6 RPC node providers for 2026, each mapped to the job it does best. Chainstack, Dwellir, Tatum, Helius, dRPC, and Blockdaemon. Compared on chains, billing models, free tiers, throughput, compliance, and AI tooling. Pricing and limits checked on October 31, 2026.

Every swap on StealthEX touches a blockchain node. A deposit lands, and a node confirms it. A payout goes out, and a node broadcasts it. Across 2,000+ cryptocurrencies, that adds up to a lot of node calls a day.

Most crypto products share that dependency. Wallets, trading bots, dashboards and AI agents all read and write through RPC nodes. Few teams run those nodes themselves anymore. They rent access from an RPC node provider.

Our Ethereum APIs guide pointed teams chasing raw throughput to a dedicated RPC roundup. This is it. 6 providers, one job each, and the execution layer most node guides skip.

Article contents

What an RPC Node Provider Does

RPC stands for remote procedure call. Your app sends a request to a node. The node answers with chain state. Balances, blocks, receipts, contract reads and transaction broadcasts all travel this way.

Running your own node is possible. It is also slow, expensive and easy to get wrong. Archive history alone runs to terabytes on Ethereum. An RPC node provider operates the nodes for you. You get an endpoint, an API key and a bill.

Two things an RPC does not do. It does not decode what it returns. A Uniswap swap comes back as an approval, a call and raw logs. It also does not execute anything for your users. Both jobs belong to other layers.

Where an RPC node provider sits in a crypto product stack

The decoding layer is a data API. It turns raw logs into balances, positions and prices. We compared those in our best cryptocurrency APIs roundup. The same line runs through this guide to the best crypto APIs for developers. RPC access on one side, aggregated market data on the other.

The execution layer is the swap itself. That is where we come in, and we cover it below.

How We Compared Them

We scored each provider from 1 to 5 on 6 criteria. The scores are editorial judgments, mapped to published figures with the rubric below.

Chain coverage. How many chains sit behind one key. 5 for 130+, 4 for 60 to 130, 3 for 20 to 60, 1 for a single chain.

Billing predictability. Whether a trace call costs the same as a balance call. 5 when every call costs the same. 4 for one flat multiplier on heavy calls. 3 for compute-unit pools with a flat pay-as-you-go rate. 2 for method-weighted credits or unpublished prices.

Free tier. How much real testing the free plan allows. 5 for about 10 million requests a month. 4 for about 3 million. 2 for about 1 million. 1 for a pool that never refills.

Throughput. Two numbers averaged, half points kept: requests per second on the entry paid plan, and the ceiling of the top published plan. Entry plan: 5 for 300, 4 for 200 to 250, 3 for 100, 2 for 50. Ceiling: 5 for 1,000 or more, or no cap. 4 for 500 to 999. 3 for 200 to 499.

Compliance. 5 for SOC and ISO 27001 both stated on the site. 4 for SOC 2 alone. 3 for certification in progress. 1 for none published.

AI readiness. 4 for an MCP server or agent skills that query chains or manage nodes. 3 for a documentation MCP only. 2 for an SDK only.

6 RPC node providers scored on 6 criteria

Every figure comes from a pricing page or documentation, read on October 31, 2026. Where a claim appears only in marketing copy, we say so. Compliance status is quoted as each provider states it. Each provider section explains the numbers behind its scores. Chainstack and Dwellir lead on totals, half a point apart. The other four are ordered by job, not by score.

CoinStats ran a similar exercise in its reviewed guide to RPC node providers. It reached the same top two. Our list diverges after that, with a Solana specialist and an institutional pick added.

The Execution Layer: StealthEX

RPC nodes move raw data. Data APIs decode it. At some point, a user wants to act on it. Something has to execute the swap. That step is the execution layer, and it is where StealthEX sits.

Our instant exchange API embeds non-custodial swaps into wallets, dashboards, bots and trading terminals. Coverage spans 2,000+ cryptocurrencies and 100+ fiat currencies. Swaps run in fixed-rate and floating-rate mode. No accounts are required. Verification can be requested when a transaction is flagged.

Integration is free, with no subscriptions or paid tiers. Partners earn a standard 0.4% from each transaction or set a custom fee. Chainstack’s guide to the best crypto swap exchanges ranks StealthEX among eight venues. That is the node layer and the execution layer in one reading list.

