Best XRP Wallets in 2026: Xaman Alternatives Compared

Full disclosure: I am the founder of Katz Wallet, one of the wallets in this review. I have a stake here, and hiding it would be silly. So let's agree on the ground rules: I name verifiable facts, I keep them separate from personal opinion, and I do not tell you where to put your money.

I will compare four options for the XRP Ledger — Xaman, Joey Wallet, the browser-based GemWallet and Crossmark, and my own Katz Wallet. I am staying quiet about Girin Wallet and other alternatives — in my view they are, to put it mildly, not great.

Why did the topic of alternatives come up at all? A year and a half ago the question would have sounded strange. There was Xaman — and there was the rest of the market. Then everything changed in a single evening.

How Xaman went from the standard to a matter of dispute

The best product in the ecosystem lost part of the community's trust — not because of a hack, but because of the large fees it introduced. And it did not really tell the community about it (maybe some post went out, but people did not see it): users simply ran transactions and paid the fees. A small note: the fees were not even shown before signing — that only started appearing in later updates. In those few days the Xaman team earned an enormous amount.

The service fees came out like this: 0.8% on trading, swaps and AMM operations (minimum 0.09 XRP per transaction), a flat 0.09 XRP on a range of operations — including adding trust lines, NFT deals and account settings, 0.15 XRP on pathfinding payments, and a separate 0.1% fee on transfers above $50,000.

I have used Xaman since its first versions. From my own experience: it was a truly convenient product, and in many ways it still is. Five-plus years on the market, audited code, multisig, support for Tangem hardware cards. It would be dishonest to write that Xaman has security problems — it does not. And I like the founder a lot: he wrote the wallet's code himself, he is simply an XRP fanatic, the same as me. I shake his hand!

The problem is somewhere else. The community was not ready for the rules to change. Reviews started carrying lines like "they are stealing my XRP", the discussion spilled over into X, and I personally saw tons of negativity. Outlets such as MEXC News and AInvest picked the situation apart, and XRPL Commons publicly reminded everyone that nobody is holding users in place — alternatives exist. The Xaman team answered fairly: every fee is visible before the transaction is signed, nothing is deducted in secret. Formally, it is all clean. But the aftertaste stayed, because people had spent years building habits around a free tool.

Now the simple math. Take a trader with average activity: 20 swaps a month at $500 each. That is $10,000 of turnover and $80 of fees every month — about $960 a year. Add the flat charges on top: open 15 trust lines for new tokens in a month and that is another 1.35 XRP gone. For some people this is an acceptable price for infrastructure. For others it is a reason to leave — especially for the many XRP holders who believe XRP will be worth $1,000 a coin. Can you imagine their reaction?

I will admit my own mistake too. I barely counted what I was paying in fees myself, until one day I put three months of them into a single spreadsheet. The number turned out comparable to the price of a new phone. That evening was, in essence, the start of my own project. But more on that below.

First, let's look at who moved into the vacated space.

Joey Wallet: a breath of air

It may sound strange, but a wallet that passed an audit with one of the most respected security firms can still be a poor fit for some people because of its raw and unfamiliar design.

Joey appeared in 2025 and is closely tied to the team behind the DEX platform First Ledger — which openly promotes it as the "perfect pair" for its own venue. The project's bet is instant onboarding: an account is created in seconds, though the classic route of importing a seed phrase is available too. At launch Joey was practically free, and operations inside dApps go through without fees — for a retail user that looked like a breath of air after the news from Xaman.

Credit where it is due: in June 2025 the Joey team passed an audit with Least Authority, a firm with a serious reputation in the industry — they have reviewed Phantom, MetaMask and other wallets. That is a real argument, not a marketing sticker. As of mid-2025 the XRPL Ecosystem catalogue put Joey's base at seven and a half thousand installs — modest scale so far, but alive.

And what about people who do not want a mobile app at all?

Crossmark and GemWallet: browser extensions

A fact I still do not understand: part of the XRPL user base keeps choosing browser extensions. Crossmark and GemWallet are the main representatives of that camp. They are convenient for desktop scenarios: development, working with web versions of DEXs, quickly signing transactions right on the site.

My personal opinion — I do not trust browser wallets for permanent storage. Extensions live next to dozens of other extensions, phishing pages and the entire attack surface of the modern web. You will not take a laptop with you into the queue for coffee or into the bathroom; a phone, you will. For me a mobile app with hardware key storage beats a browser tab on both counts: availability and threat model.

The verdict on this branch is short. As a tool for specific tasks it will do, but as the main home for your assets — definitely not.

Katz Wallet: what I did differently

Active development started in the summer of 2025 on personal funds, with no investors and no token (there is none, and none is planned). The idea was broader than "one more clone": I wanted to build a gathering point for XRPL enthusiasts, an ecosystem rather than a list of balances. So that you could easily connect to any DEX (my favourite, by the way, is xMagnetic — it is the one I put on the token start page, and I know its founder through one handshake).

