Account Abstraction Infra
Account Abstraction Infra evaluated across published price per user operation, markup on sponsored gas, exit path without the vendor, and verified mainnet chain coverage.
9providers tracked
8ranked (methodology v2026.11.1)
12 November 2026Ranking snapshot
27 September 2026oldest read · due 11 NovIndependent. Evidence-based.We rank with a published method and sourced evidence. No one can pay to rank.How it works
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Pick a country to see which bundler and paymaster services serve it. Nothing is hidden — any that does not is listed with that reason.- 🇺🇸 United States
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8 providers match your requirements
Out of 8 ranked providers. 0 excluded.
What this ranks
Ranked here: bundlers and paymasters, the services you depend on for user operations and sponsored gas when you build on smart accounts.Not ranked here: bundler and paymaster services that have been discontinued, which are excluded rather than scored.8 of the 9 assessed are ranked; 1 were turned away by name. Who, and whyRequirements narrow the list; they never change a published ChainChoice Score. How the ranking works
Candide
How Candide was chosen
Wins the weighted total without leading any single criterionSafe-aligned bundler and paymaster
81 / 100 out of 100published score, #1 of all 8 worldwide
Evidence
High
4/4 criteria scored, with 4 dated sources quoted.Markup on sponsored gasExit path without the vendorPublished price per user operation
Why it leads
- Candide and Pimlico have the same published total; the published tie-break puts Candide first.
- Tied with Pimlico on the published total; the tie-break orders them
- Provider states broad availability
Tradeoff
Published unit price: 2 points below the best in this ranking
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2
Tied for #1 · ordered by name, A to ZPI
ERC-4337 bundler and verifying paymaster sold...
81 / 100 out of 100
3
Prepaid-credit bundler and paymaster
80 / 100 out of 100
4
Bundler and gas manager sold as compute units...
76 / 100 out of 100
5
Smart account platform
69 / 100 out of 100
6
Bundler and paymaster bundled into a monthly...
68 / 100 out of 100
7
CO
Combined paymaster and bundler on a single...
52 / 100 out of 100
8
BI
Cross-chain execution platform
44 / 100 out of 100
Compare providers (0)
See key differences in features, fees, security and more.
Published unit price
Published price per user operation
30% of the published criteria weight. Scored 0–10 from the published evidence; the order below is by this criterion, then the published ranking.
| Provider | Published unit price (0–10) | ChainChoice Score |
|---|---|---|
| Pimlico | 10 | 81 |
| Candide | 8 | 81 |
| Etherspot (Skandha Bundler and Arka Paymaster) | 8 | 80 |
| Alchemy Smart Wallets (Gas Manager and Bundler APIs) | 8 | 76 |
| ZeroDev | 7 | 69 |
| thirdweb Account Abstraction | 7 | 68 |
| Coinbase Developer Platform Paymaster | 3 | 52 |
| Biconomy | 0 | 44 |
Exit without vendor
Exit path without the vendor
30% of the published criteria weight. Scored 0–10 from the published evidence; the order below is by this criterion, then the published ranking.
| Provider | Exit without vendor (0–10) | ChainChoice Score |
|---|---|---|
| Candide | 9 | 81 |
| Pimlico | 9 | 81 |
| Etherspot (Skandha Bundler and Arka Paymaster) | 8 | 80 |
| Alchemy Smart Wallets (Gas Manager and Bundler APIs) | 7 | 76 |
| ZeroDev | 5 | 69 |
| Biconomy | 4 | 44 |
| thirdweb Account Abstraction | 3 | 68 |
| Coinbase Developer Platform Paymaster | 3 | 52 |
Verified chain coverage
Verified mainnet chain coverage
20% of the published criteria weight. Scored 0–10 from the published evidence; the order below is by this criterion, then the published ranking.
| Provider | Verified chain coverage (0–10) | ChainChoice Score |
|---|---|---|
| Pimlico | 7 | 81 |
| Alchemy Smart Wallets (Gas Manager and Bundler APIs) | 7 | 76 |
| ZeroDev | 6 | 69 |
| thirdweb Account Abstraction | 6 | 68 |
| Candide | 5 | 81 |
| Etherspot (Skandha Bundler and Arka Paymaster) | 5 | 80 |
| Biconomy | 4 | 44 |
| Coinbase Developer Platform Paymaster | 1 | 52 |
Sponsored gas markup
Markup on sponsored gas
20% of the published criteria weight. Scored 0–10 from the published evidence; the order below is by this criterion, then the published ranking.
