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Leading options · 9 ranked of 17 assessed

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 here: RPC and node services that provide a production RPC endpoint, compared on the real cost of your actual workload, archive and trace access, throughput and incidents. Not ranked here: staking and indexing providers ranked in those categories, networks others build gateways on, and endpoints that are winding down, withdrawn, set to shut down or already dead.

#1 of 9published ranking
BlockPI
81ChainChoice Score
Why it leads
BlockPI scores higher than everything else in this ranking on its real cost per million calls and its throughput headroom.
Show the arithmetic
Best in this ranking on real cost per million calls and throughput headroom
Cost
$1.20 your cost/yr · Usage per month: 10
Reviewed Next review by Published Methodology v2026.11.1
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

No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links carry a referral code, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking v2026.11.1 · 4 criteria · 9 products · same inputs, same order

How we review · 9 ranked of 17 assessed · 4 criteria · 0 sponsor weight

How we review
9ranked
17assessed
4criteria
0sponsor weight
Recommendation first, comparison only if needed.
Reviewed and rechecked on the current cycle.
Commercial relationships disclosed before clickout.
Personal comparison

What RPC & node services cost you

Your inputs update the cost column. The independent ranking stays fixed.

Metered usage beyond whatever the plan includes, for a year. Excludes egress, support tiers and enterprise minimums.

RankProviderBest fitScoreYour cost
1
BlockPIPer-method request units, expiring prep...Top ranked
Real cost per 1M identical calls — 10/10Trade-off: The RU packages EXPIRE — Free 50M RU in 32 days, Elementary 500M in 60 days, Premium...
81score
Lowest at your inputs
Check availability for your country

BlockPI · blockpi.io. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

2
dRPCRouted multi-provider RPC, flat 20 comp...
Real cost per 1M identical calls — 8/10Trade-off: The flat 20 CU is a repricing, not a principle. Before 2 June 2025 dRPC charged 10 CU...
78score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country

dRPC · drpc.org. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

Same score, not joint · ordered by weighted total (45.80 against 45.60)
3
ChainstackManaged nodes, one request unit per cal...
Real cost per 1M identical calls — 9/10Trade-off: '1 RU per call, no multipliers' is the marketing line and it stops being true the mom...
78score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country

Chainstack · chainstack.com. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

4
HeliusSolana-only RPC, DAS API, webhooks, gRP...
Real cost per 1M identical calls — 8/10Trade-off: Solana only — no EVM, so the moment your roadmap adds a second chain you are running...
66score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country

Helius · helius.dev. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

5
AlchemyManaged RPC plus token and NFT APIs, co...
Documented incident record and chain coverage — 7/10Trade-off: You will find the archive data free and then discover you cannot query it the way you...
65score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country

Alchemy · alchemy.com. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

Tied for #5 · ordered by tie-break points (1.95 against 1.94)
6
QuickNodeManaged RPC across 70+ chains, credit-b...
Documented incident record and chain coverage — 7/10Trade-off: The pricing page shows 'Free trial — $0/mo' sitting in the same row as the real month...
65score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country

QuickNode · quicknode.com. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

3 more assessed and ranked below — none of them hidden for commercial reasons.
Ranking blindCommercial terms excludedDated primary sources

Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 35/20/20/25, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20 (constant here), evidence depth 18 (constant here), ease of use 10 (constant here), institutional trust 8 (constant here). Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.

How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
  • Liveness failure: the operator stops, censors you or loses data.
    Scored by Documented incident record and chain coverage · 25% (BlockPI 5/10, dRPC 7/10, Chainstack 6/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Exit failure, Information 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: Real cost per 1M identical calls (35%), Archive debug and trace access (20%), Published throughput and self-serve ceiling (20%).
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.11.1
published 10 November 2026
Providers tracked
860+
across 121 categories
Last verified
22 October 2026
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide

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.

