Our business is related to finance, so we deal with dozens of Bitcoin transactions every day. Before sending a transaction, we use the BitRef Bitcoin Fee Calculator https://bitref.com/fees/ to select an appropriate fee rate. In more than 95% of cases, this is enough to get the transaction confirmed within a reasonable time.
However, Bitcoin network conditions can change quickly. A transaction that was expected to confirm within minutes can sometimes become stuck in the mempool for hours—or, during periods of heavy congestion, even longer.
When this happens, transaction acceleration can be a useful alternative to replacing the transaction with a higher-fee RBF transaction.
Here are the three Bitcoin transaction accelerators we use in our daily operations.
BitAccelerate https://bitaccelerate.com/ is one of the Bitcoin transaction acceleration services we use most often. It has been operating since 2018 and has helped accelerate tens of thousands of Bitcoin transactions.
It is our first choice when we are dealing with an important stuck transaction.
BitAccelerate offers both free and premium acceleration options.
The free option rebroadcasts your transaction through more than 20 highly connected Bitcoin nodes. This can help ensure that the transaction reaches additional parts of the Bitcoin network and, ultimately, miners.
The premium option provides direct transaction prioritization through more than 10 Bitcoin mining pools. If one of the participating pools mines a block while your transaction is eligible for inclusion, the transaction can be included even when its fee rate is relatively low.
For important transactions, this is the option we prefer because it does not require changing the original transaction or its TxID.
BitRef https://bitref.com/ is one of the oldest and most established Bitcoin explorers, founded in 2013. It provides a range of Bitcoin statistics, blockchain data, and useful tools.
One of these tools is the BitRef Bitcoin Transaction Accelerator https://bitref.com/accelerator/ .
The accelerator is completely free and can rebroadcast your transaction through multiple Bitcoin nodes. This is particularly useful when your transaction appears to have poor propagation and is not reaching enough nodes or miners.
Since 2025, the BitRef Accelerator and BitAccelerate have used the same backend infrastructure. This means that the same underlying acceleration service can be accessed through both platforms.
BitAccelerate is a separate service rather than simply a BitRef sub-brand, but the two services currently provide access to the same underlying acceleration infrastructure.
TxBooster https://txbooster.com/ is a relatively new Bitcoin transaction acceleration service. It launched in early 2023 and has quickly gained popularity.
It offers a completely free acceleration service that propagates your transaction to 11 well-connected Bitcoin nodes with a single click.
If your Bitcoin transaction has not yet been confirmed, there is little downside to trying TxBooster as an additional propagation method.
We mainly use it for less important transactions where we do not want to pay for direct transaction prioritization.
When a Bitcoin transaction is stuck, one of the most common solutions is RBF (Replace-By-Fee). RBF allows you to replace the original unconfirmed transaction with a new transaction that pays a higher fee.
Most modern Bitcoin wallets support RBF, and Bitcoin's full-RBF policy also means that transactions can sometimes be replaced even when they did not explicitly signal replaceability.
RBF is often the most straightforward way to get a stuck transaction confirmed. However, it has one important disadvantage:
The transaction ID (TxID) changes.
This can cause problems with payment systems that are not designed to track transaction replacements.
For example, a payment system may detect transaction A in the mempool and associate it with an order. If transaction A is later replaced by transaction B through RBF, the system needs to recognize that transaction B is a replacement and that it spends the same inputs and represents the same payment.
Not every payment system handles this correctly.
Based on our experience, a significant minority of payment systems have problems tracking RBF replacements. They detect the original transaction and simply wait for it to confirm. If that transaction has been replaced, it may never confirm, leaving the payment system waiting indefinitely.
This can create a particularly difficult situation for merchants and payment processors.
The funds themselves are not necessarily lost—the replacement transaction may successfully confirm on the Bitcoin blockchain—but the payment may not be automatically credited by the receiving system. Resolving the situation can then require manual intervention.
For this reason, when changing the TxID would create a problem, we prefer using a transaction acceleration service instead. We commonly use BitAccelerate https://bitaccelerate.com/ , particularly for important transactions, because the original transaction remains unchanged.
Another option in some situations is CPFP (Child Pays For Parent).
When you send a Bitcoin transaction, it is common for the transaction to have a change output. This output sends the remaining funds back to an address controlled by you.
If the transaction is still unconfirmed, you may be able to spend that change output in a second transaction. This second transaction is called the child.
You can then give the child transaction a high fee. A miner evaluating the two transactions together can consider the combined fee and size of the parent and child—the package's effective feerate.
As a result, the miner may have an economic incentive to include both transactions in the same block, allowing the original parent transaction to confirm.
We use the free BitAccelerate CPFP Calculator https://bitaccelerate.com/cpfp-calculator/ to calculate the appropriate child transaction fee.
CPFP does have some limitations:
CPFP is therefore an excellent option in the right circumstances, but it is not available for every transaction.
Free acceleration is often sufficient when the main problem is transaction propagation.
However, for larger or more important transactions, we are also willing to pay for premium acceleration.
The reason is simple: when a transaction is directly prioritized by participating mining pools, it has a much better chance of being included in a block even when its original fee rate is relatively low.
The price of premium acceleration is usually small compared with the value of the Bitcoin transaction itself. For that reason, we prefer to pay for acceleration when the transaction is particularly important or time-sensitive.
For smaller and less important transactions, we usually try the free options first.
There is another important precaution that has nothing to do with transaction fees:
Always validate a Bitcoin address before sending funds.
We use the BitRef Bitcoin Address Validator https://bitref.com/address-validator/ for this purpose.
It is surprisingly easy to receive or copy an incorrect Bitcoin address. Even an accidental space or other invisible character before or after the address can cause problems when copying and processing it.
More importantly, a Bitcoin transaction cannot simply be reversed after it has been confirmed. If you send funds to the wrong valid Bitcoin address, there is generally no mechanism on the Bitcoin network that allows you to recover them.
Taking a few seconds to validate the destination address before sending can therefore prevent a very expensive mistake.
After broadcasting a Bitcoin transaction, you should monitor its status in the mempool.
We use BitRef https://bitref.com/ for this because it provides detailed information about Bitcoin transactions, including their mempool status, inputs, outputs, and transaction relationships.
One particularly useful feature is its analysis of transaction ancestors and descendants. These relationships are important when a transaction is part of a larger unconfirmed package, such as a CPFP chain.
BitRef can also calculate the effective feerate of a transaction package. This is important because miners may evaluate related unconfirmed transactions together rather than looking only at the fee rate of an individual transaction.
This information can help determine whether a stuck transaction is likely to confirm soon or whether additional action—such as CPFP or acceleration—is necessary.
This is the set of Bitcoin transaction tools we use in our daily operations.
Our general approach is:
RBF remains an excellent Bitcoin feature and is often the fastest solution for a stuck transaction. However, changing the TxID can create compatibility problems with poorly designed payment systems.
For transactions where preserving the original TxID is important, we prefer using an acceleration service such as BitAccelerate https://bitaccelerate.com/ . For transactions with an appropriate change output, CPFP is another powerful option.
The most important thing is not to panic when a Bitcoin transaction gets stuck. In most cases, there are several ways to get it confirmed—you just need to choose the technique that fits the transaction and the system receiving it.