| Provider | Sponsored gas markup (0–10) | ChainChoice Score |
|---|---|---|
| Etherspot (Skandha Bundler and Arka Paymaster) | 10 | 80 |
| Candide | 9 | 81 |
| thirdweb Account Abstraction | 8 | 68 |
| Alchemy Smart Wallets (Gas Manager and Bundler APIs) | 6 | 76 |
| ZeroDev | 6 | 69 |
| Coinbase Developer Platform Paymaster | 6 | 52 |
| Pimlico | 4 | 81 |
| Biconomy | 0 | 44 |
All 4 published criteria
Every ranked row’s score on each criterion, in the published order. Choose a column to order by it.
| Provider | ChainChoice Score | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Candide | 8 | 9 | 9 | 5 | 81 |
| 2 | Pimlico | 10 | 4 | 9 | 7 | 81 |
| 3 | Etherspot (Skandha Bundler and Arka Paymaster) | 8 | 10 | 8 | 5 | 80 |
| 4 | Alchemy Smart Wallets (Gas Manager and Bundler APIs) | 8 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 76 |
| 5 | ZeroDev | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 69 |
| 6 | thirdweb Account Abstraction | 7 | 8 | 3 | 6 | 68 |
| 7 | Coinbase Developer Platform Paymaster | 3 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 52 |
| 8 | Biconomy | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 44 |
How this ranking works
How firm the #1 is, the per-criterion arithmetic behind each score, who pays ChainChoice, and which account abstraction infra were assessed and left out.
One point from changingCandide and Pimlico are tied on the published score
A one-point change on one criterion puts Pimlico first, so read both.
See the arithmetic
Move exit path without the vendor — the heaviest criterion that changes it, weighted 30 — by a single point and Pimlico takes first place. Both are worth reading. The published rankings file
Why this score4 published criteria · leads 1 of 4
Published criterionWtScore, and the best hereGap/10 out of 10Pts
Published price per user operation7.2−287.7
Markup on sponsored gas4.8−195.8
Exit path without the vendor7.2·98.6
Verified mainnet chain coverage4.8−253.2
Σ methodology points25.3/32
Each bar is the score on that criterion’s own 0–10 scale, never rescaled to the pool. The dark line is the best any product here reached on that axis. Wt is the most the criterion can add to the 86-point weighted total. Pts is weight × score × 32; the sum is the methodology score, and each weighted point behind the leader costs 2.6 on the displayed score. how these are weighted
Why it ranks first
Why Candide leads this category right now
Safe-aligned bundler and paymaster with a per-plan ladder, running the LGPL-3.0 Voltaire bundler. Strongest on markup on sponsored gas (9/10): Candide states that gas is always passed through at cost with no markup, and publishes the sponsorship service fee as a number: 5,000 sponsored operations a month included on Launch, then $0.01 per operation ($0.02 on Starter, $0.005 on Grow). Weakest on verified mainnet chain coverage (5/10): Candide's supported-networks table lists 14 EVM mainnets with chain IDs; 24 more are an add-on by request, and the $399 Launch plan reaches 7 mainnet chains. Its keyless public endpoint answers on 11 of the 14. Published price: "Launch $399/mo Going to Production ✓ 100,000 UserOps/mo ✓ 7 mainnet chains", "Grow $899/mo Scaling ✓ 500,000 UserOps/mo ✓ All mainnet chains" and "Enterprise $3,000+/mo", with sponsorship priced separately: "Gas is always passed through at cost — we never…
Best for
Markup on sponsored gas — 9/10
Main tradeoff
Candide is the smallest independently-measured operator in this pool by a wide margin: BundleBear attributes 390,834 UserOps to candide against 122,078,505 for pimlico and 791,397,966 for alchemy (bundlebear.com/erc4337-bundlers/all), roughly three ten-thousandths of the leader. The engineering discipline is real and unusually well documented — "Every minute, on every chain we support, we execute a real signed transaction end to end." — but the SLA is the thing to read twice. Corrected during verification: the SLA quotes belong to docs.candide.dev/wallet/api/reliability.md, not the pricing page, and the two pages describe it differently. The reliability page's table reads "Starter | No SLA", "Launch Prod | No SLA", "Grow | 99% uptime" and "Enterprise | 99.9% uptime, or as specified in contract"; the pricing page's comparison row instead reads "Uptime SLA Best Effort Best Effort 99.0% 99.9% (w/ penalties)". Either way the $399/mo production plan carries no uptime commitment at all.
