How Much XRP Does Ripple Unlock Each Month, and What Stays?

Ripple releases a total of 1 billion XRP from on-ledger escrow on the first day of every month and re-locks most of it, so the amount that actually reaches circulation is smaller than the monthly headline. As of 30 September 2026, Ripple's own website listed 31,700,000,000 XRP placed in escrow, 36,809,481,946 XRP held by Ripple and 63,176,123,712 XRP distributed.

The escrow does not create or destroy XRP. It caps how much new XRP can enter circulation each month, which is why the release, the re-lock and the running escrow balance are three different numbers.

Key Facts

• Ripple locked 55 billion XRP, 55% of the total possible supply, into on-ledger escrows "to provide additional predictability to the XRP supply" (ripple.com).
• Those escrows "release a total of one billion XRP each month over the next 55 months," giving an upper limit on new XRP entering circulation (ripple.com).
• As of 30 September 2026, Ripple's website listed 31,700,000,000 XRP placed in escrow, 36,809,481,946 XRP held by Ripple and 63,176,123,712 XRP distributed (ripple.com).
• Any XRP left over each month is re-escrowed, into a contract that releases "in the first month in which no escrow currently releases" (ripple.com).

One Billion XRP a Month, Set in Late 2017

Ripple built the escrow as 55 separate contracts of 1 billion XRP each, expiring on the first day of every month from month 0 to 54 (ripple.com). The program dates to late 2017.

Each month's release is the ceiling, not the net. Ripple said it would "return whatever is unused at the end of each month to the back of the escrow rotation," an instruction that keeps the schedule running well past the original 55 months (ripple.com). Ripple's first-quarter 2025 Markets Report, its last in that format, described escrow lockups released "each month over the next 42 months" (ripple.com).

When it set up the escrow, Ripple offered its own comparison: it "has sold on average 300M XRP per month for the past 18 months" (ripple.com). Re-locking the unused portion keeps the monthly net closer to that pace than to the 1 billion released.

A dated view of the setup:

• Late 2017: Ripple escrows 55 billion XRP in 55 contracts of 1 billion each.
• The first of every month: the contracts release 1 billion XRP into Ripple's account.
• Within days: Ripple returns the unused XRP to new escrows.
• Through Q1 2025: Ripple publishes quarterly XRP Markets Reports with its holdings.
• From Q2 2025: Ripple sunset the report, keeping XRP holdings on its website instead.
• 30 September 2026: the latest holdings figure on that page.

How Much Goes Back Into Escrow

Ripple's own account of the mechanism is short: "The remaining XRP released is put back into the escrow each month" (ripple.com). There is one stated exception: when Ripple transfers XRP to third parties such as ETPs and trusts that it "reasonably expects to maintain in its holdings," Ripple says "a reduced amount of XRP may be returned to escrow that month" (ripple.com).

That gap is where the net release lives, and Ripple does not publish it monthly. On-chain trackers that read validated XRP Ledger data fill it in: the re-lock tends to land within roughly 24 to 72 hours of the release, and the amount returned has historically run between 600 million and 800 million XRP. Subtracting that from 1 billion leaves a net that has generally run 200 million to 300 million XRP a month, and in December 2025, roughly 70% of the unlocked tokens went straight back into escrow.

Those ranges come from ledger tracking, not from Ripple's filings. No independently verified net release figure for September, October or November 2026 has been established.

What Ripple's Own Numbers Say Is Left

Ripple reports its XRP holdings on the last day of each quarter, split between XRP available in its wallets and XRP under on-ledger escrow, and it does not have access to escrowed XRP until each monthly release, as its own pages state (ripple.com). Its published figures:

The three rows do not measure the same thing. In the Markets Reports, "held by Ripple" means XRP in its wallets, with escrow counted separately (ripple.com). On the website, the "held" figure covers escrowed XRP too: held and distributed together account for the whole supply, so the jump in "held" between March 2025 and September 2026 is a change of scope, not a surge of new XRP into Ripple's wallets.

What is comparable is the escrow line: 38,030,000,005 XRP at 31 December 2024, 37,130,000,005 at 31 March 2025 and 31,700,000,000 by 30 September 2026.

The Ledger Enforces the Lock

Three transaction types run the system. EscrowCreate locks XRP into a ledger entry with a source account, a destination account and release conditions. EscrowFinish delivers the locked XRP to the destination once those conditions are met. EscrowCancel returns the XRP to the source if the escrow expires unfinished.

Two consequences matter for reading the monthly numbers. An EscrowFinish delivers XRP to its designated account; it does not automatically send tokens to an exchange, a buyer or a liquidity provider, so a release on its own cannot show how much reached the market. And Ripple cannot bring a release forward: the ledger rejects any attempt to finish a time-based escrow before its specified date.

Why the Third-Party Totals Disagree

Ripple does not publish a monthly ledger escrow balance, so anyone tracking the total has to read the ledger themselves, and those readings do not agree. A tracker of validated ledger data put escrow near 31.28 billion XRP after the 1 September 2026 release, down from about 32.28 billion before it. Other independent estimates have ranged much wider, up to near 38 billion XRP.

None of those figures could be reconciled with each other, or with Ripple's 31,700,000,000 as of 30 September 2026. The most recent scheduled release, on 1 November 2026, was logged as two transfers of 500 million XRP, worth about $1.25 billion at the time.

What Would Change the Answer

Two dated events will move the picture, and one gap would settle it.

• 1 December 2026: the next scheduled monthly release of 1 billion XRP, followed by the re-lock within days.
• 31 December 2026: Ripple's next quarter-end holdings figure, when the escrow line on its website updates from the 30 September 2026 reading.
• A first-party monthly escrow total from Ripple, if it ever publishes one, would end the disagreement between trackers.
• A verified net release for September, October or November 2026 would replace the historical 200 million to 300 million XRP a month range with a current number.

Until one of those lands, the release is the loud number and the re-lock is the quiet one, and the difference between them is the only figure that says how much XRP actually moved into circulation.