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How to withdraw Bitcoin with Lightning (LNURL)

Withdraw Bitcoin instantly with LNURL-withdraw: scan the QR on Lightning Faucet, your wallet pulls the sats automatically. Steps, wallets, limits, and fixes.

Withdrawing Bitcoin over the Lightning Network is the fastest way to move sats you have earned or won into a wallet you control, and on Lightning Faucet the whole flow takes about ten seconds. Open the withdraw page, scan the LNURL-withdraw QR code with any Lightning wallet (or tap the link if your wallet lives on the same device), pick the amount, and confirm. Your wallet talks to our server, fetches a Lightning invoice automatically, and the sats land moments later. You never create, copy, or paste an invoice yourself.

That last sentence is the part most generic guides get wrong, so let's define the head term right away. LNURL-withdraw is a Lightning protocol extension (LUD-03 in the LNURL spec family) that reverses the usual direction of a Lightning payment. Normally the person receiving money generates an invoice and hands it to the payer. With LNURL-withdraw, the payer publishes a QR code or link instead. Your wallet scans it, learns how much it is allowed to pull, generates the invoice behind the scenes, and the service pays that invoice immediately. One scan, one tap to confirm, done.

We operate this flow for real withdrawals every day, so this guide covers the exact steps on Lightning Faucet, which wallets work well, what actually happens when a payment fails mid-route, and the limits and requirements that decide whether a balance is withdrawable in the first place.

What LNURL-withdraw actually is

Under the hood, the QR code on our withdraw page encodes a URL. When your wallet scans it, three things happen in sequence:

  1. Your wallet calls that URL and our server responds with the withdrawal terms: the minimum and maximum amount, in sats, that your account can pull right now.
  2. Your wallet shows you those terms and asks you to pick an amount and confirm.
  3. Your wallet generates a standard Lightning invoice for that amount and sends it back to our server, which pays it over the Lightning Network straight away.

From your side it feels like a single action. From our side it is a payment we push to an invoice your wallet created seconds ago, which is exactly why the flow is so reliable: the invoice is always fresh, always for a valid amount, and always points at the wallet you are actually holding.

Everything on Lightning Faucet is sat-denominated. Your balance is in sats, the withdrawal terms are in sats, and what arrives in your wallet is sats. There is no fiat conversion step and no waiting on block confirmations, because Lightning payments settle off-chain in seconds.

How to withdraw from Lightning Faucet, step by step

Step 1: Have a Lightning wallet that speaks LNURL

Almost every mainstream Lightning wallet supports LNURL-withdraw. Wallet of Satoshi, Phoenix, Blink, Zeus, and Coinos all handle it well, and they behave the same way for this flow: point the camera at the QR, or open the link, and the withdraw screen appears with the amount range already filled in. If you do not have a wallet yet, install one of those first. It takes a couple of minutes and you only have to do it once.

Step 2: Open the withdraw page

Log in and head to the withdraw page. You will see your withdrawable balance and an LNURL-withdraw QR code with a tap-to-open link beneath it. Note the word withdrawable: bonus sats that still carry a playthrough requirement are tracked separately, and only the withdrawable portion is offered through the QR. More on that below.

If your wallet is on your phone and you are browsing on a computer, scan the QR with the wallet's built-in scanner. If you are browsing on the same phone that holds your wallet, tap the link instead and your wallet will open with the withdrawal loaded. Both paths hit the same endpoint; use whichever matches your setup.

Step 4: Choose the amount and confirm

Your wallet displays the range it is allowed to pull and asks how much you want. Enter an amount in sats, confirm, and the wallet generates the invoice and submits it. There is nothing else for you to type. No invoice string, no address, no memo.

Step 5: Watch the sats arrive

Under normal network conditions the payment settles in a few seconds and your wallet shows the incoming sats immediately. Your Lightning Faucet balance updates at the same time. If the payment does not settle, read the failure section below before doing anything else, because the most common mistake at this point is rapid retrying.

Why we run withdrawals on LNURL instead of invoice pasting

This is the part of the flow we can speak to first-hand, because we chose it deliberately after seeing how invoice-paste withdrawals fail in practice.

A paste-an-invoice flow asks the user to open their wallet, generate an invoice for an exact amount, copy a long string, switch apps, and paste it into a website form. Every step in that chain is a place where withdrawals break. Invoices expire, often faster than people expect, so a slow copy-paste produces a payment to a dead invoice. Amounts get mistyped, so the invoice does not match the balance being withdrawn. And a surprising number of people paste an on-chain Bitcoin address into the invoice field, because generic crypto guides have trained them to think every withdrawal wants an address.

LNURL-withdraw removes the entire chain. The invoice is generated by the wallet, for an amount the server already approved, milliseconds before it is paid. It cannot expire in transit, cannot be mistyped, and cannot be an address by accident. The most common support question we used to imagine fielding, "I pasted my invoice and nothing happened," structurally cannot occur, because there is nowhere to paste an invoice.

So if another guide tells you to generate an invoice manually to withdraw from Lightning Faucet, it is wrong. Our flow never asks for one. Scan or tap, choose the amount, confirm.