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"Launch $399/mo Going to Production ✓ 100,000 UserOps/mo ✓ 7 mainnet chains", "Grow $899/mo Scaling ✓ 500,000 UserOps/mo ✓ All mainnet chains" and "Enterprise $3,000+/mo", with sponsorship priced separately: "Gas is always passed through at cost — we never mark up gas prices. The included ops per month are free. After the included amount, a small service fee applies." against "Included Ops 1,000 Ops 5,000 Ops/mo 25,000 Ops/mo Unlimited" and "Fee After Included $0.02/op $0.01/op $0.005/op Zero" (docs.candide.dev/wallet/pricing/, fetched 27 September 2026, HTTP 200, page stamped "Last updated on Jul 24, 2026"; every figure unchanged from 7 August 2026). The free Starter tier is a trial: "2,500 mainnet UserOps — 90 day trial". WORKED EXAMPLE (ChainChoice arithmetic, 27 September 2026, Base): 50,000 unsponsored user operations sit inside the Launch plan's 100,000 UserOps/mo, so the fee is 399.00 US dollars (0.00798 each); 50,000 sponsored operations exceed the 5,000 included sponsorship ops, so the fee is 399.00 + 45,000 x 0.01 = 849.00 US dollars, or 0.01698 each, the most expensive sponsored service fee in the pool.
Recommendation summary
What should decide this category
What does one user operation cost, and what does sponsoring the gas add?
If this vendor stops, can your users still get their transactions included?
Is the chain list you were sold the chain list the bundler actually answers on?
Quick picks
Strong options in this category
Start with the lead choice first, then use the shortlist only if you still need a challenger or stronger fit for a specific setup.
Best overall
Candide
Safe-aligned bundler and paymaster with a per-plan ladder, running the LGPL-3.0 Voltaire bundler.
Safe-aligned bundler and paymaster with a per-plan ladder, running the LGPL-3.0 Voltaire bundler. Strongest on markup on sponsored gas (9/10): Candide states that gas is always passed through at cost with no markup, and publishes the sponsorship service fee as a number: 5,000 sponsored operations a month included on Launch, then $0.01 per operation ($0.02 on Starter, $0.005 on Grow). Weakest on verified mainnet chain coverage (5/10): Candide's supported-networks table lists 14 EVM mainnets with chain IDs; 24 more are an add-on by request, and the $399 Launch plan reaches 7 mainnet chains. Its keyless public endpoint answers on 11 of the 14. Published price: "Launch $399/mo Going to Production ✓ 100,000 UserOps/mo ✓ 7 mainnet chains", "Grow $899/mo Scaling ✓ 500,000 UserOps/mo ✓ All mainnet chains" and "Enterprise $3,000+/mo", with sponsorship priced separately: "Gas is always passed through at cost — we never…
Best for: Markup on sponsored gas — 9/10
Published price per user operation · weight 30%8/10Markup on sponsored gas · weight 20%9/10Exit path without the vendor · weight 30%9/10Verified mainnet chain coverage · weight 20%5/10
Joint first
Level with Candide on the weighted total from different criterion scores; the criteria alone average 7.9 for both
Tied for #1 · ordered by name, A to Z
PI
Pimlico
ERC-4337 bundler and verifying paymaster sold on metered API credits, with the Alto bundler released under GPL-3.0.
ERC-4337 bundler and verifying paymaster sold on metered API credits, with the Alto bundler released under GPL-3.0. Strongest on published price per user operation (10/10): Pimlico's docs pricing page puts a per-method credit table, the price of $1 per 100,000 credits and its simulation assumption (750 credits per unsponsored operation, 1,050 sponsored) on one page, reproducing its headline of about $0.0075 per operation ($0.0105 sponsored). Weakest on markup on sponsored gas (4/10): Pimlico bills sponsored mainnet gas at actual cost plus a 10% surcharge, with no surcharge on testnets; its docs show the formula as actual gas cost times 1.1. Published price: Pay-as-you-go on pimlico.io/pricing (fetched 2026-09-27, HTTP 200): "$0 per month, card required", "10,000,000 credits / month included", "Then $1 per additional 100,000 credits", "~$0.0075 per user operation (~$0.0105 sponsored)" and "10% surcharge on…
Best for: Published price per user operation — 10/10
Published price per user operation · weight 30%10/10Markup on sponsored gas · weight 20%4/10Exit path without the vendor · weight 30%9/10Verified mainnet chain coverage · weight 20%7/10
Quick pick
Etherspot (Skandha Bundler and Arka Paymaster)
Prepaid-credit bundler and paymaster with both components released under MIT and gas billed at network cost.