None of the 6 providers below executes a swap. Pair one with StealthEX API when users should act on the data. Our guide to the best crypto exchange API and affiliate tools covers integration.

The 6 Best RPC Node Providers of 2026

Here is the shortlist before the detail.

5 of the 6 entry plans cost $49 a month. What that $49 buys is where they differ.

Cost per million requests on each provider’s entry paid plan

1. Chainstack: Managed Nodes With Predictable Request Units

Chainstack runs the node layer for teams that want chain state without running infrastructure. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Singapore, it offers managed RPC across 70+ chains. Ethereum, Solana and Bitcoin are included. Dedicated and self-hosted nodes cover teams that need isolation. The platform handles 10B+ API calls a day across 10+ data centers. Access runs over JSON-RPC and WebSocket. Solana, TRON and Sui add gRPC, and Sui adds GraphQL.

A Global Node routes each request to the nearest healthy region. It fails over when a node falls more than 40 blocks behind. Uptime runs at 99.99%+. Trust Wallet, Circle and TradingView are listed as customers.

Co-founder and CTO Eugene Aseev keeps the pitch short. His pinned post:

Billing runs on request units, and that is the main reason it ranks first. A full-node call costs 1 unit. An archive call costs 2. The free Developer plan gives 3 million units a month. That runs at 25 requests a second and never expires. Growth costs $49 a month for 20 million units at 250 requests a second. Archive data and the Debug and Trace API unlock from Growth. Pro is $199, Business is $499, and Enterprise starts at $990. Business runs at 600 requests a second, and Enterprise has no cap. Unlimited Nodes charge a flat fee from $149 a month, with no meter.

Solana trading teams get dedicated tooling. Warp transactions, a node add-on, route sends through bloXroute at $0.15 each. Yellowstone gRPC streams live data from validator memory. It starts at $49 a month for two streams on Growth or higher. Compliance is unusually complete for an RPC vendor. SOC 2 Type II arrived in December 2025 and ISO 27001 in July 2026. An MCP server ships on every plan, including the free one. It deploys and manages nodes, searches docs and requests testnet funds.

Snapshot:

  • Managed RPC across 70+ chains, plus dedicated and self-hosted nodes.
  • Request units: 1 per full-node call, 2 per archive call.
  • Free plan with 3 million units a month, never expires.
  • Growth at $49 a month for 20 million units and 250 requests a second.
  • Yellowstone gRPC and Warp transactions for Solana.
  • SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001.
  • MCP server on every plan, including free.

Best Suited For: Bots that read raw chain state, stream events and submit transactions. Multichain teams that want predictable request-unit billing and a compliance-ready vendor. Responses are raw chain state, so decoding stays on your side.

2. Dwellir: One Credit per Response, Built for Hyperliquid

Dwellir runs RPC and API infrastructure for 150+ blockchain networks on its own bare-metal servers in North America, Europe and Asia. Every response costs 1 API credit, including trace and debug calls. Plans start free and scale to 5,000 requests per second. Dwellir is working toward ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 certification.

That billing line deserves a second look. Elsewhere a trace call costs 2 to 25 times a balance call. On Dwellir it costs the same. A debug-heavy indexer can forecast its monthly bill from a request count. Archive data, trace and debug APIs are included on paid plans.

The free plan allows 100,000 responses a day at 20 requests a second. Developer costs $49 a month for 25 million responses at 100 requests a second. Growth is $299 for 150 million at 500 requests a second. Scale is $999 for 500 million at 5,000 requests a second. Unlimited Node plans start at $119 a month with no request metering. Tiers run from 25 to 1,000 requests a second. Yearly billing saves 14%, and you can pay by card or crypto. Current prices sit on dwellir.com/pricing.

Dwellir runs one of the most complete Hyperliquid stacks available from a single provider: HyperEVM RPC, the HyperCore Info API, gRPC streams of every node feed, L2 and L4 order book WebSockets, a historical data archive, and dedicated node clusters. Its nodes run in Tokyo, next to the Hyperliquid validators. In an October 2026 benchmark from Tokyo, Dwellir had the fastest WebSocket order books of the providers tested.

