How to Backup a Ledger: The 24 Word Guide

By Simon Bumford, Founder · 2026-07-29 · 9 min read

Learn how to backup a Ledger properly: the 24 word recovery phrase, where to store it, restoring on a new device, and the honest take on Ledger Recover.

How to backup a Ledger: the short answer

If you own a Ledger, your backup already exists: it is the 24 word recovery phrase the device showed you when you first set it up. Those words are the master key to every coin the device controls. Back them up properly and you can lose, break or replace the Ledger itself without losing a penny. Backing up properly means writing the 24 words by hand, in order, on paper or metal, and storing them somewhere safe and offline. It means never typing them into a computer or phone, never photographing them, and never putting them in cloud storage, email or a password manager. Ledger will never ask you for them, and neither will anyone honest. The rest of this guide covers where those words come from, how to store them well, and what to do when things go wrong: a lost device, a broken device, a stolen device, or a phishing email that nearly got you. If you want the brand-agnostic version of the same advice, see our general guide to backing up a hardware wallet.

Your keys, not your coins: what a Ledger actually stores

A common worry runs like this: if my crypto is on the Ledger and the Ledger dies, is my crypto gone? The reassuring answer is that your crypto was never on the Ledger. Bitcoin only ever exists on the Bitcoin network. What the Ledger holds is your private keys, the secret numbers that let you spend those coins, and it keeps them inside a certified secure element chip so they never touch your internet-connected computer. The 24 word recovery phrase is a human-readable copy of the master secret your keys are derived from. Restore those words into a new device and it regenerates exactly the same keys, and therefore control of exactly the same coins. That is why a backup works at all. It also cuts the other way. Anyone who reads your 24 words can regenerate those same keys from anywhere in the world, with no PIN and no Ledger required. Every rule in this guide exists because of that one fact. For the broader principles behind self-custody, our security guide covers them in plain English.

Which Ledger do you have? The current models

Ledger currently sells five devices, and they all back up in exactly the same way, so nothing in this guide depends on which one you own. The Nano S Plus (listed at about $79 and often discounted) is the cheapest, a USB-only device with no wireless radios. The Nano X (about $99 on the official store at the time of writing) is the oldest current model, with Bluetooth and the same small two-button screen. The Nano Gen5 (about $179, launched October 2025) added a larger E Ink touchscreen, and the Flex (about $249) and Stax (about $399) are the bigger touchscreen models. All ship to the UK from the official Ledger store. Two recent changes are worth knowing. In October 2025 Ledger renamed its companion app from Ledger Live to Ledger Wallet, so older guides mentioning Ledger Live are describing the same app. And the touchscreen models now come bundled with the Ledger Recovery Key, a PIN protected NFC card that carries a backup of your seed. It is convenient, but it is another object that holds your keys, so it needs the same physical security as your written words. If you still use an original Nano S, it was discontinued in 2022 and support wound down by spring 2025. Migrate to a current device rather than relying on it.

How to back up your Ledger 24 words, step by step

When you set up a Ledger as a new device, it generates your 24 words inside the secure chip and shows them on its own screen, one at a time. That screen is the only place they should ever appear. Write each word by hand, in order and clearly, on the recovery sheet in the box, and double-check the spelling as you go. The device then quizzes you on some of the words to confirm you copied them correctly. Three rules protect that backup for life. Never type the words into a computer or phone: no app, website or 'validation' tool has a good reason to ask, and the Ledger Wallet app never will. Never photograph them: a photo syncs to clouds and backups you do not control. And never store them in email, notes apps or a password manager, because that turns an offline secret into something hackable. If you set your Ledger up years ago and are not sure where your sheet is, treat that as urgent. Find it and check that all 24 words are legible and in order. If you cannot find it, set up a fresh wallet on a reset device, back up the new words properly, and move your coins across, verifying the receive address on the device's own screen and sending a small test amount first.

Where should I store my Ledger recovery phrase?

Paper is fine to start with, but paper burns, fades and gets thrown out in house moves. For any meaningful sum, stamp or engrave the words into a metal backup plate, which survives fire and flood. Plenty of vendors sell these; what matters is that the words end up in metal, offline and legible. Store the backup somewhere a burglar would not casually find, and never in the same drawer as the Ledger itself, because a thief who gets both gets everything. Many UK holders keep one copy at home in a safe and a second copy somewhere else entirely, for example with a solicitor or in a bank deposit box. If you make two copies, both must be complete: splitting the words in half across two places sounds clever, but it weakens your security and doubles your chance of losing access. Avoid labelling the backup 'Ledger' or 'bitcoin'. And if you use the optional passphrase feature that Ledger devices support, remember the passphrase is part of the backup too. Lose it, and the 24 words alone will not recover the funds it protects.

