Helius vs QuickNode vs Triton: Solana RPC Compared

Last updated: 25 October 2026 · Prices, credit costs, rate limits and benchmark figures rechecked on vendor pages on 25 October 2026

In the Helius vs QuickNode vs Triton comparison, Helius is the best Solana RPC for most teams, QuickNode is the best pick for NFT data, audits and multi-chain apps, and Triton One is the best pay-as-you-go option for heavy account scans and full history. We priced five real Solana workloads on all three meters.

All three run Solana mainnet RPC endpoints, gRPC streaming and dedicated nodes. They bill in different units: Helius in credits per method, QuickNode in a flat 30 credits per Solana call, and Triton One in calls plus bandwidth. This head to head expands the Solana entries in our ranking of the 12 best RPC node providers, and our methodology page explains how we gather prices. Our RPC provider pricing breakdown converts these units to dollars per million calls.

The Decision Kernel

Choose by the shape of your Solana traffic. Helius rewards plain reads and sends, QuickNode rewards expensive methods such as DAS, and Triton One rewards small responses and account scans. Log one day of requests by method and response size before you compare plans. The shortcuts below cover the common cases.

• Lowest bill for wallets, DeFi backends and bots: Helius, where standard calls cost 1 credit and Sender transactions cost none.
• NFT, token and compressed asset data: QuickNode Scale, which bills DAS at 60 credits with no extra DAS rate cap listed.
• Heavy getProgramAccounts scans on pay as you go: Triton One at about $17.63 per million, or QuickNode at $18.38.
• Security questionnaires and vendor reviews: QuickNode, with SOC 1, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports.
• Full ledger history from genesis and unmetered gRPC: Triton One, through Old Faithful and dedicated nodes from $2,900 a month.
• One vendor for Solana plus EVM chains: QuickNode, which covers 76+ chains on one key.

How We Compared Helius, QuickNode and Triton One

We scored each provider from 1 to 5 on six criteria, weighted them, and doubled the total for a score out of 10. The weights match our 12-provider ranking, with coverage judged on Solana depth. Every input links to a vendor page or a public benchmark checked on 25 October 2026. The full rules sit on our methodology page.

• Price per call, 25%: monthly bills for five method mixes, converted from credits or bandwidth.
• Reliability, 20%: uptime claims, support response targets and public latency benchmarks.
• Compliance, 15%: SOC 2, ISO 27001 and similar audits stated on the vendor’s own pages.
• Features, 15%: gRPC streaming, transaction sending, DAS, history and dedicated nodes.
• Coverage, 15%: Solana networks, regions, historical depth and other chains.
• Free tier, 10%: what a team can run before paying.

Criterion (weight)	Helius	QuickNode	Triton One
Price per call (25%)	4	2	3
Reliability (20%)	4	5	4
Compliance (15%)	4	5	2
Features (15%)	5	4	5
Coverage (15%)	4	5	4
Free tier (10%)	3	2	1
Score out of 10	8.1	7.6	6.6

Helius vs QuickNode vs Triton One at a Glance

The table lines up the billing unit, free option, entry plan, throughput and support target for each provider. Prices are monthly US dollar list prices from each pricing page on 25 October 2026. Annual billing gives two months free on Helius and lowers QuickNode by about 15% to 30%, and Triton One has no subscription to discount.

	Helius	QuickNode	Triton One
Billing unit	Credits, 1 to 10+ per method	API credits, 30 per Solana call	$10 per 1M calls plus $0.08 per GB
Free option	Free: 1M credits, 10 rps	One-month trial: 10M credits, 15 rps	None, $125 minimum deposit
Entry paid plan	Developer $49: 10M credits, 50 rps	Build $49: 80M credits, 50 rps	Pay as you go, 120 rps default
Higher tiers	$499 (100M), $999 (200M), Enterprise	$249 (450M), $499 (950M), from $999 (2B)	Custom limits, dedicated from $2,900
Overage	$5 per 1M credits	$0.62 to $0.50 per 1M credits	Same metered rates
gRPC streaming	LaserStream, mainnet from Business	Solana gRPC included from Scale	Dragon’s Mouth, $0.08 per GB
Support target	24h Developer to 4h Enterprise	24h Build, 12h Accelerate, 8h Scale	24/7 chat with engineers

Pricing: Credits Against Bandwidth

The three meters charge for the same Solana call in different ways. Helius charges 1 credit for standard and historical calls but 10 for getProgramAccounts and DAS. QuickNode charges 30 credits for any Solana method, with DAS at 60. Triton One charges $10 per million calls and then $0.08 for every GB the responses carry.

Converting each unit to dollars per million calls shows where each vendor wins. The figures use the entry paid plan fully used, which is the rate most small teams pay. Response sizes for Triton One come from our own calls to Solana mainnet on 25 October 2026, such as 0.49 KB for getAccountInfo and 1.82 MB for a full getBlock.