That benchmark matters more every week. Hyperliquid is turning into infrastructure for regulated markets, not only a perps venue:

Markets of that size need order books that update in milliseconds. Dwellir’s L2 book sends about 14 updates a second. The public l2Book channel sends about one every 5 seconds. One caveat on scope. Dwellir ran that test itself from one AWS server in Tokyo. Each feed was measured for five minutes on October 28. The field was two other providers plus the public API. The full method sits in its Hyperliquid data latency benchmark. Agents are covered as well. A hosted MCP server and an open-source agent skill cover EVM, Substrate and Hyperliquid. Dwellir is currently in the process of obtaining ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 certification.

Snapshot:

  • 150+ networks over HTTPS and WebSocket.
  • 1 response = 1 API credit, no compute units.
  • Archive, trace and debug APIs on paid plans.
  • Up to 5,000 RPS on shared plans, 10,000 burst.
  • Unlimited Nodes: flat monthly price, no request metering, 25 to 1,000 RPS.
  • Dedicated node clusters for teams that need their own hardware.
  • Hyperliquid gRPC streams, order book data and historical archive.
  • Pay by card or crypto.
  • ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 in progress.

Best Suited For: Teams that run trace-heavy or high-volume workloads, need many chains under one key, or want a predictable bill. Hyperliquid builders who want the full stack from one account.

3. Tatum: Nodes and Data on One Key

Tatum bundles three things behind one key. An RPC Gateway routes calls across 130+ blockchain networks with failover. A Data API covers wallets, transactions, prices, DeFi events and fee estimation. A Notifications service and an MPC-based Smart Wallet SDK round it out. The official SDK is JavaScript and TypeScript. Tatum’s registry listed 67 blockchains across 135 networks in October 2026. Marketing pages quote anything from 100+ to 130+ networks. Check your chain on the supported-blockchains page before you commit.

Credits meter everything. The free plan carries 100,000 lifetime credits at 3 requests a second. Two API keys are included. Starter costs $49 a month for 4 million credits. An annual plan cuts that by 40%. Paid plans run at 200 requests a second. A standard RPC call costs 2 credits. An eth_call costs 5. A debug or trace call costs 50. Credits do not roll over. An exhausted plan auto-upgrades to the next tier unless you switch that off.

Throughput can be bought separately. Dedicated API keys with guaranteed capacity start at $99 a month. That buys 10 requests a second, and the keys do not consume plan credits. The homepage carries SOC 2 and ISO 27001 badges. AI tooling is compact but real. The open-source blockchain-mcp server exposes 13 tools. Ten cover data and three cover the RPC gateway. A hosted documentation MCP sits at docs.tatum.io/mcp.

Snapshot:

  • RPC Gateway across 130+ networks with failover.
  • Data API, webhooks and an MPC wallet SDK on the same key.
  • Free plan with 100,000 lifetime credits at 3 requests a second.
  • Starter at $49 a month for 4 million credits.
  • Dedicated API keys from $99 a month for guaranteed throughput.
  • Open-source MCP server with 13 tools.

Best Suited For: Fintech teams that want RPC, data, notifications and wallets together. Read the free tier carefully. Those 100,000 credits never refill. Trace calls burn them 25 times faster than balance calls.

4. Helius: The Solana Specialist

Helius does one chain and does it deep. Founded in 2022, it calls itself Solana’s leading infrastructure provider. RPC nodes come with LaserStream gRPC streaming and a Sender endpoint for landing trades. A DAS API covers tokens and NFTs. Webhooks and WebSockets round it out. Phantom, Jupiter, Coinbase and Bitwise are named as customers. The site claims 99.99% uptime, coverage across three continents and SOC 2 certified infrastructure.

Helius helped build the read layer Solana shipped this spring:

Pricing is credit-based and simple on the surface. A standard RPC call costs 1 credit, archival reads included. A getProgramAccounts call costs 10, and so does a DAS call. The free plan gives 1 million credits a month at 10 requests a second. Developer costs $49 for 10 million credits at 50 requests a second. Staked connections unlock here. Business is $499 for 100 million credits at 200 requests a second. LaserStream gRPC unlocks on mainnet from there. Professional is $999 for 200 million. Extra credits cost $5 per million. Sender is included on every plan at zero credits. It offers 7 regional endpoints and 50 transactions a second by default. Dedicated nodes start at $2,900 a month. Agents are covered too. A Helius MCP server exposes 10 tools, with 6 agent skills beside it.