If I lose my Ledger, do I lose my crypto?

No. Losing the device loses nothing, as long as you have your 24 words. Buy a new Ledger, choose the restore option during setup, and enter the words on the device itself, using its buttons or touchscreen rather than a computer keyboard. The new device regenerates your keys, and your balances reappear once the app resyncs. The 24 words follow an industry standard, so in a pinch they can also be restored into other hardware wallets, such as a Trezor (our Trezor backup guide covers that side of the fence), or into reputable software wallets. Be careful with the software route: typing seed words into a phone or computer exposes them to that machine, so treat it as an emergency measure, not a convenience, and move the funds to a freshly generated wallet afterwards. If your Ledger was stolen rather than lost, the PIN stands between the thief and your coins, but do not lean on it. Restore your words onto a new device, then send everything to a brand-new wallet with a brand-new phrase, verifying each address on the device screen and testing with a small amount first.

Is Ledger Recover safe? The honest take

Ledger Recover is an optional subscription, about $9.99 a month, that encrypts your seed, splits it into three fragments and stores them with three separate custodians. To restore, you pass an identity check and the fragments are reassembled onto a Ledger device. For someone who genuinely cannot keep 24 words safe, that is a real safety net. So why do many security-conscious users decline it? When Recover was announced in May 2023 the backlash was severe, because it demonstrated that Ledger's firmware can be written to export the seed from the secure element, something years of marketing had implied was impossible. Ledger conceded in a much-quoted tweet that this had always been technically possible, and security experts raised doubts at the time. The episode permanently changed how careful users view the closed-source parts of Ledger's software. The service is opt-in and off by default, and declining it costs you nothing. Our honest take: a well-made metal backup in a sensible location does the same job with no monthly fee, no identity records linked to your coins, and no third parties to trust. One point of naming confusion to avoid: Recover, the subscription, is not the same thing as the Recovery Key, the physical NFC card bundled with newer devices.

Why do Ledger owners get so many scam emails?

In July 2020, Ledger's e-commerce and marketing database was breached. Around one million email addresses were stolen, along with roughly 272,000 detailed records including names, home addresses and phone numbers, and in December 2020 the whole dataset was dumped publicly online. Then in January 2026 Ledger notified customers that Global-e, a third-party payment partner, had been breached, again exposing names, emails, postal addresses and phone numbers. No keys or wallet data were involved in either incident, but the result is that a great many Ledger customers are personally identifiable as crypto owners. That is why Ledger owners receive so much convincing phishing: emails, texts, even letters claiming your wallet needs 'validation' or your device has been 'compromised'. The answer never changes. Ledger will never ask for your 24 words, and nothing legitimate ever will. Treat every message that claims to come from a wallet company as hostile until proven otherwise; Trezor customers have had their data leaked too, so this is not a one-brand problem. One line for completeness: in December 2023 attackers briefly poisoned a piece of Ledger software code used by third-party crypto websites, draining about $600,000 from users before a fix went out in about 40 minutes. The lesson is old but good: trust what your device's screen shows, not what your browser shows.

Never buy a second-hand Ledger

Buy a Ledger only from the official store at shop.ledger.com or an official reseller. Never buy second-hand, however tempting the discount. Tampered devices are a real risk, and a doctored device, or a 'helpful' recovery sheet with the words already filled in, means the seller held your keys before you did. A genuine, factory-fresh Ledger always generates its 24 words in front of you at first setup. If a device arrives with words already chosen, or a scratch card that reveals them, do not send a single satoshi to it. The same caution applies when you replace an old device, including a retired original Nano S: buy new, from the official channel, every time. And if your coins are still sitting on an exchange rather than on any hardware wallet, that is the bigger risk to fix first. Our guide to moving coins from Coinbase to a hardware wallet walks through the whole process, including verifying the receive address on the device screen and sending a small test amount before the rest.

The backup that survives you

There is one failure mode that metal plates cannot fix: you. A perfect 24 word backup protects you while you are alive, well and able to remember where it is. If you die or lose capacity, and nobody you trust knows the backup exists, where it lives, or what those strange words even mean, your coins are as gone as if the plate had melted. No probate court, solicitor or support team can regenerate a seed phrase, and this quiet kind of loss happens far more often than theft. The fix is not technical. It is a plan another person can follow at the worst moment of their lives, without you there to explain it. That is exactly what crypto inheritance planning is for. And if you would like to know how your current setup would actually hold up, our free inheritance scorecard takes a few minutes and gives you an honest answer.