{"id":634,"date":"2026-07-15T13:21:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T13:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nownodes.io\/blog\/?p=634"},"modified":"2026-07-15T13:21:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T13:21:58","slug":"monero-how-to-check-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nownodes.io\/blog\/monero-xmr-how-to-check-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Check Your Monero (XMR) Wallet Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With most cryptocurrencies, checking a balance is trivial: paste an address into a block explorer and the number appears. Monero doesn’t work that way. Because the protocol doesn’t expose public address balances, you can’t read an XMR balance from an address alone \u2014 you need the wallet that holds the keys, or a view key that someone has shared with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That single difference trips up a lot of newcomers, and it’s why “why doesn’t my Monero balance show up?” is such a common question. This guide covers every way to check your Monero wallet balance \u2014 from the one-click method inside your wallet to the developer approach through a node \u2014 plus the one caveat behind almost every “wrong balance” complaint.<\/p>\n\n\n

Why Checking a Monero Balance Works Differently<\/h2>\n\n\n

Monero is private by default. On transparent chains like Bitcoin or Ethereum, every address and its balance sit in the open \u2014 exactly what block explorers read. Monero uses stealth addresses, hidden amounts (RingCT), and ring signatures to break those links, so an outside observer sees nothing about what your address holds or moves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Monero Project describes the design as “private, optionally transparent.” As its Moneropedia<\/a> puts it, Monero “features an opaque blockchain (with an explicit allowance system called the view key), in sharp contrast with transparent blockchains.” Here’s the practical upshot: privacy is the default, and visibility is something you switch on deliberately with the right key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, sender privacy comes from ring signatures with a ring size of 16 \u2014 one real input among 15 decoys \u2014 fixed in the August 2022 upgrade<\/a>. A planned change called FCMP++<\/strong> (Full-Chain Membership Proofs) would replace rings entirely, proving a spent output belongs to all eligible outputs on the chain rather than a small ring. As of mid-2026 it’s still in development and auditing with no confirmed mainnet date, so ring signatures remain in use \u2014 the current client release is 0.18.5.0 ‘Fluorine Fermi’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People transact with Monero, which is why balance-checking matters. “It shouldn’t be surprising that Monero is often used for payments rather than being held like Bitcoin as an investment,” said Justin Ehrenhofer, vice president of operations at Cake Wallet, in an April 13, 2023 CoinDesk interview, “Privacy-Preserving Payments Shouldn’t Be ‘Niche’, Monero Contributor Justin Ehrenhofer Says.”<\/a> When money moves, you need a reliable way to confirm what’s arrived and what’s left.<\/p>\n\n\n

The Dual-Key System That Controls What You Can See<\/h3>\n\n\n

Every Monero account is built on two private keys, and understanding the split is the foundation for everything below. Get this one distinction right and the rest of the methods fall into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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View key vs. spend key:<\/strong> The private spend key<\/strong> authorizes spending \u2014 it gives full control of your funds and should never be shared. The private view key<\/strong> only reveals incoming<\/em> transactions to your address. Sharing it can’t move a single coin, but it does expose your incoming activity, so treat it as privacy-sensitive.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The public halves of these keys are encoded into the address you hand out \u2014 a primary address starting with 4<\/code>, or a recommended subaddress starting with 8<\/code>. This is what makes an XMR wallet check different from other coins: seeing a balance is a permission you grant, not a default anyone can access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a subtlety here that matters more than any other point in this guide. A view key shows money coming in<\/em>, but on today’s protocol it cannot reliably see money going out<\/em> \u2014 Monero currently offers only incoming view keys. Its own documentation is blunt about it: “the balance of a Monero address as shown via a viewkey should not be relied upon.” We’ll return to why that happens \u2014 and how to fix it \u2014 in the view-key section.<\/p>\n\n\n

