Introduction
One of the major pain points of Monero is restoring an old wallet. Today, I will compare the speed of three popular Monero wallets to check which one is the fastest at restoring.
Test data
Date of test: 2025-12-10
Device: Samsung Galaxy A56 (Exynos 1580, 8 GB RAM, mid-range 2025 phone)
Connection: Local Monero full node over Wi-Fi (same LAN, Using Deco S7)
Wallet: Legacy 25-word seed created in December 2024 (~1 year old, moderate transaction history)
Goal: Full restore + sync from my restore height with each wallet to see real-world performance on a typical self-hosted setup in 2025.
The contenders
| Wallet | Version | Restore height method | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cake Wallet | 5.6.2 | Legacy 25-word | Official multi-coin wallet |
| Stack Wallet | 2.4.2 | Legacy 25-word | Privacy-focused, Bitcoin-first but good XMR support |
| Monerujo | 4.1.7 (Exolix build) | Legacy 25-word | Long-time Android-only Monero favorite |
Results
| Wallet | Total time to full sync | Behavior at 90–100% | Screen stay-on? | Finished? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monerujo | 21 minutes 45 seconds | Steady speed, no slowdown | No | Yes | Absolutely crushed it |
| Cake Wallet | 40 minutes and 13 seconds | Very slow after ~90%, ETA broken | Yes (huge W) | Yes | Got there, but it was a bit slow |
| Stack Wallet | Gave up after ~1 hour 16 minutes | Crawled after 98%, resync didn’t help | No | No | Stuck forever around 98–99% |
Detailed observations
Monerujo 4.1.7 – The clear winner
- Started scanning instantly
- Progress was smooth and predictable the entire time
- Never slowed down, even in the final 10%
- Just worked. 21m45s from entering the 25th word to “synchronized”.
- Does NOT prevent screen timeout → Android kept suspending the process
Cake Wallet 5.6.2 – It gets there… eventually
- Restore started fine
- ETA counter was not precise (showed 2 minutes for 30 minutes)
- Massive slowdown after ~90%
- Kept screen on the entire time ← this alone probably saved the sync from dying
- Eventually finished
Stack Wallet 2.4.2 – Disappointing
- Actually started the fastest of all three
- Flew to 98% in ~25 minutes… then died
- Speed dropped
- Restarting the app resumed at 98.49% but didn’t fix the crawl
- Tried using the "Resync" button – no improvement
- Does NOT prevent screen timeout → Android kept suspending the process
- Abandoned after 1+ hours of no meaningful progress
Conclusion: Monerujo is the fastest in 2025
If you want to restore an old Monero wallet on a phone using your own node in 2025, the answer is crystal clear:
Monerujo is in a completely different league.
Cake Wallet is still very usable and has an amazin UI/polish, but the sync performance lag is real. Stack Wallet unfortunately seems broken/super slow for large restores right now
Shoutout to the Monerujo dev(s) — whatever witchcraft you did with the scanning engine, thank you. Privacy on mobile just became faster.
Tested on 2025-12-10 with a local node. Your mileage may vary with transaction count, but the relative ordering should hold.