How to restore a Monero wallet from its seed

Quick steps

1. Identify your seed. Count the words. 25 words is a legacy Monero seed, 16 words is a Polyseed. A 12 or 24-word phrase usually belongs to a hardware or multi-coin wallet.
2. Install a compatible wallet. Use Feather or Cake Wallet for Polyseed, or any Monero wallet, including the official GUI and CLI, for a 25-word seed. Download it from the official source.
3. Choose Restore. Select restore from seed or recovery phrase, choose Monero, and set the seed type and language to match your words.
4. Enter the words and passphrase. Type the words carefully in order. Enter your seed offset passphrase only if you created one.
5. Set the restore height. Enter a date or block height from before your first incoming payment. If unsure, choose an earlier date.
6. Sync and check. Let the wallet sync fully, then confirm your primary address and balance. Rescan from a lower height if the balance looks wrong.

The short answer

Your coins live on the Monero blockchain. The seed simply regenerates your keys. Any wallet that supports your seed format can find your funds again, which is how former MyMonero and Exodus users recovered their XMR after those services stopped supporting Monero.

Restoring has three parts: the seed type, the restore height and, if you used one, the seed offset passphrase.

Which seed do you have?

The 25-word legacy seed

The first 24 words encode your private spend key and the 25th is a checksum calculated from them, so a single typo is usually caught. Wordlists exist in 12 languages, including English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese (simplified). Choose the same language you created it in.

The 16-word Polyseed

Polyseed packs the secret, a checksum and an approximate creation date into 16 words. The date has roughly one-month precision, and wallets convert it into a block height automatically. Feather can turn a Polyseed into a 25-word seed for use in other wallets, but a 25-word seed cannot be turned into a Polyseed.

Not every wallet reads Polyseed yet. The official GUI and CLI restore guide still describes 25-word seeds. If your app does not offer a Polyseed option, restore in Feather or Cake Wallet, or display the 25-word version in Feather under Wallet, Seed.

Restore height: the step that confuses everyone

The restore height is the block where your wallet starts scanning. Monero adds a block about every two minutes, around 720 a day, and the chain passed block 3,791,000 on 24 October 2026.

• Too high (after your first incoming payment): the wallet misses transactions and shows a wrong, usually lower, balance.
• Too low: nothing is lost, the first sync just takes longer.
• When unsure, pick an earlier date. GUI, CLI and Cake Wallet all accept a date instead of a block number.

If a restored balance looks wrong, rescan from a lower height before you panic.

Seed offset passphrases

Some users add a seed offset, an extra passphrase that turns the same words into a different wallet. If you used one, enter it at the prompt. If you did not, leave it blank. The CLI asks for it separately from the wallet file password, which is a different thing.

Special cases

MyMonero users

MyMonero shut down on 6 January 2026, but its 25-word seeds restore elsewhere. Cake Wallet's guide says to choose Restore, Recovery Phrase or Keys, select Monero, switch the seed type from Polyseed to Legacy (25 words) and pick a date close to when you started using MyMonero. Full walkthrough: MyMonero closure and recovery.

Beware of lookalike MyMonero sites that ask for your seed. A real restore never happens on a website.

Former Exodus users

Exodus ended Monero support on 18 August 2025. Its instructions were to export the 25-word Monero mnemonic (on desktop under Settings, Assets, Monero Private Keys) and import it into another wallet, for example Cake. See multi-coin wallets.

Ledger and Trezor

The device's own recovery phrase is not typed into a Monero app. Restore the device first, then create a wallet file from the hardware wallet in the GUI, Feather or Cake and give it a restore height. See Monero hardware wallets.

Restoring from keys

If you only kept the address, private view key and private spend key, choose Restore from keys. With the address and view key alone you get a view-only wallet that can watch but not spend. See Monero view key.

What a seed does not bring back

• Transaction notes, address book entries and subaddress labels.
• Transaction keys used to prove a payment. If you may need proof, save them separately.
• Subaddresses far down your list may need a larger lookahead (in the CLI, set subaddress-lookahead) before their funds appear.

Frequently asked questions