Method, per 1M calls	Helius Developer	QuickNode Build	Triton One
getAccountInfo	$4.90 (1 credit)	$18.38 (30 credits)	$10.04 (0.49 KB each)
getTransaction	$4.90 (1 credit)	$18.38 (30 credits)	$11.34 (17.5 KB each)
getBlock, full transactions	$4.90 (1 credit)	$18.38 (30 credits)	$152.15 (1.82 MB each)
getProgramAccounts	$49.00 (10 credits)	$18.38 (30 credits)	$17.63 (about 100 KB each)
DAS getAsset	$49.00 (10 credits)	$36.75 (60 credits)	$50.00 (Metaplex API rate)
sendTransaction	$0 through Sender, plus tip	$18.38 (30 credits)	$10.01

Two rows flip the ranking. Helius costs more than both rivals for account scans and DAS calls, and Triton One costs far more for full-block reads because bandwidth dominates the bill. Request getBlock with transactionDetails set to signatures and the response drops to about 27 KB, which brings Triton One back to about $12 per million.

What Five Real Workloads Cost

Plan tables only matter once you apply them to real traffic. We built five Solana method mixes, assumed a peak of three times the average rate, and picked the cheapest plan on each vendor that clears credits, requests per second and per-method limits. Helius came out cheapest in four of the five, and QuickNode won the DAS-heavy app.

Workload (monthly)	Helius	QuickNode	Triton One
Wallet backend, 10M requests	$49 on Developer	$185.40 on Build	$102.95 (37 GB)
DeFi app backend, 30M requests	$284 on Developer plus overage	$499 on Scale	$326.27 (328 GB)
History indexer, 50M requests	$499 on Business	$790.50 on Scale plus overage	$2,677.11 (27.2 TB)
NFT and token data app, 20M requests	$729 on Business plus overage	$499 on Scale	$633.03 (413 GB)
Trading bot, 100M requests	$499 on Business	$1,499 on Business plus overage	$1,005.74 (72 GB)

• Wallet backend: 35% getAccountInfo, 20% getBalance, 15% token accounts, 10% blockhash, 10% signatures, 5% getTransaction, 5% sends.
• DeFi app backend: 40% getAccountInfo, 20% getMultipleAccounts, 10% getProgramAccounts, 10% simulations, 10% blockhash, 10% sends and status checks.
• History indexer: 40% getTransaction, 30% full getBlock, 20% getSignaturesForAddress, 10% getSlot.
• NFT and token data app: 50% DAS getAsset, 20% getProgramAccounts, 30% getAccountInfo. The DAS peak of 11.6 rps pushes Helius past Developer’s 10 rps DAS cap.
• Trading bot: 50% getAccountInfo, 20% blockhash, 15% simulations, 10% sends and 5% status checks, with sends peaking at 11.6 per second.

Rate limits decided two rows. The trading bot peaks at 116 requests per second, which fits Helius Business at 200 rps. On QuickNode its 3 billion credits make Business cheaper than Scale plus overage. The indexer fits Helius Business on credits alone, yet its full-block responses add 27.2 TB of bandwidth on Triton One.

gRPC Streaming and Real-Time Data

All three sell Yellowstone-compatible gRPC streams for accounts, transactions and slots, and they price them within a cent per GB. Helius LaserStream costs 2 credits per 0.1 MB and adds 48 hours of replay. QuickNode moved Solana gRPC to metered pricing on 1 October 2026, at 15 credits per 0.1 MB.

Streaming	Helius	QuickNode	Triton One
Product	LaserStream gRPC and WebSocket	Solana gRPC	Dragon’s Mouth gRPC
Plan needed	Business $499 for mainnet, Developer on devnet	Included on Scale $499, paid add-on on Build and Accelerate	Any deposit
Price per GB	$0.100 on included credits, $0.078 with Pro data add-ons	$0.079 on Scale credits	$0.08
Connection limits	10 on Business, 100 on Professional	10 concurrent on Scale, 25 on Business	Not capped on the pricing page
Extras	48h historical replay, shreds from $800 a month	Compressed filters, port 443 compression	Shreds from $900 a month, unmetered on dedicated

Sending Transactions

Landing transactions is where Solana RPC vendors differ most. Helius Sender uses no credits on any plan, including Free, and submits each transaction through several routes, including Jito. You pay a SOL tip instead, with a 0.001 SOL minimum for Sender and 0.000005 SOL for the SWQOS-only route. Helius plans also cap standard sendTransaction rates.

• Helius: Sender at 50 transactions per second on all plans, staked connections from Developer, standard sends capped from 1 to 100 per second by plan.
• QuickNode: sends cost 30 credits like any call, with Jito bundles, priority fee APIs and Lil’ JIT offered as marketplace add-ons.
• Triton One: sends cost $10 per million, and preconfirmations through Jito BAM and Harmonic cost $0.0015 per slot or $50 per million messages.

Landing data is patchy. The Helius sends benchmark showed submit errors for every QuickNode and Triton One transaction on 25 October, so its live board ranks only Helius (95.4% landed, 6-slot median) and Chainstack. Cached copies of the same board from earlier periods placed Triton One first on landing rate, so treat the live result as incomplete.

Free Tiers and Minimums

The free options differ more than the paid plans. Helius Free never expires and gives 1M credits and 10 requests per second, enough for a prototype. QuickNode offers a one-month trial with 10M credits. Triton One has no free tier and asks for a $125 prepaid deposit that is valid for 12 months and non-refundable.

