What Does a Monero Address Look Like? XMR Address Formats and Examples (2027)

By the SecureShift Team · Updated November 12, 2026

The first time most people paste a Monero address, the reaction is the same: that's long. A Bitcoin address fits on one line of a phone screen. A Monero address wraps two or three times. There's a reason for that length, and once you know what you're looking at, it gets much easier to spot when something is wrong.

Under the hood, every standard Monero address packs two public keys together: a public spend key and a public view key. Add a network byte at the front and a checksum at the end, encode it all in Monero's own flavour of Base58, and you land at 95 characters. Bitcoin addresses usually hold one hash of one key, which is why they're shorter.

The three Monero address types

1. Standard (primary) address: starts with 4

This is the address your wallet creates first. It's 95 characters, it always starts with 4, and the second character is a digit or one of the letters A or B. A real one looks roughly like this (illustrative only, don't send anything to it):

4AdUndXHHZ6cfufTMvppY6JwXNouMBzSkbLYfpAV5Usx3skxNgYeYTRj5UzqtReoS44qo9mtmXCqY45DJ852K5Jv2684Rge

Your primary address never changes. That's useful for things like a donation page, but it also means anyone who sees it more than once knows it's you.

2. Subaddress: starts with 8

Subaddresses are the ones you should be handing out day to day. They're also 95 characters, but they start with an 8. You can make as many as you like from one wallet, and all of the money lands in the same balance.

The point is unlinkability. If you give one subaddress to an exchange and a different one to a friend, nobody looking at those two addresses can tell they belong to the same wallet. Cake Wallet, Feather and the official GUI all generate a fresh one with a single tap.

3. Integrated address: starts with 4, 106 characters

An integrated address is a standard address with a short 8-byte payment ID stuck on. Exchanges used to rely on these so they could tell which deposit belonged to which customer without giving each person a separate address. They're 106 characters long and still begin with 4, which is why people sometimes mix them up with standard addresses. Count the length if you're unsure.

These days most services have moved to subaddresses instead. You'll still run into integrated addresses on older platforms, and if a service asks you to use one, use exactly the one they give you.

Cheat sheet: prefixes and lengths

Why your wallet keeps showing a new address

If you open your wallet's receive screen twice and see two different addresses, nothing is broken. Most modern Monero wallets show a fresh subaddress each time on purpose. Old ones keep working forever, so there's no need to worry about a payment sent to an address you used last month.

It's also worth knowing that even when you reuse the same address, nobody can see incoming payments on the blockchain. Monero uses one-time stealth addresses, so every payment goes to a unique output that only your view key can recognise. The address you share is more like an instruction for how to pay you than a public account number. We cover what can and can't be traced in Is Monero traceable?

Mistakes that cost people XMR

• Clipboard malware. Some malware watches your clipboard and swaps any crypto address for the attacker's. Because Monero addresses are long, people tend to check only the first few characters. Check the first six and the last six, every time.
• Sending to a testnet address. Addresses starting with 9, A, B, 5 or 7 are for test networks. A mainnet wallet should refuse them, but some services don't validate properly.
• Dropping the payment ID. If an older exchange gives you a standard address plus a separate payment ID and you leave the ID out, your deposit may not be credited automatically. You'll be stuck with support tickets.
• Copying from a chat app. Messaging apps sometimes add line breaks or hidden characters when they wrap long text. Paste into a plain text field first and make sure it's one unbroken string.
• Confusing XMR with wrapped tokens. There's no such thing as "Monero on Ethereum" with a 0x address. If someone gives you a 0x address and says it's for XMR, stop.

How to check an address before you send

1. Look at the first character: 4 or 8 for mainnet.
2. Check the length: 95 for standard and sub, 106 for integrated. Pasting into any character counter takes five seconds.
3. Compare the first and last six characters against the source.
4. For larger amounts, send a small test first. Monero blocks come roughly every two minutes, and most wallets show the funds after 10 confirmations, so a test costs you about 20 minutes and a tiny fee.
5. When swapping into XMR, paste the address into the swap form, then re-check it on the confirmation screen before you send your deposit.

Don't have a wallet yet? Our walkthrough on how to set up a Monero wallet gets you from zero to your first subaddress in about ten minutes.

FAQ

How many characters is a Monero address?

Standard addresses and subaddresses are 95 characters. Integrated addresses are 106.

What does a Monero address start with?

On mainnet, a standard or integrated address starts with 4 and a subaddress starts with 8.

Is it safe to share my Monero address?

Yes. An address only lets people send to you. Nobody can see your balance or incoming payments from it. Use a different subaddress for each sender if you don't want them linked to each other.

Can I reuse a Monero subaddress?

You can, and payments will still arrive. Reuse just means the person paying you can recognise it's the same recipient, so for privacy, give each counterparty its own.

What happens if I send XMR to the wrong address?

If the address is valid but not yours, the funds are gone. There's no way to reverse a Monero transaction. If it's invalid, your wallet will reject it before anything is sent.