7 Best Free RPC Providers in 2026 for Testing and Small dApps

Last updated: 4 November 2026 · Free plan allowances, rate limits, unit costs and feature gates rechecked on each vendor’s pricing page and docs on 4 November 2026

The best free RPC provider in 2026 for most testing and small dApps is dRPC: its free plan gives about 10.5 million standard EVM calls every 30 days at 100 requests per second, with no card. Alchemy is the pick when you need archive data and WebSockets for free, Chainstack when you want a private endpoint with 3M requests, and Helius for Solana.

We checked seven free RPC providers with permanent free plans on 4 November 2026, turned each allowance into real calls for three workload mixes, and tested the limits that break a free plan before the quota does, such as log block ranges and per-second caps. The ranking uses a free-plan rubric explained below, and our methodology page covers how we collect prices.

Which Free RPC Provider Should You Pick

Pick by the one limit your project will hit first. For most hobby and test projects that is volume, for indexers it is the log block range, and for real-time apps it is WebSocket access. Before you pick, count how many eth_getLogs calls your app makes, since that one method splits these free plans more than any other. The shortcuts below cover most cases.

• Most calls for free: dRPC, with a 210M compute unit pool that covers about 10.5M standard EVM calls every 30 days.
• Archive data, WebSockets and webhooks: Alchemy, whose free plan includes full archive, all mainnets and testnets and 5 webhooks.
• A private endpoint with predictable limits: Chainstack, with 3M requests a month at 25 requests per second and WebSockets.
• Event scanning on a free plan: Ankr Freemium, which allows a 3,000-block range on eth_getLogs.
• Solana: Helius, with 1M credits a month at 1 credit per standard call and webhooks included.
• MEV-protected sends on a small budget: GetBlock, which lists MEV protection on its free plan.

How We Ranked the Free Plans

Our main RPC provider ranking weighs price and compliance for production buyers. This list only judges the free plans, so it uses a separate rubric. Each plan gets 1 to 5 on five criteria, and the weighted sum is doubled to give a score out of 10. All inputs come from vendor pages we checked on 4 November 2026.

Provider	Allowance (30%)	Rate limit (20%)	Features (20%)	Chains and testnets (15%)	Upgrade path (15%)	Score
dRPC	5	5	2	4	4	8.2
Alchemy	3	3	4	5	5	7.6
Chainstack	4	4	3	4	4	7.6
Ankr	3	4	3	4	4	7.0
Infura	3	2	4	3	3	6.0
Helius	2	3	4	2	4	5.8
GetBlock	1	4	4	3	3	5.6

Allowance uses the dApp frontend mix described below. Features covers archive data, WebSockets, trace and debug access and log range limits. Upgrade path rewards a cheap first paid step, such as pay as you go billing, over a jump to a fixed monthly plan.

1. dRPC

dRPC is a multi-chain RPC network that bills compute units from one shared pool. Its free plan gives a 210M CU pool per 30 days from registration, at 100 requests per second, on public nodes only. Almost every EVM method costs the same 20 CU, so the free pool works out to 10.5M calls whatever your method mix. Figures come from its pricing page and compute unit table.

• Allowance: 210M CU, which dRPC describes as up to about 10M requests. eth_call, eth_getLogs and eth_getBalance all cost 20 CU.
• Limits: 120,000 CU a minute per IP, about 100 eth_call requests a second, a 2-second timeout, logs capped at 10,000 entries, batches of 3 and filter methods off by default, per its rate limiting docs.
• Not included free: archive nodes, debug and trace methods and WebSocket connections.
• Upgrade: pay as you go at $6 per 1M requests, or Pro at $49 a month for 163M CU and 300 requests per second.

Public nodes are fast in third-party tests. OpenChainBench measured eth.drpc.org at 51 ms median latency with 100% success on 3 November 2026, the fastest keyless Ethereum endpoint in its board that day.

2. Alchemy

Alchemy has the most complete free plan of the seven: 30M compute units a month, all mainnets and testnets, full archive data, WebSockets and 5 webhooks. It caps throughput at 15 requests per second, or 300 CU per second on a 10-second rolling window. Alchemy Free allows only a 10-block range per eth_getLogs call on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon. Plan details are on its pricing page and the range table is in its eth_getLogs docs.

