OUT_OF_ENERGY: why a USDT transfer on TRON fails

Updated 26 October 2026. Figures checked on TRON mainnet transactions and network parameters.

Short answer

OUT_OF_ENERGY means the transaction ran out of energy before the transfer finished. There are two causes: the address has too little TRX (or energy), or the wallet's fee limit is too low. Whatever the failed attempt spent is not refunded, so fix the cause before you retry.

What happened

A USDT transfer on TRON is a smart-contract call. It uses 64,285 energy if the recipient already holds USDT and 130,285 if it doesn't. Energy comes from the address's resources; when there is none, the network burns TRX at 100 sun per unit: 6.43 TRX or 13.03 TRX per transfer. If energy runs out before the call finishes, the transaction is reverted with OUT_OF_ENERGY: your USDT stays where it was, but the energy and TRX spent on the attempt are gone.

Cause 1: too little TRX on the address

The classic case: the wallet holds USDT but less TRX than the transfer costs. The network burns what it can and still falls short. With 3 TRX on the balance, for example, the transfer gets about 30,000 energy out of the 64,285 it needs.

Fix: top the address up to at least 6.43 TRX (13.03 TRX if the recipient has never held USDT), or put energy on it before sending: buy it, rent it or stake for it.

Cause 2: the fee limit is too low

The fee limit is the most TRX a transaction may spend, and it also caps all the energy it may use, delegated energy included: a limit of N TRX allows at most N × 10,000 units. We checked this on mainnet on 27 October 2026: a transfer with a 5 TRX limit failed at 50,000 energy even though the address had energy, and burned 1.775 TRX.

Fix: keep the limit at 7 TRX or higher, and at 14 TRX or higher when the recipient has no USDT. If you send from your own code or changed wallet settings by hand, check this field first.

How to see what happened to your transfer

Open the transaction on tronscan.org. The result line says OUT_OF_ENERGY, and the resources section shows how much energy was used and how much TRX was burned. If exactly limit × 10,000 units were used, the fee limit was the cause; if almost all the TRX on the address was burned, the balance was.

How not to hit it again

Keep enough TRX or energy on the sending address, and keep the fee limit at 7 TRX or more. If you send USDT often, energy is cheaper than burning: hourly rentals on the cheapest markets cost 1.03–1.54 TRX per transfer, and Quietfee sells it at 2.51 TRX per transfer with payment in USDT from any network or exchange. Check how much your address overpays.

See what your own address burns

Paste it into the calculator — it takes under a minute.

Open the calculator