Rabby transaction stuck pending: speed up, cancel or replace it

Quick steps

1. Find the pending transaction. Open Rabby and click the pending indicator, or open Signature Record from the menu.
2. Fix the oldest one first. Act on the earliest pending transaction. Later ones wait for it and cannot be sped up or cancelled first.
3. Speed up. Choose Speed up, select a higher gas setting than the original and sign.
4. Or cancel. Choose Cancel, then On-chain Cancel with a higher gas price, or Quick Cancel if it has not been broadcast.
5. Replace manually if needed. For a transaction sent from another wallet, start a Send, enter the stuck nonce in the gas options, raise the fee and sign.
6. Check the RPC. If transactions never appear on the explorer, disable any custom RPC and re-broadcast.

Every transaction from an EVM address carries a number called a nonce: 0 for your first transaction on a chain, then 1, 2, 3 and so on. The network processes them strictly in order. If nonce 14 is stuck, 15 and 16 wait behind it, even if they paid more. This is general EVM behaviour, not a Rabby bug.

To unstick it, you send a new transaction with the same nonce and a higher fee. Validators pick the better-paying one, and the other is dropped. Rabby's own tooltip puts it plainly: Only one transaction will be completed, and it is almost always the one with the highest gas price (Rabby extension source, v0.94.13, October 2026).

Why transactions get stuck

• Gas price too low. Network fees rose after you sent, or you picked a slow setting.
• An earlier transaction is pending. Rabby will not let you speed up or cancel a later one first; it shows Cannot speed up or cancel: Not the first pending txn.
• A skipped nonce. If a transaction with a higher nonce was sent (for example from another wallet using the same address), there can be a gap.
• The node dropped it. The transaction never reached enough nodes, often because of an RPC problem.
• Gas-saving mode. Rabby has a mode that waits for lower fees before broadcasting. Such transactions show Pending: to be broadcasted with a Broadcast now button. If you chose this, nothing is wrong; press the button if you no longer want to wait.

Speed up a transaction

Open Rabby and click the pending indicator on the home screen, or open Signature Record from the menu. Find the pending transaction and choose Speed up (NGRAVE's guide shows it as a lightning icon). Rabby prepares the same transaction with the same nonce. Choose a higher gas setting than the original, leave everything else as it is, and sign. The record then shows an initial transaction and a speed-up transaction; only one will complete.

Cancel a transaction

Choose Cancel on the pending transaction. Rabby offers up to three options (Rabby extension source, October 2026):

Treat Clear Pending Locally with care. Rabby warns: The removed transaction may still be confirmed on-chain unless it is replaced. Use it when a transaction is clearly gone (a block explorer does not know it) or already replaced from another wallet, not as a way to cancel a swap you regret. Rabby itself suggests this option when a transaction has been pending for over three minutes and looks stuck locally.

A cancel is a race: if the original confirms first, the cancel fails and you pay only its gas. On fast layer-2 networks a pending transaction usually confirms before you can act.

Replace it manually with a custom nonce

If the stuck transaction was sent from another wallet that uses the same address, it may not appear in Rabby. You can still replace it (NGRAVE support, 2026; BitBox support, 2026):

1. Look up the stuck transaction on a block explorer for that chain and note its nonce.
2. In Rabby, start a Send from the same address on the same chain. To speed it up, send the same amount to the same recipient; to cancel, send 0 to your own address.
3. On the signing screen, open the gas options (More) and enter the stuck transaction's number in the Nonce field.
4. Pick a higher gas setting than the stuck one and sign.

If you enter a nonce that is too high, Rabby reports Nonce too high. Please adjust the nonce and try again. A nonce lower than the next expected one has already been used and cannot be replaced.

Errors you may see

When you resend, nodes can return standard EVM errors. replacement transaction underpriced means your new fee is not high enough over the original; raise it further. nonce too low means the original already confirmed, so check the explorer. insufficient funds for gas means the address does not hold enough of the chain's native token; Rabby's own wording is Gas balance is not enough for transaction. The Gas Account can pay gas from a stablecoin balance on supported chains, and our gas cost estimator helps you judge a sensible fee.

RPC problems

If you set a custom RPC for the chain (Settings, then Modify RPC URL) and it is down or out of sync, your transactions may never reach the network. Rabby shows Custom RPC Error and offers Disable Custom RPC to fall back to its official RPC. Rabby can also show how many RPC nodes have seen a pending transaction and offers Re-broadcast. More in adding a custom network or RPC.

Never pay a stranger to "unstick" a transaction, and never share your seed phrase to have one "fixed". Anything that can be done is done from your own wallet.

Frequently asked questions