LND Channel Rebalancing -- Keep Liquidity Balanced

Why Rebalance?

Channels become unbalanced over time: all funds on one side means you cannot route payments in that direction. Rebalancing moves liquidity from where you have too much to where you have too little.

Check Balance

lncli listchannels | grep -E "remote_balance|local_balance|channel_point"

Circular Rebalance with bos

# Install balance-of-satoshis
npm i -g balanceofsatoshis

# Rebalance from channel A to channel B
bos rebalance --out <out_peer_pubkey> --in <in_peer_pubkey> --max-fee-rate 500 --max-rebalance 100000

Manual Circular Payment via lncli

# Create invoice on your own node
lncli addinvoice --amt 100000

# Pay it routing via specific channel
lncli payinvoice --outgoing_chan_id <chan_id> <payment_request>

Set Max Fee

Always set --max-fee-rate to avoid expensive rebalances. A fee rate of 500 ppm means you pay 0.05% per rebalance.

Automate with bos scheduled-rebalance

bos scheduled-rebalance --cron "0 */6 * * *" --out <pubkey> --in <pubkey>

Common Errors

- "no route found" — try lower amount or different peer

- "fee too high" — increase --max-fee-rate or try different path

- "channel inactive" — peer is offline, pick another channel