• Unit costs: eth_blockNumber 10 CU, eth_getBalance 20, eth_call 26, eth_sendRawTransaction 40 and eth_getLogs 60, per its compute unit table.
• Real volume: about 1,158,301 calls a month on our dApp mix and 625,000 on our indexer mix.
• Throughput: the CU-per-second cap means our dApp mix tops out near 11.6 requests a second, per its throughput docs.
• Upgrade: pay as you go at $0.52 per 1M CU with 300 requests per second, so there is no fixed monthly jump.

3. Chainstack

Chainstack’s free Developer plan gives 3M request units a month, 25 requests per second, one node, WebSockets and no card. A full request costs 1 RU and an archive or debug request 2 RU, per its request unit docs. Because every full call costs one unit, 3M request units means 3M calls for any method mix. Plans are on its pricing page.

• Limits: eth_getLogs is capped at 100 blocks on Developer and 10,000 on paid plans, and Solana mainnet is held to 5 requests a second on Developer, per its limits page.
• Archive: listed from the Growth plan up, not on Developer.
• Upgrade: Growth at $49 a month for 20M requests and 250 requests per second.
• Trust: its pricing page shows SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 badges, useful if a test project later goes through vendor review.

4. Ankr

Ankr offers two free options: keyless public endpoints on 30+ chains, and a Freemium plan with a project token and 200M API credits a month. Every EVM request costs 200 credits, so Freemium covers 1M EVM calls, at 30 requests per second over HTTPS. Ankr Freemium allows a 3,000-block eth_getLogs range, the widest of the free plans we checked. Limits are listed on its service plans page.

• Public tier: about 1,800 requests a minute guaranteed across endpoints, batches of 10 and a 1,000-block range.
• Freemium: 200M credits, 30 requests per second on the Node API, batches of 100, HTTPS only, one project token and no trace or debug.
• Solana: 500 credits a request, so 200M credits buys 400,000 Solana calls, per its pricing docs.
• Upgrade: pay as you go from $10 for 100M credits, with WebSockets and 1,500 requests per second.

5. Infura

Infura’s free Core plan gives one API key, 3M credits a day and 500 credits a second, with full archive data and its Gas API on 40+ networks. Credits are set by method: 80 for eth_call, balances and receipts, 255 for eth_getLogs and 300 for eth_estimateGas, per its credit cost table. At 500 credits a second, Infura Core serves only about 6 eth_call requests a second, the lowest real rate of the seven. Plans are on its pricing page.

• Real volume: about 27,650 dApp-mix calls a day, or 829,493 over 30 days.
• Daily reset: the quota resets at 00:00 UTC, which is 5:30 AM in India. WebSocket subscriptions also bill per event, such as 50 credits per newHeads block, per its WebSockets docs.
• Not included free: debug and trace methods.
• Upgrade: Developer at $50 a month for 15M credits a day.

6. Helius

Helius is a Solana-only provider. Its free plan gives 1M credits a month at 10 requests per second, with standard RPC calls at 1 credit, webhooks and standard LaserStream WebSockets. Helius Free allows only 1 sendTransaction a second, so it works for testing and small apps but not for trading bots. Limits come from its pricing page and rate limit docs.

• Unit costs: standard RPC calls 1 credit and getProgramAccounts 10 credits, per its credit docs.
• Other caps: 2 DAS API requests a second and 5 getProgramAccounts calls a second.
• Not included free: staked connections and LaserStream gRPC.
• Upgrade: Developer at $49 a month for 10M credits and 50 requests per second. Our Helius vs QuickNode vs Triton comparison covers paid Solana options.

7. GetBlock

GetBlock’s free plan gives 50,000 compute units a day, renewed daily with no rollover, at 20 requests per second with two access tokens. Total CU is the chain multiplier times the method multiplier, and Ethereum’s multiplier is 20, per its CU docs. A standard Ethereum call costs 20 CU on GetBlock, so the free plan covers about 2,500 Ethereum calls a day. Plans are on its pricing page.

• Included free: WebSockets, MEV protection and limited archive access on major networks.
• Solana: a chain multiplier of 50, so about 1,000 Solana calls a day.
• Archive: archive-mode requests double the CU cost.
• Not included free: an SLA. Support is community only.

How Many Calls Each Free Plan Buys

Free allowances use different units, so we converted each one into calls for three method mixes. Chainstack and dRPC give the same call count for every mix, while Alchemy and Infura shrink by roughly half for an indexer. Infura and GetBlock reset daily, so their figures assume full use on all 30 days.

