Forgot Your Crypto Wallet Password? How to Recover an Ethereum Wallet

By Merunas Grincalaitis, founder of MEV DAO and a developer who builds MEV, sniping and trading bots on Ethereum. Last updated: October 2026.

TL;DR: If you forgot your wallet password but still have your 12 or 24-word recovery phrase, you haven't lost anything: reinstall or reset the wallet, import the phrase, and set a new password. MetaMask, Ledger and every other self-custody wallet work this way, and MetaMask states that nobody, including its support team, can reset the password for you. Without the phrase, your only real options are decrypting the wallet file on your own device (if you know the password but the app won't open) or brute-forcing a password you partly remember with an open-source tool like btcrecover. Anyone who contacts you offering to "recover" a wallet is almost certainly a scammer.

A password and a recovery phrase are two different things, and mixing them up is where most panic comes from. Here's the short version, then the detail for each case.

Which recovery situation are you in?

Find your row first; it tells you whether this is a five-minute fix or a long shot.

What you have	What you lost	Can you recover?	What to do
Recovery phrase	Password	Yes, easily	Import the phrase into a fresh install, set a new password
Password + the old computer	Recovery phrase, app won't open	Usually	Decrypt the vault file with MetaMask's vault decryptor
Old computer or wallet file, part of the password	Exact password	Sometimes	Run btcrecover with a list of your likely passwords
Recovery phrase with one word wrong or missing	One word	Usually	btcrecover's seed tool can test the gaps
Hardware wallet + recovery phrase	PIN	Yes	Let the device wipe, then restore from the phrase
Nothing but an address	Phrase and password	No	Nobody can help, and anyone who says otherwise is lying

How do you reset a MetaMask password with your Secret Recovery Phrase?

Lock MetaMask, click "Forgot password", enter your Secret Recovery Phrase, and choose a new password. The Secret Recovery Phrase (SRP) is the 12-word list MetaMask showed you when you created the wallet. Your password only encrypts the copy of your keys on that one device; the phrase is what actually generates your accounts.

The steps, based on MetaMask's password reset guide:

Lock MetaMask (on the extension, open the menu and choose "Lock MetaMask"; on mobile, log out).
On the unlock screen, click Forgot password.
Type the 12 words in order, lowercase.
Set a new password and write it down somewhere separate from the phrase.

Two things surprise people afterwards. First, accounts you imported with a private key or connected from a hardware wallet aren't part of the phrase, so they won't come back; you'll need to add them again with their own keys. Second, MetaMask rediscovers your derived accounts in order and stops at the first one with no ETH on mainnet. If "Account 4" seems missing, add accounts manually until it reappears. That one is in MetaMask's restore guide.

If you created your MetaMask with a Google, Apple or Telegram login instead of writing down a phrase, the rules are different: MetaMask says you need both that account and your password, and if you lose the password you lose the wallet unless you revealed and backed up the SRP earlier.

What if you know the password but MetaMask won't open?

You can often pull the encrypted vault off your computer and decrypt it yourself. The vault is the encrypted file where the browser extension stores your phrase and imported keys. MetaMask co-founder Dan Finlay wrote a vault decryptor for exactly this, and MetaMask's own recovery article explains where to find the vault files in Chrome-based browsers.

A few limits worth knowing before you start:

It only applies to the desktop extension. MetaMask says vault recovery on Android and iOS isn't currently possible with this method.
Firefox stores data differently, and the guide says its instructions are of limited use there.
If you uninstalled the extension, the data is probably gone, unless you have a backup or disk image of the old machine.
The decryptor page works offline. I'd load it, disconnect from the internet, and only then paste anything into it.

If the decryptor says the password is wrong but you're sure it's right, people on the project's GitHub issues report that very old vaults sometimes need an older build of the tool.

Can you recover a wallet if you forgot the password and lost the phrase?

Only if you still have the encrypted wallet data and remember a good part of the password. In that case you're not "recovering" anything from a server. You're guessing your own password against your own file, very fast.