Snapshot:

  • Solana only, with RPC, LaserStream gRPC, Sender and DAS API.
  • 1 credit per standard call, 10 for program-account and DAS reads.
  • Free plan with 1 million credits a month at 10 requests a second.
  • Developer at $49 a month for 10 million credits and 50 requests a second.
  • LaserStream gRPC from Business at $499 a month.
  • Sender included on all plans at zero credits.
  • MCP server with 10 tools, plus agent skills.

Best Suited For: Solana trading apps, bots and wallets that need fast transaction landing. Anything multichain needs a second vendor. Our Solana API providers guide covers the data side of the same chain.

5. dRPC: Decentralized Routing Across 60+ Providers

dRPC does not run every node it serves. It routes each request across 60+ independent RPC providers with an AI-powered load balancer. One operator going down becomes a routing event, not an outage. The network covers 130+ chains across 232 networks. It serves 4B+ requests a day to 4,000+ dApps. Instadapp, SushiSwap and Aerodrome supply the testimonials. 1inch, Lido and Safe sit on the logo wall. Paid plans claim 99.96% uptime.

The free tier is the largest on this list. A 210 million compute-unit pool covers roughly 10 million requests a month. The cap is 100 requests a second. It runs on public nodes only. Archive nodes, the Debug and Trace API and WebSocket connections are excluded. Pro costs $49 a month for about 10.2 million Multi-Chain requests. Solana gets about 12.5 million more. The cap rises to 300 requests a second. Scale is $199 for about 47 million and 51 million requests. The cap is 600 a second. Enterprise starts at $990 with unlimited throughput. Pay as you go costs $6 per million requests with no commitment. It runs at 100 requests a second. Rate limits are set in compute units per second. Heavy methods run below the headline figure. Solana gRPC runs $60 per terabyte on Pro and Scale.

Agent tooling is a product line, not a footnote. An AI Agents offering packages onchain skills for agents and MCP. The routing software behind the service is open source. dRPC maintains dshackle, a Kotlin load balancer for Ethereum and Bitcoin APIs. It drops lagging nodes from rotation. No compliance certifications are published.

Snapshot:

  • Requests routed across 60+ independent node providers.
  • 130+ chains across 232 networks.
  • Free pool of about 10 million requests a month on public nodes.
  • Pro at $49 a month for 10 million Multi-Chain and 12 million Solana requests.
  • Pay as you go at $6 per million requests.
  • Onchain skills for AI agents and MCP.

Best Suited For: DeFi apps and bots that want redundancy without building failover themselves. Teams that prefer flat per-request pricing. Custodians that need audits should look at Chainstack or Blockdaemon instead.

6. Blockdaemon: Institutional Nodes With Compliance Built In

Blockdaemon sells to banks and custodians first and to startups second. Its RPC documentation lists 24 protocols, testnets included. Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, Base, Cosmos, XRP, Cardano and Stellar are among them. Goldman Sachs, DTCC, Visa, Circle, Citi, JP Morgan and BNY appear on the homepage. Blockdaemon provided wallet and validator infrastructure for participants in the DTCC Tokenization Service. That service went live in October 2026.

Compliance is the product. The Trust Center lists SOC and ISO 27001 certification. Sanctions screening is built in. Any API request that writes to a sanctioned address is blocked automatically. Dedicated nodes and region-targeted deployment cover data residency requirements.

Pricing is the catch for small teams. Shared infrastructure meters in compute units. Per Blockdaemon’s documentation, the free plan allows up to 1 million units a month. The cap is 5 requests a second, with one test key. Starter runs up to 65 million units at 100 requests a second. Growth reaches 365 million units at 200 requests a second. Enterprise is custom. No public page lists dollar figures. Expect a checkout or a sales call. Blockdaemon says all its APIs support MCP, and an MCP server covers its documentation.

Snapshot:

  • Native RPC on 24 protocols, including Bitcoin, Solana and Polkadot.
  • SOC and ISO 27001 certified, with sanctions screening on write requests.
  • Free plan up to 1 million compute units a month at 5 requests a second.
  • Starter with up to 65 million units and 100 requests a second.
  • Dedicated nodes and region-targeted deployment.
  • Prices quoted at checkout or through sales.

Best Suited For: Regulated custodians, tokenization platforms and institutional desks. Audit trails and sanctions screening come built in. Side projects should start elsewhere.

RPC Provider Comparison: Matching Nodes to Jobs

Free tiers differ more than their headline numbers suggest. Some refill monthly. One never refills at all. One runs on public nodes with no archive access.