Plan	dApp frontend	Event indexer	Test and bot traffic	Rate limit
dRPC	10,500,000	10,500,000	10,500,000	100 req/s on dApp mix
Chainstack	3,000,000	3,000,000	3,000,000	25 req/s on dApp mix
Alchemy	1,158,301	625,000	1,111,111	11.6 req/s on dApp mix
Ankr	1,000,000	1,000,000	1,000,000	30 req/s on dApp mix
Infura	829,493	444,444	725,806	4.6 req/s on dApp mix
GetBlock	75,000	75,000	75,000	20 req/s on dApp mix

• dApp frontend: 40% eth_call, 15% eth_getBalance, 15% eth_blockNumber, 10% receipts, 10% eth_getLogs, 5% sends and 5% gas estimates.
• Event indexer: 70% eth_getLogs, 20% eth_getBlockByNumber and 10% receipts.
• Test and bot traffic: 50% eth_call, 20% gas estimates, 20% sends and 10% receipts.

Our numbers match the independent free-tier table on OpenChainBench closely for dRPC, Chainstack, Ankr and GetBlock. Its Alchemy figure of 1.26M uses a different method mix from ours. For paid pricing beyond the free tier, see our RPC provider pricing guide.

The Log Range Limit Breaks Free Plans First

Ethereum adds a block every 12 seconds, about 7,200 a day, per ethereum.org. A free plan’s maximum block range sets how many eth_getLogs calls it takes to read one day of events. On Alchemy Free, scanning one day of Ethereum events takes 720 calls and 43,200 CU, against 3 calls on Ankr Freemium. That gap matters more than the headline allowance for any indexer.

Free plan	Max block range	Calls for one day	Notes
Alchemy Free	10 blocks	720	Same 10-block limit on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon
Chainstack Developer	100 blocks	72	10,000 blocks on paid plans
Ankr public	1,000 blocks	8	Keyless endpoints
Ankr Freemium	3,000 blocks	3	10,000 blocks on paid plans
dRPC Free	Not stated as blocks	Depends on events	Responses capped at 10,000 log entries and a 2-second timeout

Set Up a Free Fallback

Two free plans in a fallback beat one free plan. A fallback transport sends each call to the first healthy endpoint and moves on when one throttles or times out. The viem fallback transport does this in a few lines, and rank: true orders endpoints by measured latency.

import { createPublicClient, fallback, http } from "viem";
import { mainnet } from "viem/chains";

const client = createPublicClient({
  chain: mainnet,
  transport: fallback(
    [
      http(process.env.DRPC_URL),      // volume
      http(process.env.CHAINSTACK_URL), // private endpoint
      http(process.env.ALCHEMY_URL),   // archive reads
    ],
    { rank: true, retryCount: 2 }
  ),
});

Keep archive and trace calls on the provider that supports them, since dRPC Free does not include them. Keyless endpoints such as PublicNode, which lists 76 chains, make a good last resort in tests but carry no allowance or support commitment. For Ethereum-specific options, see our Ethereum RPC provider ranking, and for Base see our Base RPC provider guide.

Why QuickNode Is Not on This List

QuickNode’s free option is a trial, not a plan: 10M API credits for one month at 15 requests per second with no card, then a paid plan from $49, per its pricing page. A one-month trial is useful for evaluation but cannot host a test project that runs for a year, so we left it out. Several ranking pages still list it as a free tier.

If you plan to move to a paid provider anyway, our QuickNode vs Alchemy vs Chainstack comparison covers the paid entry plans, and our Alchemy alternatives and Infura alternatives guides cover the wider field.

Final Verdict

dRPC is the best free RPC provider in 2026 for testing and small dApps, with the largest allowance and the highest free request rate. Alchemy is the best free plan for features, Chainstack the most predictable, and Helius the Solana default. For a full Solana list, see our Solana RPC provider ranking.

1. dRPC, 8.2: most free calls, 100 requests per second, public nodes only.
2. Alchemy, 7.6: archive, WebSockets and webhooks free, 10-block log range.
3. Chainstack, 7.6: 3M requests at 1 unit each, 25 requests per second, WebSockets.
4. Ankr, 7.0: 3,000-block log range, keyless public endpoints, 1M EVM calls.
5. Infura, 6.0: archive data free, daily quota, low real request rate.
6. Helius, 5.8: Solana only, 1M credits, webhooks, 1 send a second.
7. GetBlock, 5.6: 50,000 CU a day, MEV protection, smallest allowance.

Frequently Asked Questions