Most people asking "how long" expect a single number. The reality is that recovery time spans 8 orders of magnitude depending on the wallet format and what you remember. A MetaMask vault with a known prefix can crack in 2 minutes; an Ethereum scrypt keystore with no hints can take centuries. Knowing where you fall on this scale is the first step.
The three components of recovery time
- Queue wait: 0-30 minutes if your job fits available GPU lanes; up to a few hours during heavy load.
- Free check (fast pass): 5-60 minutes of common dictionary + popular rules. Catches ~30% of jobs immediately.
- Deep attack (paid): hours to days. The wide variance lives here.
Per-wallet GPU throughput (single RTX 4090)
| Wallet | Hashcat mode | H/s (single 4090) | 100M list | Class |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MetaMask vault | 26600 | ~9M | ~11 sec | Very fast |
| Phantom (Solana) | custom | ~200K | ~8 min | Fast |
| Coinomi mobile | 28200 | ~310K | ~5 min | Fast |
| Bitcoin Core wallet.dat | 11300 | ~50K | ~33 min | Medium |
| Electrum | 16600 | ~35M | ~3 sec | Very fast |
| MEW (PBKDF2 c=10240) | 15600 | ~2M | ~50 sec | Fast |
| MEW (scrypt N=262144) | 15700 | ~50 | ~23 days | Very slow |
| Trust Wallet (scrypt 16384) | 15700 | ~1.2K | ~23 hrs | Medium |
| Trezor passphrase | 12700 | ~50K | ~33 min | Medium |
| BIP38 paper wallet | 15700 | ~50 | ~23 days | Very slow |
A 6-GPU rig multiplies all numbers by ~6. Multi-rig farms add another factor. But scrypt-based wallets remain memory-bound and benefit much less from GPU scaling than PBKDF2.
How password complexity changes everything
Take the same wallet type and only the password changes. Bitcoin Core (mode 11300, ~50K H/s, single 4090):
| Password class | Search space | Time on 1×4090 | Time on 6-GPU rig |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common dictionary word + 2 digits | ~470K | 10 sec | 2 sec |
| RockYou + best64 rules | ~14B | 3.2 days | 13 hrs |
| 8-char lowercase + digits mask | ~2.8T | 1.8 yrs | 3.7 mo |
| 10-char mixed case + digits + symbol | ~4e19 | ~25M yrs | ~4M yrs |
| 14-char fully random | ~10e27 | infeasible | infeasible |
What hints accelerate the most
The math: every confirmed character drops the search space by 60-80x. A 10-character password where you remember the first 4 characters has only the last 6 unknown — a 64-bit problem instead of 96-bit, which is the difference between days and centuries.
- Confirmed first 3+ characters — biggest single win.
- Pattern memory ("ends with 2017!") — second biggest.
- Capitalization style ("first letter uppercase")
- Length range ("10-12 chars")
- Personal data (kid name, pet, dates)
- Old passwords from other accounts (you reuse patterns)
Realistic end-to-end timelines
Fast cases (under 6 hours)
- • MetaMask + first 3 chars known
- • Electrum + dictionary password
- • Bitcoin Core + year + name pattern
- • Trezor passphrase + tokenlist of 100K
- • Old wallets with simple 2014-era passwords
Medium cases (1-7 days)
- • Bitcoin Core + length only known
- • Trust Wallet + partial password memory
- • MEW PBKDF2 + decent hints
- • Coinomi + capitalization variants
- • 10-12 char passwords, mostly remembered
Why one rig vs a farm matters
A 6-GPU rig gives roughly 6× linear speedup on PBKDF2-class hashes (Bitcoin Core, MetaMask, Electrum). On scrypt-class hashes (MEW high-cost, BIP38), GPU memory bandwidth is the bottleneck and you get only 3-4× scaling. This is why some services quote "2 weeks" for a wallet that another service quotes "2 days" for — they have different GPU counts and different scaling efficiencies.
Related guides
- Recovery cost calculator 2026 — pricing tiers per wallet.
- DIY GPU rig build.
- Password entropy explainer.
- KDF comparison.
Frequently asked questions
How long for Bitcoin Core wallet.dat?
30 minutes for a standard dictionary + rules. With hints, most jobs finish 4-72 hours. Pure mask of 9+ chars — months to never.
How long for MetaMask?
Most successful recoveries within 2-6 hours. PBKDF2 only 10K iterations means 10B candidates fits in 10 minutes on a 6-GPU rig.
Why is MEW scrypt so much slower?
N=262144 + memory-hard scrypt → ~50 H/s per GPU. Without strong hints, infeasible.
What does end-to-end include?
Queue (0-30 min) + free check (5-60 min) + deep attack (hours to days). Hard cap usually 7 days.
How can I speed up recovery?
Provide hints. Every confirmed character cuts search space 60-80x. Hints beat hardware.
Get a real time estimate for your wallet
Upload your wallet (or just the hash) and we will tell you the exact mode, expected throughput, and realistic time-to-recover ranges before you pay a cent.