Autopilot (Lightning)

Lightning Autopilot is a feature in some Lightning implementations that automatically selects channel peers and opens channels on your behalf, based on graph-connectivity heuristics rather than manual choice. It exists to lower the operational barrier for new Lightning node operators.

LND has an autopilot agent built in, switched off by default. When turned on, it tries to:

• Identify well-connected nodes in the gossip graph that could provide good routing paths.
• Stay within a budget. By default it commits up to 60% of the wallet's funds across at most five channels, within minimum and maximum channel sizes the operator can change.
• Replace closed channels. When a channel closes, the freed-up slot and funds go back into its budget for new channels.

It does not rebalance or close channels. As of October 2026, LND's agent only ever opens channels, and the hook it has for closing one does nothing.

How it has worked out in practice:

• It makes a first setup easier. Instead of picking peers by hand and hoping they route well, the operator switches it on and sets a budget.
• Its picks lean toward hubs. LND's default heuristic favors the nodes with the highest betweenness centrality, meaning the ones that sit on the most paths between other nodes. An older option favors nodes that already have many channels. In January 2018, when LND's autopilot worked that way, researcher Rene Pickhardt warned that it would create a few "power nodes" with huge numbers of channels, and that the network's connectivity could break if one of them failed. If everyone connects to the same few hubs, the network takes on a hub-and-spoke shape.
• Routing nodes need more than it offers. Lightning Labs' own guide says a routing node needs both inbound and outbound capacity in each channel, plus some way, automated or manual, to watch traffic and rebalance. The autopilot does not rebalance.

Custodial wallets and wallets built around a Lightning service provider (LSP) take channel choices away from the user altogether. With "just-in-time" channels, for example, the provider opens a channel to the wallet when a payment for it arrives.

Lightning Labs also uses the Autopilot name for a separate feature of its Lightning Terminal software. Its AutoOpen tool also scores peers by betweenness centrality, but it aims to connect nodes that do not yet share peers, which Lightning Labs expects to spread connections away from the biggest hubs. Turning it on shares the node's public key and its current and past channels with the service, and like LND's agent, it does not close channels.