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Your recovery seed is the master key to every coin, token, and account protected by your Trezor. It is a sequence of 12 or 24 ordinary English words — chosen from the BIP-39 wordlist — that encodes your entire wallet. If your Trezor is lost, stolen, or destroyed, these words are the only thing standing between you and permanent loss of your funds. Protecting them is not a one-time task; it is an ongoing responsibility.
Your recovery seed is more valuable than the device itself. Anyone who obtains your seed words — in any form, in any order — can import your wallet into any BIP-39 compatible software or hardware wallet and transfer all your funds instantly. Never store your seed digitally. Never photograph it. Never send it over any network. Treat it the same way you would treat an equivalent amount of physical cash.

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What the Recovery Seed Is

When you created your wallet, your Trezor used a hardware random-number generator to produce a string of entropy. That entropy was translated into your seed words following the BIP-39 standard. Every private key in your wallet — across every coin and every account — is mathematically derived from this single seed. This design means:
  • One backup protects everything. You do not need separate backups for Bitcoin and Ethereum accounts.
  • Any compatible wallet can restore it. You are not locked in to Trezor hardware. In an emergency, you can restore your seed in software wallets like Electrum or Sparrow.
  • The seed never changes. New accounts you add later are also covered by the same seed — no backup updates required.

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How to Write Down Your Seed

Use the recovery seed card included in your Trezor box. It is designed to fit all 24 words with space for clear, legible printing.
  • Write in permanent ink, not pencil. Pencil fades and can be erased.
  • Print each word clearly — ambiguous handwriting causes recovery failures.
  • Number each word. Seed word order is critical; a shuffled seed is useless.
  • Write the complete word, not an abbreviation.
  • Produce two copies minimum. Store them in separate physical locations.
Do not laminate the card until you have tested recovery — laminate can trap moisture and degrade the card over time.

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Where to Store Your Seed

The goal is protection from three threats: fire, flood, and theft. A single storage location rarely guards against all three. Recommended storage options:
  • A fireproof and waterproof safe in your home, bolted to the floor or wall
  • A bank safety deposit box as a secondary location for a duplicate copy
  • A metal seed backup plate (steel, titanium, or similar) that survives house fires and flooding — multiple manufacturers offer blank plates compatible with BIP-39 words
  • A trusted family member’s secure location as a geographically distributed second copy
Metal seed storage products such as Cryptosteel or Cryptotag Zeus offer dramatically better durability than paper. Paper recovery seed cards can be destroyed in a house fire in seconds; a steel plate survives temperatures exceeding 1,400°C.

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What NOT to Do

Avoid every digital touchpoint. The moment your seed words exist in digital form, they are potentially exposed to hackers, malware, cloud account breaches, and data leaks.
  • Do not photograph your seed card — even “just for now.” Photos sync to cloud services automatically on most phones.
  • Do not store seed words in cloud services — including iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, or any note-taking app that syncs online.
  • Do not email or message your seed — email and messaging services are not end-to-end encrypted for long-term storage and can be accessed by third parties.
  • Do not type seed words into any website or app claiming to “verify” or “check” your seed — these are phishing attacks. Trezor Suite never asks for your seed after initial setup.
  • Do not store the seed on your computer in any file, encrypted or otherwise. Encrypted files can be cracked given enough time, and the existence of the file tells attackers where to look.

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Shamir Backup (Trezor Model T)

Trezor Model T supports Shamir Backup (SLIP-39), an advanced backup scheme that splits your recovery data into multiple shares. You define how many shares exist and how many are required to reconstruct the wallet — for example, 3 shares where any 2 are needed to recover. This is ideal for users who want to:
  • Distribute backup responsibility across trusted people or locations without giving anyone a complete backup
  • Add resilience against theft (a single share is useless on its own)
  • Create inheritance plans where multiple family members each hold a share
Shamir Backup is configured during wallet creation in Trezor Suite. It is supported on the Trezor Model T, Safe 3, Safe 5, and Safe 7, but is not available on Trezor Model One.

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Frequently Asked Questions

If you lose your recovery seed and your Trezor device is also lost, damaged, or reset, your funds are permanently unrecoverable. There is no customer support escalation, no backup with Trezor, and no court order that can retrieve them. This is the nature of self-custody. Store your seed securely and treat its protection as a priority.
No. Every account and every coin you add to Trezor is derived from the same seed. Your existing backup covers all current and future accounts without any changes.
No. Password managers are software applications that can be compromised by malware, phishing, or account breaches. Your seed must remain entirely offline in physical form. A password manager is appropriate for passwords; it is not appropriate for a recovery seed that controls irreversible cryptocurrency funds.
Trezor Suite includes a Dry-run recovery feature that lets you verify your seed without wiping the device. Open Suite, navigate to Device Settings → Check backup, and follow the prompts. The device asks you to enter your seed words and confirms whether they match the wallet on the device. No funds are moved and nothing is reset.
Only people you absolutely trust and who need to access your funds in an emergency — such as a spouse or a designated heir — should know where your seed is stored. Consider formalizing this in an estate plan or letter of instruction. However, be cautious: the more people who know, the larger the attack surface. Balance disclosure with security based on your personal threat model.
No. The passphrase (sometimes called the 25th word) is a separate, user-defined secret that you memorize or store independently. It is applied on top of your seed to create a hidden wallet. Your seed backup covers your base wallet; the passphrase must be preserved separately to access passphrase-protected wallets. Losing the passphrase with no backup means losing access to that specific wallet’s funds even if you have the seed.