Method 1: Check the Balance Inside Your Wallet (Easiest)<\/h2>\n\n\n

The simplest way to check your Monero balance is to open the wallet that holds your keys and let it scan the blockchain for you. The wallet uses your private view key to find incoming outputs and your spend key material to account for what you’ve sent, then displays the total \u2014 no commands or explorers required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’ll usually see two numbers: balance<\/strong> and unlocked balance<\/strong>. A standard received output becomes spendable after 10 confirmations \u2014 roughly 20 minutes at the two-minute block time \u2014 so freshly received funds read as locked until then. (Mining, or coinbase, outputs differ: they mature after 60 confirmations.) A payment showing as locked isn’t missing; it’s maturing.<\/p>\n\n\n

Desktop: GUI and CLI Wallets<\/h3>\n\n\n

The official Monero GUI wallet shows your balance on the main screen the moment it finishes syncing. If the figure looks stale, trigger a manual refresh and confirm the wallet is connected to a working node.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you prefer the command line, the official CLI wallet<\/a> is just as quick. Type balance<\/code> to print your total and unlocked amounts, refresh<\/code> to pull the latest blocks, and \u2014 with the caution noted later \u2014 rescan_bc<\/code> to rescan the chain when something looks off. Those first two commands resolve most everyday “my balance is wrong” moments on desktop.<\/p>\n\n\n

Mobile and Lightweight Wallets<\/h3>\n\n\n

On mobile, open-source options like Cake Wallet and Monero.com show your balance on the home screen as soon as the app syncs. Feather is a popular lightweight desktop choice that does the same without storing the full blockchain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One clarification about these wallets: they scan on your own device using your keys and only pull blockchain data from a remote node \u2014 they do not<\/strong> hand your private view key to that node. That differs from remote-synchronization light wallets (MyMonero-style servers), which do send your view information to a scanning server.<\/p>\n\n\n

Method 2: View Your Balance With a View Key (Read-Only)<\/h2>\n\n\n

Sometimes you want to view a Monero wallet balance without<\/em> the ability to spend from it. An accountant auditing a business wallet, a treasurer watching a donation address, or anyone proving funds to a third party all need visibility, not control. This is exactly what the view key was built for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You create a view-only wallet<\/strong> by restoring from your primary address plus your private view key, leaving the spend key blank. In the CLI, that’s monero-wallet-cli --generate-from-view-key<\/code>; the GUI offers the same through its restore flow. The official view-only wallet guide<\/a> walks through both. The result is a wallet that can watch every incoming payment but can’t move a coin.<\/p>\n\n\n

The Catch: Why a View-Only Balance Can Look Wrong<\/h3>\n\n\n

Here’s the catch that surprises almost everyone. Because a view key only sees incoming transactions, a view-only wallet doesn’t reliably know what you’ve spent<\/em>. Right after setup it can show a balance that’s too high, counting funds you already sent out as if they were still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fix is to import key images<\/strong> \u2014 data generated with the spend key that marks which outputs have been used. You export the key images from your full wallet, import them into the view-only wallet, and refresh; only then does the balance reflect spending. If a Monero balance “doesn’t show up right” in a watch-only setup, missing key images is the number-one cause. (This limitation is also what the planned FCMP++ outgoing<\/em> view keys are designed to remove in the future.)<\/p>\n\n\n