The open-source tool most people use is btcrecover. Despite the name, its docs list password recovery for MetaMask vaults (and clones like Binance Chain Wallet and Ronin), imToken, and Ethereum UTC keystore files, the encrypted JSON files that MyEtherWallet, MyCrypto and geth produce. The tutorial shows where the MetaMask extension data lives and how to point the tool at it.

How it works in practice:

Copy the wallet data to an offline machine.
Write a "token list" of everything you might have used: old passwords, pet names, years, the way you usually add a symbol at the end.
Let btcrecover try every combination and typo variation of those pieces.

This works when you're close, like "I know it was my dog's name, a year, and an exclamation mark". It doesn't work for a long random password you never saw again. Strong encryption is the whole point.

What if one word of your recovery phrase is wrong or missing?

A single missing or misspelled word is usually recoverable, because the phrase has a built-in checksum. Under the BIP-39 standard, the last word partly encodes a checksum of the others, so most random guesses are rejected instantly. btcrecover ships a seedrecover.py script that tests the gaps and checks each candidate against an address you know you owned.

One related trap: some people added an optional BIP-39 passphrase, sometimes called a 25th word. If you forget it, the phrase restores a different, empty wallet with no error message at all. If your restored wallet shows zero balance and wrong addresses, this is the first thing I'd check.

What happens if you forget your hardware wallet PIN?

The device wipes itself after too many wrong attempts, and you restore it from the recovery phrase. On a Ledger, three wrong PIN entries reset the device to factory settings. Your coins aren't on the device; they're on the blockchain, so after the reset you choose "restore from recovery phrase" (Ledger's guide) and pick a new PIN. Without the phrase, Ledger can't help, because Ledger never had it.

Should you pay a wallet recovery service?

Almost never, and never one that found you first. After any post about a lost wallet, scammers show up in the replies and DMs offering recovery. Their real goal is your phrase, your remaining funds, or an upfront fee. I covered the patterns in detail in crypto recovery scams.

The honest version of password recovery is the btcrecover process above. A legitimate helper would run it on your own encrypted file, ideally with you present, and would never need your phrase. If someone asks for the 12 words, stop.

What should you do right after restoring the wallet?

Check whether the wallet is actually safe before you put anything new in it. A forgotten password is an inconvenience. A leaked phrase is a different problem, and restoring the wallet doesn't fix it.

Look at the address on Etherscan for outgoing transactions you didn't make.
Review and revoke old approvals (how to revoke token approvals).
If the phrase was ever typed into a website, photographed, or stored in a cloud note, treat it as exposed and move funds to a brand-new wallet. My compromised wallet checker goes through the signs.
If ETH you send in disappears within seconds, a sweeper bot is watching the address. Stop funding it.

Frequently asked questions

How do I restore a crypto wallet?

Install the wallet app fresh, choose the option to import or restore an existing wallet, and enter your recovery phrase in the original order. You'll set a new password during the process.

Can MetaMask support reset my password?

No. MetaMask says the password is stored only on your device and that nobody can reset it for you. You reset it yourself with your Secret Recovery Phrase.

Can I recover a crypto wallet without the seed phrase?

Only if you still have the encrypted wallet file and either know the password or remember most of it. Tools like MetaMask's vault decryptor and btcrecover work on your own file; there's no central account to restore from.

Will my imported accounts come back after a reset?

No. Accounts imported with a private key or added from a hardware wallet aren't derived from your phrase, so you need to import them again with their own keys.

What happens if I enter the wrong Ledger PIN three times?

The device resets to factory settings. Your funds are safe on the blockchain, and you get access back by restoring the device with your recovery phrase.

Is it safe to use a crypto wallet recovery service?

Most services that advertise recovery or contact you first are scams. Never share your recovery phrase with anyone; real password recovery runs on your own encrypted file.

At MEV DAO we spend most of our time on the other side of this problem: wallets people can open but can't use, because a sweeper bot takes every bit of gas. If that's where you ended up after restoring, our token rescue service explains how we get tokens out. For more guides like this, subscribe here.