Why did my swap get stuck on pending and how long should I wait

07 September 2026

A swap stuck on pending means the transaction has been sent to the network but has not yet been confirmed in a block. You should wait at least until the network's standard confirmation time has passed, which for most blockchains is between a few minutes and an hour, depending on congestion and the fee you attached.

Why swaps get stuck

The most common reason is that the transaction fee you set was too low for current network conditions. Every blockchain has limited space per block. Miners or validators prioritize transactions offering higher fees. If your fee is below the prevailing rate, your transaction sits in the memory pool (mempool) waiting for a block with enough room.

A second reason is nonce issues. On account-based chains like Ethereum, every transaction from your wallet has a sequential nonce number. If you sent a transaction with nonce 5, then sent another with nonce 6, the second cannot confirm until the first does. If the first is stuck, both are stuck.

Third, the swap contract itself may require multiple steps. A decentralized exchange swap typically involves approving a token, then swapping. If the approval transaction confirms but the swap transaction does not, the swap appears pending indefinitely.

Fourth, network congestion can spike unexpectedly. A popular NFT mint or a DeFi exploit can flood the network with high-fee transactions, pushing lower-fee ones to the back of the queue. This can last hours.

How long you should wait

There is no universal answer. A reasonable guideline is to wait:

• For Ethereum: Up to 6 hours on a normal day. During extreme congestion, 24 hours is possible before the transaction is dropped from the mempool.
• For BNB Smart Chain or Polygon: Usually 1-2 hours. These chains clear mempools faster.
• For Bitcoin: Up to 48 hours if fees were very low. Bitcoin's mempool can hold transactions for weeks, but most wallets drop them after 2 weeks.

After these timeframes, if the transaction is still pending, it will likely never confirm. The network will eventually discard it. Your funds are not lost - they remain in your wallet - but the swap never executed.

What you can do

You have two options: wait, or replace the transaction.

Most wallets allow you to cancel or speed up a pending transaction. Speeding up resends the same transaction with a higher fee. Canceling sends a new transaction with the same nonce but zero value and a higher fee, overriding the stuck one.

If your wallet does not support these features, you can manually broadcast a replacement using a block explorer's "replace by fee" function. This requires technical comfort.

What happens to your funds

The tokens you intended to swap never left your wallet. The approval transaction, if it confirmed, gave the swap contract permission to move your tokens, but no tokens moved. The stuck transaction is a request that was never executed.

This is where the hub page "What you can recover from a failed swap" becomes directly relevant. If the swap ultimately fails - either because you canceled it or the network dropped it - you can recover the full amount of the tokens you tried to swap. No partial losses occur from the stuck state itself. The only cost is the fee for the stuck transaction, which is lost regardless of outcome, and any fee you pay to cancel or replace it.

When to call it a failure

If you have waited the recommended time, and the transaction still shows pending, you should treat it as a failed swap. Proceed to cancel or replace it. Do not send another swap of the same tokens while the first is pending, or you risk double-spending or nonce errors.

The recovery process, including how to reclaim approvals and handle partial state changes, is explained fully under "What you can recover from a failed swap." That page covers the exact steps for each blockchain and wallet type.

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