Per-method request units, expiring prepaid RU packages, 70+ networks. Strongest on real cost per 1m identical calls (10/10): eth_call is 20 RU. Premium is $299 for 4,000M RU = $0.0747/1M RU, so 1M eth_call = 20M RU = $1.50. Elementary ($49 / 500M RU) = $1.96 per 1M eth_call. That is the cheapest normalized rate in this pool — roughly 13x below Ankr and 9x below Alchemy for identical work. Weakest on documented incident record and chain coverage (5/10): 76 network rows in the supported-networks table, comparable to Chainstack and QuickNode. Its status page (status.blockpi.io) records 'All rpc service is down' on 5 December 2025, 09:15-09:40 UTC — 'Due to a Cloudflare outage, all of our RPC servers are affected and currently down.' — plus frequent per-chain critical incidents, several lasting days to weeks. Published price: Free: $0, 50M RU, 32 days validity. Elementary: $49, 500M RU, 60 days. Premium: $299, 4,000M RU, 90 days. Pay As You Go: $0.01 per 50,000 RU. Enterprise: contact.
RPC & Node Services
RPC & Node Services evaluated across real cost per 1m identical calls, archive debug and trace access, published throughput and self-serve ceiling, and documented incident record and chain coverage.
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 35/20/20/25, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
What matters most before choosing in this category
The best RPC provider depends on your call mix and your throughput ceiling — but headline plan prices in this category are not comparable at all. Every vendor bills in its own unit, and the same eth_call is 1 unit at one provider and 200 at another, so a plan that looks cheaper per month can be many times dearer for identical work. The scored figure is the cost of one fixed workload derived from each vendor's own published unit table, and incident history is weighted by blast radius rather than count.
The best RPC provider depends on your call mix and your throughput ceiling — but headline plan prices in this category are not comparable at all. Every vendor bills in its own unit, and the same eth_call is 1 unit at one provider and 200 at another, so a plan that looks cheaper per month can be many times dearer for identical work. The scored figure is the cost of one fixed workload derived from each vendor's own published unit table, and incident history is weighted by blast radius rather than count.
Expert review and scoring weights
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on real cost per 1m identical calls, archive debug and trace access, published throughput and self-serve ceiling, and documented incident record and chain coverage.