I paid particular attention to security — recovery by seed phrase only: no social logins and no cloud backups. Keys are stored in the device's hardware modules — Secure Enclave on iOS and StrongBox on Android (as of 2026 these modules are the most secure of everything that exists), and every transaction, including DEX and AMM trades, is signed locally on the phone.

And the thing it was all started for: no surprises in fees. For me XRPL has always meant ZERO fees (I am not promising it will stay that way forever). And of course no registration and no KYC, biometrics if you want them.

What is inside today:

• sending and receiving XRP and tokens, trust lines;
• built-in trading on the native XRPL DEX, AMM and swaps, NFTs, escrow — in general anything you like: it is enough to connect via WalletConnect to any venue in the ecosystem (personally I trade on xMagnetic);
• for newcomers there is a built-in learning academy — links to videos right inside the app (I am quite the fan of XRPL lore and all those conspiracy theories).

The app lives in the App Store and on Google Play, on iOS and Android.

The main feature, though, is Smart Money. As far as I know, we are the first to build in analytics of this class (the First Ledger team tried to do it before us with their XRPLens site, but it did not work out): tracking of large addresses, a ranking of top-performing traders by PnL, win rate and ROI, capital flows by token — where volume comes in and where it goes out.

The framing matters here: these are not signals and not advice. All the data is public and sits on the blockchain, we only make it readable. You can see when large holders are selling off a token or when liquidity is draining from a pair — and the decision always stays with you. I will put a detailed breakdown of Smart Money into a separate article.

And honesty in the other direction. Katz Wallet is a young, early-stage product. We do not have Xaman's five-year history or its audience, and we do not have a public audit report yet either. I am writing about this myself, deliberately, because trust in crypto is built on what you do not hide.

One more thing: I see a lot of visual rough edges in the app, and we will definitely be fixing them a bit later. Smart Money also does not reveal everything we have actually built — we have a much deeper analysis running, and it is not public for now.

All that is left is to put it into one table.

Quick comparison

Criterion	Katz Wallet	Xaman	Joey Wallet	GemWallet / Crossmark
Platforms	iOS and Android	iOS and Android	iOS and Android	Browser extensions
Wallet fees	None	0.8% on trading + flat fees on some operations	Changed over time — check current terms in the app	As a rule, none
Recovery	Seed phrase only	Seed phrase, hardware options	Mnemonic phrase	Seed phrase
WalletConnect	Yes	No (own signing system)	Yes	Partly, depends on the venue
In-app analytics	Smart Money + token pages	No	Token pages	No
Educational content	Built-in academy	No	No	No
Public audit	Not yet, internal only	Yes, over many years	Least Authority, 2025 (key management)	Depends on the project

The table is a snapshot as of July 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What fees does Xaman charge in 2026?

Xaman charges 0.8% on trading, swaps and AMM operations with a minimum of 0.09 XRP per transaction, a flat 0.09 XRP on a range of operations including trust lines, NFT deals and account settings, 0.15 XRP on pathfinding payments, and 0.1% on transfers above $50,000. Every fee is shown before you sign the transaction.

Which XRP wallet has no wallet fees?

Katz Wallet charges no wallet fees of its own, and browser extensions such as GemWallet and Crossmark as a rule do not either. You still pay the XRP Ledger network fee, which is a fraction of a cent. Joey Wallet's terms have changed over time, so check the current conditions inside the app.

Can I recover Katz Wallet without a seed phrase?

No. Katz Wallet supports recovery by seed phrase only — there are no social logins and no cloud backups. Keys are stored in the device hardware module, Secure Enclave on iOS and StrongBox on Android, and every transaction is signed locally. If the seed phrase is lost, access cannot be restored by anyone.

Has Joey Wallet been audited?

Yes. In June 2025 Joey Wallet passed an audit with Least Authority, a security firm that has also reviewed Phantom and MetaMask. The audit covered key management. As of mid-2025 the XRPL Ecosystem catalogue put Joey's install base at around seven and a half thousand.

Are browser extension wallets safe for storing XRP?

Browser extensions such as Crossmark and GemWallet are convenient for desktop work with DEX web interfaces, but they live next to dozens of other extensions and the full attack surface of the browser. For permanent storage a mobile wallet that keeps keys in a hardware module is the stronger option in this comparison.

How to choose (and why this is not advice)

There is no universal answer, and that is normal. There are four questions I would ask myself in your place. Who can restore access to my funds, and how? Where do the keys physically sit and what signs the transactions? How much will I actually pay with my style of use — count it over a quarter, not "by eye"?

Xaman remains a mature product with the longest history — at a price you now have to account for. Joey is good for a quick start with small amounts. Katz Wallet I built for those who need strict self-custody, analytics inside the app and predictable rules of the game.

Nothing here is financial advice: download them, touch them, compare for yourself. In the next article I will break down Smart Money: how tracking of large wallets works and what exactly is visible in the data.

See you around!