What is your realistic monthly call volume, and which methods dominate it?
Do you need archive state or debug and trace methods, and on which chains?
What request rate breaks you — and does the largest self-serve plan carry it without a sales call?
Current engine lead

The #1 overall and the scoring weights

BlockPIData checked Oct 2026
Per-method request units, expiring prepaid RU packages, 70+ networks

Per-method request units, expiring prepaid RU packages, 70+ networks. Strongest on real cost per 1M identical calls (10/10): BlockPI prices eth_call at 20 RU. The Premium package sells 4,000M RU for $299 and Elementary 500M RU for $49, about $1.50 and $1.96 per million eth_call; the packages expire after 90 and 60 days. Pay As You Go costs $0.01 per 50,000 RU, about $4 per million eth_call. Weakest on documented incident record and chain coverage (5/10): BlockPI's status page shows a 5 December 2025 outage, tied to Cloudflare, that took all RPC service down, plus frequent chain-level critical incidents through 2026, the latest a Cosmos chain-level outage on 22 September 2026. BlockPI serves 77 networks. Published price: BlockPI pricing page (docs.blockpi.io/pricing/pricing-and-rate-limit), read 22 October 2026 for the 21 October 2026 re-read; unchanged since 14 September 2026. RU packages expire.

Best forReal cost per 1M identical calls — 10/10
Main tradeoffThe RU packages EXPIRE — Free 50M RU in 32 days, Elementary 500M in 60 days, Premium 4,000M in 90 days. Unused units are forfeited, so the category's cheapest per-request price only holds if you burn the entire package inside the window; a quiet quarter means you paid $299 for whatever you happened to use. On top of that, Archive Mode adds 30% RU, eth_getLogs RU doubles 'for every additional 200 KB' above 200 KB of response data, any method doubles per extra 1 MB, and Polygon MEV-protected eth_sendRawTransaction is billed at 250,000 RU per request — 12,500x a normal eth_call.
Verify before signupBlockPI pricing page (docs.blockpi.io/pricing/pricing-and-rate-limit), read 22 October 2026 for the 21 October 2026 re-read; unchanged since 14 September 2026. RU packages expire. Free "$0", "50M" RU, "32 days", "20 requests/sec" / "400 RU/sec" (a gift package "distributed to registered users on the 1st of every month"). Elementary "$49", "500M" RU, "60 days", "1000 requests/sec" / "40000 RU/sec". Premium "$299", "4,000M" RU, "90 days", "2500 requests/sec" / "100000 RU/sec". Pay As You Go "$0.01" per "50000" RU, "20 requests/sec" / "1000 RU/sec". Enterprise "Contact us". Public RPC "10 requests/sec" / "200 RU/sec". EVM RU table (docs): eth_call 20, eth_getLogs 50, eth_getBalance 15, eth_blockNumber 10, trace_transaction 20, debug_traceTransaction 150, eth_sendRawTransaction 200. RU doc: Archive Mode "30% additional RU consumption"; eth_getLogs +100% per additional 200 KB above 200 KB; any method +100% per additional 1 MB; Polygon MEV eth_sendRawTransaction "250,000 RU per request".
Weighted criteria
Real cost per 1M identical calls35%
Archive debug and trace access20%
Published throughput and self-serve ceiling20%
Documented incident record and chain coverage25%
Methodology

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.

The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked

Questions people ask before choosing RPC nodes

Why can't I just compare monthly plan prices?
Because the unit behind the price differs per vendor. Compute units, credits and request units are all sized differently per method, so the only comparable number is the cost of one identical workload priced through each vendor's own table — which is what is scored here.
Is a free tier worth anything in production?
Only if its rate limit is. A generous monthly request allowance behind a low per-second ceiling breaks under real traffic, so throughput is scored separately from volume.
How much does an outage really matter?
It depends entirely on blast radius, which is why incidents are weighted that way rather than counted. An event that stops a chain-wide wallet from loading is not the same as a degraded regional endpoint.
Reviewed22 October 2026Method4 criteriaCategoryrpc_nodes
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research