Bitcoin Basics

Blockchain Explorers: How to Look Up a Bitcoin Transaction

A block explorer is a website that shows you the blockchain: every transaction, every block, every address, live. You will use one the first time a payment seems slow and you want to know whether it went through. This page explains how to read what an explorer shows you, which ones to use, and the one privacy habit worth learning before you look up your own address.

None of the links on this page is an affiliate link. The sites were checked on September 23, 2026.

What an explorer is for

Bitcoin has no customer service desk. When you send a payment, your wallet broadcasts it to the network and then waits for miners to include it in a block. An explorer lets you watch that happen without trusting your wallet or the exchange to tell you the truth. Paste in the transaction ID your wallet shows you, and the explorer tells you whether the payment is still waiting, how many blocks have confirmed it, what fee it paid, and where the coins went.

You do not need an account, and you should never be asked for one. An explorer only reads public data. Any site that asks you to connect a wallet or type a seed phrase to “check a transaction” is a scam (see Avoiding Scams).

How to read one

  • Transaction ID (txid). A 64-character code that names one payment. Your wallet or exchange shows it once a withdrawal is sent. Paste it into the explorer’s search box.
  • Address versus transaction. An address is like an account number: it can appear in many transactions. A transaction is one movement of coins. Searching an address shows every payment in and out of it.
  • Inputs and outputs. Inputs are the coins being spent. Outputs are where they go. A transaction often has two outputs: the payment, and change going back to the sender. That is normal, not a mistake.
  • Unconfirmed, or “in the mempool”. The payment has been broadcast and is waiting in the mempool for a miner to include it in a block. It has not settled yet.
  • Confirmations. One confirmation means the payment is in a block. Each block added after that is another confirmation, roughly every ten minutes. Most exchanges credit a deposit after one to six.
  • Fee rate, in sat/vB. What the sender paid per unit of transaction size. Compare it with the explorer’s current fee suggestions. A payment whose fee rate is far below today’s rates can sit unconfirmed for hours or days.
  • A stuck payment is not lost. It either confirms when fees fall, or the sending wallet can raise the fee (the features are called RBF and CPFP). An exchange will do this itself if you ask support.
  • Block height is the number of the block that holds your payment, counting from the first block in 2009.
  • Amounts may be shown in bitcoin, in sats (1 bitcoin = 100,000,000 sats) or in dollars. Check which before you panic.
  • Right explorer, right chain. A bitcoin txid will not show up on an Ethereum explorer, and the other way round. If a search returns nothing, check the chain before you assume the money is gone.

Bitcoin explorers

mempool.space is the one to start with. It opens on a live picture of the queue of waiting transactions and today’s fee rates, which is exactly what a beginner needs to see, and its transaction pages are the clearest. It is open source, run by the Mempool Open Source Project, uses no third-party trackers, and publishes a Tor address. It also has a Lightning section (below).

Blockstream Explorer is a plain, fast second opinion from Blockstream, the company behind the Liquid network and the Jade hardware wallet. It works over Tor and without JavaScript. When two explorers agree, you can stop worrying.

Blockchair covers bitcoin and around forty other chains in one place, with a Tor address, so it is handy if you hold more than one coin. It is not open source, and its search pages carry more advertising than the two above.

Your own node. If you run a bitcoin node at home, you can run your own explorer on it and never ask a website anything. mempool and BTC RPC Explorer are both free and both come pre-installed on the common node packages. That is the strongest privacy option, and a project for later, not for your first week.

Lightning explorers

Lightning payments do not appear on the blockchain, so a normal explorer cannot show them. What Lightning explorers show is the network itself: which nodes exist, how they are connected, and how much capacity they have. You will only need one if you run a Lightning node or want to check a node before opening a channel to it.

mempool.space/lightning is the easiest place to look up a node or channel, with the same privacy setup as the main site. Amboss has the most detail on individual nodes, including their reputation and fee history, and is the one node operators tend to use. Read The Lightning Network first if these words are new.

Ethereum and other chains

Etherscan is the standard explorer for Ethereum: transactions, tokens and contracts. The same company runs Basescan for Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum network, and Solscan for Solana. None is open source, and Etherscan says it keeps raw visitor logs for at least five days.

Blockscout is the alternative for Ethereum and hundreds of Ethereum-style chains. Its code is public, though under a licence that stops others charging for it. Litecoin Space is mempool.space rebuilt for Litecoin, run by the Litecoin Foundation. For anything else, Other Coins explains why we do not chase every chain.

The privacy catch

An explorer is a website, and websites see who visits them. When you search for your own address, the explorer sees your internet address next to your bitcoin address. Blockchair says it keeps that for a day or two; Etherscan for at least five days; and at least one well-known explorer is run by a blockchain surveillance company that shares what you searched across its business. Nothing about your bitcoin is secret on the blockchain, but the link between an address and you is, until you hand it over.

  • Look up transaction IDs, not addresses, when you can. A txid tells the explorer less about you than the address that holds your savings.
  • Do not look up all your addresses in one sitting. Several searches from one connection tell the explorer they all belong to one person.
  • Use Tor Browser for anything you would rather not link to yourself. mempool.space, Blockstream and Blockchair all publish Tor addresses; the links are on each site’s about page.
  • Type the address yourself or use a bookmark. Lookalike explorer sites exist, with one letter changed, and some of them serve fake transaction pages or ask you to “connect a wallet”. A real explorer never asks for anything.
  • Hiding your visit does not hide your transactions. Everything on the chain is public forever. Explorer privacy is about not adding your name to it.

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