LND High Fee Pathfinding — Reduce Routing Costs with Mission Control

LND's pathfinder sometimes picks expensive routes. Here's how to tune Mission Control and fee limits to reduce routing costs.

Check current fee limits

# See what you paid in fees recently
lncli listpayments | python3 -c "
import json, sys
d = json.load(sys.stdin)
payments = d.get('payments', [])
for p in sorted(payments, key=lambda x: -int(x.get('fee', 0)))[:10]:
    amt = int(p.get('value', 0))
    fee = int(p.get('fee', 0))
    if amt > 0:
        ppm = fee * 1_000_000 // amt if amt else 0
        print(f'Paid {fee} sats fee on {amt} sats = {ppm} ppm')
"

Set fee limits when sending

# Send with max fee limit (sats)
lncli sendpayment --pay_req <INVOICE> --fee_limit 10

# Send with max fee as percentage (fee_limit_sat)
# 0.5% of payment amount:
lncli sendpayment --pay_req <INVOICE> --fee_limit_sat $((AMOUNT * 5 / 1000))

# For lnpay/bos style:
bos send <PUBKEY> --amount 100000 --max-fee 200  # max 200 sats fee

Reset Mission Control (clear bad route history)

# Mission Control remembers failed routes and penalizes them
# If it's too conservative, reset it:
lncli resetmc

# Query current Mission Control state
lncli querymc | python3 -c "
import json, sys
d = json.load(sys.stdin)
pairs = d.get('pairs', [])
print(f'MC has {len(pairs)} node pair records')
# Show pairs with recent failures
for p in pairs[:5]:
    print(p.get('node_from', '')[:8], '->', p.get('node_to', '')[:8])
"

Tune pathfinding config in lnd.conf

[Routing]
# How much to trust MC history (0=ignore, 1=full trust)
routing.assumechanvalid=false

# Pathfinding algorithm
routing.pathfindingconfig.attemptcost=100        # sats to try a route
routing.pathfindingconfig.attemptcostppm=1000    # ppm equivalent
routing.pathfindingconfig.minprobability=0.01    # try routes with >1% success chance

# Increase for more reliable routes (higher fees ok)
# Decrease for cheaper routes (more retries ok)
routing.pathfindingconfig.minprobability=0.001

Need routing optimization help? $9

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