Prepaid-credit bundler and paymaster with both components released under MIT and gas billed at network cost. Strongest on markup on sponsored gas (10/10): Etherspot states that gas fees are charged separately at network cost with no markup; its only sponsorship charge is the published credit cost of pm_sponsorUserOperation, 700 credits at $1 per 250,000 credits. Weakest on verified mainnet chain coverage (5/10): Etherspot's chains page lists 17 mainnets, each with a chain ID and bundler URL, plus 13 testnets, and claims no larger headline count. Published price: "Pay-As-You-Go $1 per 250,000 credits Pay only for what your app uses. No subscriptions required", with "Gas fees charged separately at network cost (no markup)" and "Minimum initial top-up: $10 in prepaid credits.
Best for: Markup on sponsored gas — 10/10
Published price per user operation · weight 30%8/10Markup on sponsored gas · weight 20%10/10Exit path without the vendor · weight 30%8/10Verified mainnet chain coverage · weight 20%5/10
Quick pick
Alchemy Smart Wallets (Gas Manager and Bundler APIs)
Bundler and gas manager sold as compute units inside the general Alchemy node platform, running the Rust Rundler bundler.
Bundler and gas manager sold as compute units inside the general Alchemy node platform, running the Rust Rundler bundler. Strongest on published price per user operation (8/10): Alchemy meters bundler and paymaster calls in compute units: its compute-unit table prices each method (eth_sendUserOperation 1,000 CU, 3,000 with a sponsorship policy) and its pricing page sets $0.525 per million CU, so the cost per operation closes across two pages. Weakest on markup on sponsored gas (6/10): Alchemy charges an 8% admin fee on sponsored gas under Pay as You Go, stated on its pricing page and in the Gas Manager FAQ, and requires the gas to be pre-loaded. Published price: Pay as You Go on alchemy.com/pricing (fetched 2026-09-27, HTTP 200) is metered in compute units, not operations: "$0.525/1M CU", with the gas sponsorship rows reading "Admin fee — 8% Custom" and "Limit — Pre-load funds Custom" (Free, Pay as You Go…
Best for: Published price per user operation — 8/10
Published price per user operation · weight 30%8/10Markup on sponsored gas · weight 20%6/10Exit path without the vendor · weight 30%7/10Verified mainnet chain coverage · weight 20%7/10
Considered and not ranked
1 product we looked at and left out
A shortlist is only honest if it says who it turned away. It was assessed against the same published criteria as the ranked table and excluded for a stated reason — not overlooked.
We assessed 9 products here and rank 8 — 89% of what we looked at. That share is of the products we assessed, not of the category: how many exist is not something we can count, so we do not claim a number for it.
Stackup
What this ranking does not assess
- Contract failure: the code holding the funds is exploited.
- Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
- Liveness failure: the operator stops, censors you or loses data.
These can still cost you money here; the ranking does not measure them, so a high place says nothing about them. Which criterion scores each family, and why the others do not apply, is in /data/risk-coverage.json.
How this ranking is built
Reviewed on published price per user operation, markup on sponsored gas, exit path without the vendor, and verified mainnet chain coverage.
Data checked Sep 2026 · Independent rankings · We show our work
Reviewed Published Methodology v2026.11.1
Re-read due since
The published cadence is 45 days; this page's next read was due on 11 November 2026.How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means every product ranked on this page was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.
How we review · Review calendar · Corrections log · How we make money
Direct answer
What is the best bundler and paymaster service in 2026?
Candide ranks #1 overall for account abstraction infra on ChainChoice. Safe-aligned bundler and paymaster with a per-plan ladder, running the LGPL-3.0 Voltaire bundler. It holds that rank under an affiliate-blind methodology scored across 4 published, weighted criteria — the code that ranks providers physically cannot read affiliate payouts (CI-enforced), so a payout can't move a rank. The verdict re-computes on every fee change, incident, or regulatory action; the full reasoning and the audit receipt are under Methodology.
