How much does it cost to trace stolen crypto?
There is no sticker price for tracing stolen crypto, and any firm that hands you one before looking at your case is guessing or fishing. That is the honest short version. The longer version is worth reading, because how a firm answers the price question is often the first tell of whether you are talking to a real investigator or the next person lining up to take your money.
Why there is no flat rate
Tracing is investigative work, not a product on a shelf. What it costs turns on the shape of your case: how many transactions are involved, how many wallets the money bounced through, whether it ran through a mixer, and how fast it reached an exchange. One payment that moved a single time is a short job. A loss dribbled out across months of deposits, hopping between coins and chains, is a long one. Nobody can price that fairly without seeing your transaction detail first.
What the fee actually buys
You are paying for a person’s hours and tools to follow your money across the blockchain and write up where it went. The report is the deliverable. Done right, it points to the exchange where the funds cashed out, which is the thing law enforcement or a lawyer needs before anyone can move. What you are not buying is the coins reappearing in your wallet. A trace reveals the path; it does not reverse the payment, and anyone who lets those two blur together is selling relief, not a service.
On the numbers themselves: most legitimate investigators charge a flat fee for a defined job, or an hourly retainer for something open-ended. A basic trace and report on a single loss tends to land somewhere in the low hundreds to low thousands, depending on how tangled the trail is. The pricing model to distrust is the one that wants a percentage of whatever gets “recovered” — that quietly promises recovery, and recovery is the one thing no honest firm can guarantee.
The one charge that means walk away
There is a single request that should end the conversation on the spot. If someone wants an upfront payment in crypto or gift cards in exchange for getting your money back, that is a recovery scam, not a trace. The FTC is clear that a genuine refund never costs you more money upfront, and the FBI has warned that nearly everyone burned in a crypto scam is later approached by a fake recovery operation. The “release fee,” the “tax” you have to clear before funds arrive, the refundable “bond” that is never refunded — same hook, different hat each time.
The honest limit is worth stating plainly before you spend anything. A trace can very often follow the money to the exchange where it cashed out. What happens after that depends on things no investigator controls: how fast you reported, whether that exchange cooperates, whether the account is still funded, whether law enforcement picks it up. For plenty of individual victims the trail ends at a documented report and nothing comes back. That is not a reason to skip the work when the loss is large. It is a reason to pay only for the work itself, with the outcome left honestly uncertain.
Before you hire anyone
Report the loss first at IC3.gov and ReportFraud.ftc.gov; a fast complaint gives any later tracing a better chance. Gather your transaction hashes, wallet addresses, and screenshots into one place so you are not reconstructing the story weeks later. Then, if the amount justifies it, ask an investigator for a defined trace with a written quote, and read the terms before you send a cent.
If your loss is smaller and you mainly want a paper trail, our Investigation Help page covers that kind of work. For larger five- and six-figure losses that need to hold up in court, we route to Rexxfield for court-grade fund tracing. Either way, know the price and what it buys before you commit, not after.
Asking what it costs is exactly the right question. Just make sure the answer comes back with a clear scope attached, and never with a guarantee.
— Lisa, GCCI