LND Channel Rebalancing Strategies -- Keep Liquidity Flowing

Channel rebalancing moves liquidity from outbound-heavy channels to inbound-heavy ones, keeping your node able to route payments in both directions.

Check Current Balances

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

Circular Rebalance with lncli

# Pay yourself via a circular route
lncli sendpayment --dest <your_pubkey> \
  --amt 500000 \
  --last_hop <channel_to_drain> \
  --outgoing_chan_id <channel_to_fill>

Using bos (Balance of Satoshis)

bos rebalance \
  --out <outbound_peer_pubkey> \
  --in <inbound_peer_pubkey> \
  --amount 1000000 \
  --max-fee-rate 200

Automated Rebalancing with charge-lnd

# Install
pip install charge-lnd

# Config: /etc/charge-lnd.conf
[default]
strategy = proportional
min_fee_rate = 50
max_fee_rate = 500
auto_rebalance = true
auto_rebalance_scale = 1.0

Key Principles

- Only rebalance if routing fees earned outweigh rebalancing cost

- Keep local:remote ratio between 20:80 and 80:20

- High-capacity channels to well-connected nodes rebalance more efficiently

Common Errors

- "insufficient local balance" — channel already drained, choose different outbound

- "no route found" — raise max fee rate or choose different channel pair

- Fee cost exceeds routing income — skip rebalancing, let organic traffic balance the channel