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
- Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.Scored by Exit path without the vendor · 30% (Candide 9/10, Pimlico 9/10, Etherspot (Skandha Bundler and Arka Paymaster) 8/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Control failure, Liveness failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: Published price per user operation (30%), Markup on sponsored gas (20%), Verified mainnet chain coverage (20%).
FAQs
3 questions readers ask before choosing account abstraction infra.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing account abstraction infra
How concentrated is this layer really?
More than the word "decentralised" in front of it suggests. Re-derived from the raw page data at bundlebear.com/erc4337-bundlers/all on 2026-08-07: 1,230,964,806 user operations across sixteen labelled operators, with Alchemy at 791,397,966 (64.29%) and Alchemy, Pimlico and Coinbase together at 1,028,954,948 (83.59%). A further 130,710,666 (10.62%) are attributed to "Unknown". Everything else in this comparison — thirdweb, Biconomy, Particle, Gelato, Stackup, Candide, Etherspot — shares 66,432,774 between them, or 5.40%. That is why the ability to leave carries 30% of the weight here rather than being a footnote.
Is the advertised chain count the real one?
Not always, and one of them is testable without an API key. thirdweb's pricing page advertises "Chains Supported 145+"; its bundler is addressed per chain and distinguishes a missing key from an unsupported chain, so coverage can be probed keylessly. Of 24 chain IDs probed on 2026-08-07, nine answered "Invalid chain" — Zora, Blast, Mode, Mantle, Unichain, Sonic, HyperEVM, Ink and Soneium — and every one of those nine carries live, byte-identical EntryPoint v0.6 and v0.7 contracts read in the same session. Pimlico publishes three incompatible counts: "100+ chains" on the pricing page, "all 25+ mainnet chains" in the docs pricing table, and an enumerated reference that counts 43 mainnets and 42 testnets, or 85 named networks.
What is a paymaster stake and why should I check it?
Under ERC-4337 reputation rules an unstaked paymaster faces tighter throttling in the canonical mempool — exactly the condition in which you would need a fallback to work. It is checkable directly: calling EntryPoint.getDepositInfo on 2026-08-07 shows Pimlico's ERC-20 paymaster staked on Base for v0.6 and v0.7 (1.9708 and 1.4701 ETH, 1,209,600-second unstake delay) but staked=false with stake=0 for v0.8; on Ethereum mainnet all three are unstaked despite holding deposits of 1.0663, 1.2600 and 1.3893 ETH; on Arbitrum v0.7 is staked and v0.8 is not. None of that appears on any Pimlico page.
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Best picks
Best account abstraction infra in 2026
Weighted on the published unit price (30), the markup on sponsored gas (20), whether you can leave without the vendor (30), and verified chain coverage (20). Exit carries as much weight as price because of what the numbers show: summing BundleBear's own bundler table gives 1,230,964,806 user operations across sixteen labelled operators, of which Alchemy alone is 791,397,966 — 64.29% — and Alchemy, Pimlico and Coinbase together are 83.59%. The entire competitive tail here shares 5.40% between them. The infrastructure layer under "decentralised" accounts is more concentrated than most centralised exchanges.
Best overall
Candide
Safe-aligned bundler and paymaster with a per-plan ladder, running the LGPL-3.0 Voltaire bundler.
Data checked Sep 2026
Safe-aligned bundler and paymaster with a per-plan ladder, running the LGPL-3.0 Voltaire bundler. Strongest on markup on sponsored gas (9/10): Candide states that gas is always passed through at cost with no markup, and publishes the sponsorship service fee as a number: 5,000 sponsored operations a month included on Launch, then $0.01 per operation ($0.02 on Starter, $0.005 on Grow). Weakest on verified mainnet chain coverage (5/10): Candide's supported-networks table lists 14 EVM mainnets with chain IDs; 24 more are an add-on by request, and the $399 Launch plan reaches 7 mainnet chains. Its keyless public endpoint answers on 11 of the 14. Published price: "Launch $399/mo Going to Production ✓ 100,000 UserOps/mo ✓ 7 mainnet chains", "Grow $899/mo Scaling ✓ 500,000 UserOps/mo ✓ All mainnet chains" and "Enterprise $3,000+/mo", with sponsorship priced separately: "Gas is always passed through at cost — we never…
Best for: Markup on sponsored gas — 9/10
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Written and reviewed by Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research