What happens when a withdrawal fails

Lightning is a network of payment channels, and occasionally a payment cannot find a route to your wallet, or your wallet's inbound capacity is not sufficient for the amount. When that happens on Lightning Faucet, here is the exact behavior:

  • The amount that was debited for the attempt is refunded to your balance automatically, usually within a minute or two. You do not need to contact anyone for this. If your balance looks unchanged right after a failed attempt, that is the refund settling; give it a moment.
  • Once the refund has settled, try again. A second attempt often succeeds because Lightning routing is probabilistic and your wallet may also pick a different route.
  • If the same amount keeps failing, try a smaller amount. Large payments need more routing capacity, so splitting a withdrawal into smaller pulls is a practical workaround, keeping in mind the attempt spacing below.

One important caution from operating this system: do not hammer the retry button. Making many withdrawal attempts in a short window looks like abuse to our automated protections and can place a temporary security hold on withdrawals. That hold does not clear on its own; our support team reviews the account and removes it, which resolves quickly for accounts in good standing but is an avoidable wait. The smooth path is one attempt, let any failure refund itself, then retry once.

Limits, balances, and playthrough

Three things determine what the QR will let you pull:

Per-payment and daily limits

A single withdrawal can be up to 100,000 sats, and daily payout limits apply on top of that. If you hit a daily limit, nothing is lost; withdraw the remainder the next day. These are safety limits, not a judgment on your account.

Withdrawable balance versus bonus balance

Sats you deposited or won with your own funds are withdrawable. Bonus sats, such as promotional credits and some free spin rewards, carry a playthrough requirement: you wager through a fixed amount before bonus-funded winnings unlock for withdrawal. One detail players often miss is that running a bonus balance down to zero does not complete the playthrough. The requirement is fixed when the bonus is granted and stays until you have wagered through it, whether with winnings or with deposited funds.

Offerwall earnings

Sats earned from third-party offers on the earn page become withdrawable after you pass a first-payout threshold. This protects the offer ecosystem from abuse; once you clear it the first time, subsequent offer earnings flow into your withdrawable balance normally.

Common mistakes that slow withdrawals down

  • Generating an invoice in your wallet and looking for a place to paste it. There is no such place; the QR is the whole flow.
  • Trying to withdraw to an on-chain Bitcoin address. Lightning Faucet withdrawals travel over the Lightning Network, so you need a Lightning wallet, not a bc1 address. If you want your sats on-chain eventually, withdraw over Lightning first and use your wallet's own swap or transfer features.
  • Retrying instantly after a failure. Wait for the automatic refund, then retry. Rapid attempts risk a security hold that requires support to lift.
  • Scanning with a camera app instead of the wallet. A plain camera may not know what to do with an LNURL. Open your Lightning wallet and use its scanner, or tap the link on the same device.
  • Expecting a fiat amount. Everything is in sats. If your wallet displays fiat equivalents, that is your wallet's conversion, not ours.

From zero sats to your first withdrawal

If you are reading this before you have a balance, the fastest route to testing the flow yourself is to earn a small stack and pull it. The earn page collects the free surfaces: your signup gift, daily streaks, scratchcards, microjobs, offers, and Boltwork tasks that pay sats for human-data work. From there you can grow a balance at the tables in multiplayer Lightning poker, take a position on a prediction market, or play provably fair casino games like dice, where every result can be verified from the server seed, client seed, and nonce after the fact.

However you build the balance, the exit is always the same ten-second flow: open the withdraw page, scan the LNURL-withdraw QR with your Lightning wallet, choose your sats, confirm, and they are yours. That is the entire point of running a sat-denominated site on Lightning: the money you win is real Bitcoin, and it leaves whenever you want it to.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to create a Lightning invoice to withdraw from Lightning Faucet?

No. Lightning Faucet uses LNURL-withdraw. You scan a QR code (or tap a link) with your Lightning wallet, and the wallet generates the invoice automatically behind the scenes. There is nowhere to paste an invoice, and you never need to make one manually.

Which Lightning wallets work for LNURL-withdraw?

Any wallet that supports LNURL-withdraw, which includes most mainstream options: Wallet of Satoshi, Phoenix, Blink, Zeus, and Coinos all work well. Scan the QR with the wallet's built-in scanner, or tap the withdraw link if the wallet is on the same device.

My withdrawal failed and my balance looks unchanged. What should I do?

If a Lightning payment does not complete, the debited amount is refunded to your balance automatically, usually within a minute or two. Wait for that refund to settle, then try again. Avoid rapid repeat attempts, which can trigger a temporary security hold that support has to review.

How much Bitcoin can I withdraw at once?

A single withdrawal can be up to 100,000 sats, and daily payout limits apply on top of that. If you hit a daily limit, the rest of your balance stays safe and you can withdraw it later.

Why can't I withdraw my bonus sats?

Bonus sats carry a playthrough (wagering) requirement before bonus-funded winnings become withdrawable. The requirement is fixed when the bonus is granted, and running the bonus balance down to zero does not complete it; you meet it by wagering through the required amount.

Can I withdraw to an on-chain Bitcoin address?

Withdrawals travel over the Lightning Network, so you need a Lightning wallet rather than an on-chain address. If you want your sats on-chain, withdraw over Lightning first and then use your wallet's own transfer or swap features.