Vanity Address Difficulty Calculator
Calculate how many attempts and how much time a vanity address with a given prefix requires, at your hardware rate, and see why the difficulty grows sixteenfold per character.
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Each additional character multiplies the work by sixteen
An Ethereum address is forty hexadecimal characters, so matching a prefix of n characters requires on average 16 to the n attempts, each of which is a key generation and a hash. Four characters is about 65,000 attempts and takes no time at all; eight is four billion; twelve is close to three hundred trillion. The curve is why a six-character vanity address is a novelty and a twelve-character one is a project, and why the jump between them feels sudden: it is a factor of sixteen million.
Case sensitivity multiplies the difficulty again
Matching a case-sensitive prefix under EIP-55 requires the checksum case to match as well as the characters, which roughly doubles the work for each letter in the prefix. Digits carry no case and cost nothing extra. A prefix of six letters is therefore about sixty-four times harder case-sensitively than case-insensitively, which is a larger effect than most people expect from what looks like a cosmetic preference.
Never let anyone else generate the key
A vanity address is only as safe as the key behind it, and a third-party generator that returns a private key has had that key. The split-key method exists precisely so that a service can do the searching without ever seeing the final key: you generate a keypair, the service searches for an offset that produces a matching address, and you combine the two locally. Any service that simply hands you a finished private key should be assumed to have kept a copy, and vanity addresses generated this way have been drained years later.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much harder is each extra character?
Sixteen times, because each hexadecimal position has sixteen possibilities. Four characters take about 65,000 attempts, eight take four billion, and twelve take close to three hundred trillion.
Does case sensitivity matter?
Substantially. Matching the EIP-55 checksum case roughly doubles the work per letter, so a six-letter prefix is about sixty-four times harder case-sensitively. Digits carry no case and cost nothing.
Is a vanity address less secure?
Not in itself, if you generated the key. The private key is as random as any other. The risk is entirely in who did the searching.
Can I safely use a vanity address service?
Only with the split-key method, where you generate a keypair, the service finds an offset, and you combine them locally. A service that returns a finished private key has had that key, and addresses obtained that way have been drained years later.
Is a suffix easier than a prefix?
No, the arithmetic is identical. Matching both a prefix and a suffix multiplies the two difficulties together, which is why combined patterns get expensive very quickly.
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How to Use
Enter the prefix you want and your search rate.
Disclaimer: This tool is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Results are for educational and utility purposes.