Free tiers compared across 6 RPC node providers

Throughput on the entry paid plan is the other number to check. Peak load matters, not the average. A token launch or an airdrop claim can multiply requests tenfold within minutes.

Requests per second on each provider’s entry paid plan

Best for Predictable Multichain Billing

Chainstack prices every call in request units. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are published. One bill, no surprises, 70+ chains.

Best for Trace-Heavy and Hyperliquid Workloads

Dwellir charges 1 credit per response, trace calls included. Its Tokyo nodes and order book streams make it the Hyperliquid pick.

Best for Nodes Plus Data

Tatum pairs an RPC Gateway with indexed data and notifications. One key, one JavaScript SDK, 130+ networks.

Best for Solana

Helius ships staked connections, LaserStream and Sender on one chain. Solana trading products fit best.

Best for Redundancy

dRPC spreads calls across 60+ operators and sells flat pay-as-you-go pricing. Outages become routing events.

Best for Regulated Institutions

Blockdaemon brings SOC and ISO 27001 certification plus sanctions screening to nodes. Custodians and tokenization platforms fit best.

Which RPC Provider Should You Choose?

  • Choose Chainstack for the multichain default: Request-unit billing, full compliance, MCP on every plan.
  • Choose Dwellir for heavy workloads: 1 credit per response, trace calls included, plus Hyperliquid.
  • Choose Tatum to consolidate vendors: Nodes, data and notifications under one key.
  • Choose Helius for Solana: Staked connections and streaming built for trading.
  • Choose dRPC for redundancy: 60+ operators behind one endpoint and $6 per million.
  • Choose Blockdaemon for compliance: Certified infrastructure with sanctions screening built in.

Three habits save teams from launch-day outages. First, test the free tier with your real call mix, not a hello-world script. A trace-heavy indexer and a price ticker produce very different bills. Second, keep a second provider configured as a fallback. Solana’s own guide to choosing an RPC provider agrees. Keep one separately operated fallback with health checks. Third, know what a billing unit means before you scale.

What one trace call costs under each billing model

Ethereum’s co-founder adds a fourth habit. Do not trust what a node returns. Verify it:

Light clients like Helios check RPC responses against chain consensus. For a wallet that shows balances, that check is worth the extra work. The ethereum.org page on nodes as a service makes the same trade-off explicit. Providers remove the operational burden. They also centralize part of your stack.

Many teams end up with three layers. RPC for nodes, a data API for balances, execution for swaps. Our free crypto API comparison covers the entry tiers of the data layer.

Community Picks and Further Reading

Developer forums tell the same story the pricing pages do. In an r/solana thread on real-time tracking, Helius came up most often. Mint detection was the use case. A Chainstack team member pointed to an open-source trading bot built on its nodes. Several commenters noted that gRPC streams beat RPC polling for live data. One gets by on a $50 monthly plan.

For the basics, read Umang Suthar’s dev.to explainer on how apps connect to blockchains. It is a clear primer on public versus private endpoints.

On GitHub, the awesome list of RPC node providers has 900+ stars. It tracks public endpoints across dozens of chains. The ethereum/execution-apis repository holds the JSON-RPC specification every EVM provider implements. Each provider above publishes code too. Chainstack’s mcp-server deploys nodes from an AI agent. Dwellir’s dwellir-skill packages EVM, Substrate and Hyperliquid data skills. Tatum’s blockchain-mcp exposes 13 tools. Helius ships a TypeScript SDK. dRPC maintains the dshackle load balancer.

For chain-specific data picks, see our Solana API providers and DeFi APIs guides. CoinStats’ guide to RPC node providers offers a second ranking of the same market.

Conclusion

RPC node providers decide whether your app stays up on its busiest day. Chainstack and Dwellir lead this list. Their bills can be forecast, and their nodes hold under load. Tatum, Helius, dRPC and Blockdaemon each win a narrower job. Consolidation, Solana, redundancy and compliance.

Pick by workload. Test the free tier with real calls. Keep a fallback configured. Then add the layers above the node. A data API for decoded balances, and StealthEX for the swap.

Ready to put swaps inside your wallet, dashboard or bot? Integrate StealthEX crypto exchange through its Affiliate Program and earn from every transaction. Reading this as a trader rather than a builder? You can swap Ethereum, Solana or Hyperliquid on StealthEX without registration.

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Don’t forget to do your own research before buying any crypto. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

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