Sparrow Wallet

Sparrow is a desktop application for holding and spending bitcoin. Its site describes it as a wallet for people who "value financial self sovereignty", with an emphasis on security, privacy and usability. It handles bitcoin only and has no token.

Sparrow is an open-source project rather than a company product. The site's footer reads "© 2026 Sparrow Wallet" and names no legal entity, and the code is licensed under Apache 2.0. Releases are signed by Craig Raw, whose PGP key the download page publishes, and he is the main contributor on GitHub; conference bios describe him as the project's developer. We found no published funding, ownership or office details, which is common for single-developer Bitcoin software but means there is no company to hold accountable.

The first public build, v0.5, appeared on GitHub on 12 April 2020, and version 1.0.0 followed on 28 January 2021. The project has shipped about 80 releases since.

Sparrow keeps keys, or watches hardware wallet keys, on your computer and talks to the Bitcoin network through a server you choose. The options are a public Electrum server, your own Bitcoin Core node, or a private Electrum server; the documentation recommends Fulcrum for speed. Connections can run over Tor, which is built in. Using a public server is easier but lets that server see which addresses are yours, which is why the documentation spends so much time on connecting to your own node.

Its interface exposes details that simpler wallets hide. You choose which coins (UTXOs) to spend, set the fee rate, label transactions, inputs and outputs, and inspect any transaction in a built-in editor that doubles as a block explorer.

• Wallet types: single-signature and multisig on the common script types, including taproot.
• Hardware wallets: USB and air-gapped signing with PSBTs, including Ledger, Trezor, Blockstream Jade, BitBox02, Coldcard, Passport and Keycard, plus Tapsigner and Satscard NFC cards. Release 2.5.3 added the ERA hardware wallet.
• Privacy tools: PayNym (BIP47) payments, payjoin, a "fake two person coinjoin" spending pattern, and silent payments.
• Networks: mainnet plus testnet, testnet4, signet and regtest for testing.

Sparrow is an on-chain wallet. Its documentation describes no Lightning payments; the only Lightning-related item in its release history is support for LNURL-auth logins, added in 2022. For background on when several keys make sense, see do you need a multisig wallet.

Older guides describe Sparrow as a Whirlpool coinjoin client. That is no longer true. Version 1.9.0, released on 25 April 2024, removed the Whirlpool client and the related Soroban features in a one-line change note. The FAQ still mentions "postmix" wallets left over from Whirlpool, which use a default gap limit of 40.

The privacy work has moved to silent payments, a scheme that lets someone publish one static address without every payment landing on the same on-chain address. Sparrow 2.3.0 (October 2025) added sending to silent payment addresses, 2.4.0 (February 2026) added the PSBT fields hardware wallets need to sign such payments, and 2.5.0 (May 2026) added receiving wallets, including with air-gapped signers. Receiving requires a server that can scan for these payments; Sparrow adds frigate.2140.dev as a public option and selects it automatically when needed.

Sparrow is free to download and use. Its site and documentation mention no fee, subscription or premium tier, and the wallet does not route trades or sell bitcoin, so there is no spread to hide a charge in. The only costs are Bitcoin miner fees, which you set yourself with a fee slider fed by mempool.space or another source you pick. Replace-By-Fee and Child Pays for Parent are supported for transactions that get stuck.

Sparrow's design is sound for self-custody: it is open source, the keys stay on your machine or on a hardware wallet, and it can work entirely through your own node. We found no reported hack or loss caused by a Sparrow bug in searches in October 2026. Recent releases have tightened hardware wallet handling, for example making anti-klepto mandatory on the BitBox02 and checking that scanned transactions match the PSBT that produced them.

The practical risks are the ones that come with any desktop wallet. A compromised computer can attack a hot wallet held in Sparrow, which is why pairing it with a hardware wallet is the common setup. A fake download is the other main threat.

• Download only from sparrowwallet.com or the GitHub releases page.
• Verify the download. Sparrow 1.8.3 and later can check a new installer from its own Tools menu; otherwise use GPG with Craig Raw's key and compare SHA-256 hashes against the signed manifest.
• Back up the recovery phrase offline; for multisig, also back up the wallet's output descriptor, which Sparrow can export as a QR code or file.

For how Sparrow sits next to other software wallets, see Sparrow among other software wallets.

Setup starts on the download page, where you pick the build for your system: a .dmg for Apple silicon or Intel Macs, an .msi or standalone .zip for Windows, or .deb, .rpm or .tar.gz packages for Linux. Users on macOS 10.13 to 10.15 are pointed to the older 1.x series. Sparrow Server is a separate build for headless Linux machines such as home nodes.

After installing, you connect to a server, then create a software wallet or import a hardware wallet's public key. The quick start guide and the hardware wallet guides cover each device. Sparrow can also recover SLIP39 share backups, added in version 2.0.0.

Because Sparrow uses standard derivation paths and exports output descriptors, leaving means restoring the same phrase or descriptor in another wallet. Desktop users who want a lighter Bitcoin wallet often compare it with Electrum, which also connects to Electrum servers.

Sparrow has no support team, no phone number and no ticket system. The documentation points users to a community-managed Telegram group and asks that bugs be reported as GitHub issues, with the sparrow.log file attached. Anyone offering Sparrow support by phone or private message, or asking for a recovery phrase, is not part of the project. The official X account is @SparrowWallet.