Method 3: Verify Transactions on a Block Explorer<\/h2>\n\n\n

A block explorer can’t hand you a balance from an address \u2014 that’s the entire point of Monero’s privacy. What it can<\/em> do is verify specific transactions, which is often what people actually need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On an explorer like xmrchain.net<\/a>, you can look up a transaction by its ID to confirm it was broadcast and mined. You can also paste an address plus its view key into the explorer’s “decode outputs” tool to see which outputs belong to that address. A privacy warning matters here:<\/strong> typing a private view key into a third-party website discloses your incoming activity to whoever runs that site, so for anything sensitive, use a local wallet tool instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re the sender and need to prove a payment, use your wallet’s proof commands \u2014 get_tx_proof<\/code> (prove a payment to a recipient) or get_spend_proof<\/code> \u2014 which the recipient verifies with check_tx_proof<\/code> or check_spend_proof<\/code>. Older guides hand over the raw transaction private key; the proof commands are the current, safer default, as the official prove-payment guide<\/a> shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you’re checking<\/th>Visible from the address alone?<\/th>What you need<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Wallet balance<\/td>No<\/td>The wallet’s keys, or a view key + key images<\/td><\/tr>
Incoming payments to an address<\/td>No<\/td>Address + private view key<\/td><\/tr>
A specific transaction exists<\/td>Yes (by TXID)<\/td>The transaction ID<\/td><\/tr>
Proof you sent a payment<\/td>No<\/td>get_tx_proof<\/code> \/ get_spend_proof<\/code><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This table is the mental model to keep: on Monero, almost nothing is readable without a key you were explicitly given. An explorer confirms that events happened, but it never exposes a balance.<\/p>\n\n\n

Method 4: Automating Balance Checks for Apps (Developers)<\/h2>\n\n\n

If you’re building an app or exchange integration, you need balances programmatically \u2014 and there’s a common misconception to clear up first: a Monero node on its own cannot<\/strong> tell you a wallet balance. The daemon (monerod<\/code>) serves blockchain data over RPC but holds no keys and has no concept of “your balance.” Computing one requires wallet software that holds your keys \u2014 normally monero-wallet-rpc<\/code> \u2014 pointed at a node, or a hosted scanning service that scans on your behalf with your view key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s where a provider like NOWNodes<\/a> fits: it supplies the node layer so you don’t maintain your own server. You point monero-wallet-rpc<\/code> at the endpoint xmr.nownodes.io<\/code> (daemon JSON-RPC at https:\/\/xmr.nownodes.io\/json_rpc<\/code>, key in the api-key<\/code> header); your keys stay inside your wallet process and the node only relays blockchain data. The free START plan includes 100,000 requests per month at a rated 99.95% uptime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For teams that would rather not run a wallet process at all, NOWNodes has also documented a light-wallet scanning flow that computes a view-key balance server-side:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Create the account<\/strong> \u2014 POST https:\/\/xmr.nownodes.io\/xmr\/account<\/code> with your API key and address.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Resync<\/strong> \u2014 POST https:\/\/xmr.nownodes.io\/xmr\/resync<\/code> with your address and view key to import recent transactions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Check the balance<\/strong> \u2014 POST https:\/\/xmr.nownodes.io\/xmr\/balance\/<\/code> with your API key, address, and view key.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Two cautions before using that flow. First, a privacy trade-off: handing the service your private view key lets it see your incoming transaction activity. Second, confirm the endpoints, fields, and responses against NOWNodes’ current documentation<\/a> before relying on them, since the scanning API has historically been documented mainly in an older article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A sample balance response looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    json<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    {\n  \"blockchain_height\": 3423107,\n  \"scanned_block_height\": 3423107,\n  \"start_height\": 3423000,\n  \"total_received\": \"1500000000000\",\n  \"total_sent\": \"0\",\n  \"locked_funds\": \"0\",\n  \"status\": \"success\"\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    Reading it: blockchain_height<\/code> and scanned_block_height<\/code> show scan progress \u2014 when they match, the scan is current. Monetary fields are in atomic units<\/strong> (piconero), where 1 XMR = 10\u00b9\u00b2 atomic units, so total_received<\/code> of 1500000000000<\/code> is 1.5 XMR. Treat total_sent<\/code> with caution: an incoming view key can’t determine spends with full certainty, so unless the service also incorporates key images, the outgoing side is an estimate, not a guarantee.<\/p>\n\n\n
    Balance Not Showing Up? Quick Fixes<\/h2>\n\n\n
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    When a Monero balance looks wrong or missing, the cause is almost always one of a handful of things. Run through these before assuming anything is actually lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n