sender, none of their links are opened, and no code they wrote runs. A Token-2022 transfer hook, which lets a creator attach their own program to a token, runs on transfers such as a swap, never on a burn.
Some Token-2022 tokens carry a permanent delegate, an address the creator sets that can move or burn that token from any holder's account. You can't revoke it, but it covers only that one token, not your SOL or anything else you hold. You can still burn the token yourself, and Sol Incinerator burns it like any other.
The real risk is burning something you meant to keep. An unfamiliar token isn't automatically spam: it could be an LP position, a staking receipt or an allowlist token from something you used once.
Burns are permanent. Nobody can restore a burned token, including us. If you can't say what something is, leave it or hide it.
How do you remove spam with Sol Incinerator?
- Connect your wallet at Sol Incinerator. The scan reads your accounts from the chain, so spam you've hidden in your wallet app still shows up here.
- Switch to Pro Mode with the toggle in the footer. Fun Mode, the default, closes empty accounts and withdraws surplus deposits, but it can't burn anything.
- Open the right tab. Spam coins are under Tokens, standard spam NFTs under NFTs and compressed ones under cNFTs, up to 30 at a time. Anything with missing metadata, or an image from a host flagged as unsafe, goes to the Unknown tab, which appears only in Dev mode and asks you to accept a warning before it lists anything.
- Mind the value slider. Pro Mode hides anything worth more than the slider's value, so priced assets stay out of a big selection. Prices come from third parties and can be wrong. If a spam token you expected is missing, it may be priced above the slider, or sitting in Unknown.
- Select what you're sure about, check the preview and approve. Large burns ask for an extra confirmation, and bigger selections can take more than one approval.
Out of SOL? Gasless Pay is automatic! Select your spam tokens, and we'll cover the upfront network fee when the burn qualifies, taking our charge from the SOL it returns.
Burning with Phantom? Phantom can block a whole approval that burns a token it has flagged as a scam. When we spot tokens likely to be on that list, such as one with a website address or claim wording in its name, we move the transactions that burn them into a final approval of their own, so everything else is approved and sent first.
Why won't a spam token burn?
If a token shows as Frozen, you can't select it. Its account has been frozen, and a frozen account can't be burned or transferred until the token's freeze authority thaws it, which you can't force. Hide it in your wallet instead; its deposit stays in the account. Our guide to frozen and stuck tokens covers the other cases.
If it shows as Unburnable, another address holds the account's close authority, so only that address can close it and we can't burn it either. Hide it instead.
Can you stop spam from arriving?
No. Anyone can send a token or NFT to any Solana address, and there's nothing on-chain that refuses an incoming transfer. If you mint or claim airdrops often, doing it from a separate burner wallet keeps those interactions away from your main holdings.
Sol Incinerator
Connect your wallet, burn the spam you've identified and get back the SOL deposits its accounts hold.