Free option	Allowance	Solana calls it covers	Limits
Helius Free	1M credits a month	About 1M standard calls or 100,000 DAS calls	10 rps, 1 send per second
QuickNode trial	10M credits for one month	About 333,000 calls	15 rps, ends after one month
Triton One deposit	$125 prepaid, 12 months	About 12M small reads	Spent like credit, no refunds

Latency and Reliability

Public Solana latency data is thin for this trio. The Helius benchmark is run by Helius, and its last complete ranking, ending 18 October 2026, scored Helius 94.5 and QuickNode 85.6. On 25 October that benchmark showed QuickNode and Triton One endpoints as down, so it fell back to older data.

The independent OpenChainBench Solana run tracks keyed endpoints from Alchemy, Chainstack, GetBlock and QuickNode, and QuickNode leads that cohort at about 3 ms median. It does not test Helius or Triton One. QuickNode and Triton One claim 99.99% uptime, and Helius cites 99.99% from a February 2024 snapshot. None publishes a credit-backed SLA on its public pages.

Security, Compliance and SLAs

Procurement teams will see the widest gap here. QuickNode states SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001, and offers DORA reports on request. Helius states a SOC 2 Type II report with a clean opinion. Triton One publishes its security practices but no SOC 2 or ISO report.

	Helius	QuickNode	Triton One
Audits stated	SOC 2 Type II	SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001	Security practices page only
Uptime claim	99.99% (February 2024 snapshot)	99.99%	99.99%
Support target	24h, 12h, 8h, 4h by plan	24h, 12h, 8h by plan	24/7 chat with engineers
Dedicated option	Dedicated nodes from $2,900	Dedicated clusters on Enterprise	Dedicated nodes from $2,900

Historical Data and Dedicated Nodes

Archive depth matters for indexers and analytics. Helius bills historical calls such as getTransaction at 1 credit, and adds getTransactionsForAddress for filtered history. Triton One serves the complete ledger from genesis through Old Faithful at its standard rate. QuickNode serves archive calls at the same 30 credits.

Dedicated nodes start at $2,900 a month on both Helius and Triton One, and QuickNode offers dedicated clusters on Enterprise plans. Triton One includes unmetered Dragon’s Mouth gRPC on dedicated nodes, which removes the bandwidth meter for streaming-heavy teams.

Helius

Helius is a Solana-only provider with RPC, DAS, LaserStream gRPC, Sender and dedicated nodes. Standard and historical calls cost 1 credit, so plain reads are the cheapest of the three. Developer costs $49 a month for 10M credits and 50 requests per second. Extra credits cost $5 per million on every plan.

• Plans: Free (1M credits), Developer $49 (10M), Business $499 (100M), Professional $999 (200M), Enterprise custom.
• Rate limits: 10, 50, 200 and 500 rps by plan, with DAS at 2, 10, 50 and 100 rps and +100 rps for $100 a month on Professional.
• Strengths: lowest bill in four workloads, credit-free Sender, LaserStream replay, SOC 2 Type II.
• Weaknesses: 10 credits for DAS and getProgramAccounts, a big jump from $49 to $499, Solana only.

QuickNode

QuickNode runs Solana alongside 76+ other chains, with gRPC, DAS and marketplace add-ons on one key. Every Solana method costs 30 credits, so cheap reads cost more and expensive methods cost less. Scale costs $499 a month for 950M credits, 250 rps and Solana gRPC. Annual billing lowers Scale to $424.

• Plans: trial (10M credits), Build $49 (80M), Accelerate $249 (450M), Scale $499 (950M), Business from $999 (2B).
• Overage: $0.62 per million credits on Build down to $0.50 on Business.
• Strengths: cheapest DAS workload, SOC 1, SOC 2 and ISO 27001, best independent latency, multi-chain.
• Weaknesses: $18.38 per million standard calls, gRPC bundled only from Scale, no permanent free tier.

Triton One

Triton One builds Project Yellowstone, including the Dragon’s Mouth gRPC interface and the Old Faithful archive, and serves Solana, Sui and Monad. It bills $10 per million calls plus $0.08 per GB, with a 1,200 requests per 10 seconds default limit that support can raise. Small responses cost about $10 per million, and large ones cost far more.

• Pricing: $125 minimum deposit, $10 per 1M calls plus $0.08 per GB, Metaplex API at $50 per 1M plus bandwidth.
• Extras: shred streaming from $900 a month, preconfirmations, dedicated nodes from $2,900 with unmetered gRPC.
• Strengths: cheapest getProgramAccounts, full history from genesis, flexible rate limits, Yellowstone tooling.
• Weaknesses: no free tier, no audit report, costly for large responses such as full blocks.

Final Ranking

Helius takes first place on price for common workloads, Solana features and a permanent free tier. QuickNode is second on audits, latency evidence and DAS pricing, held back by its flat 30-credit meter. Triton One is third on our weights, mostly for its missing free tier and audit report, and it wins on history and scans.

1. Helius, 8.1: best Solana RPC for most teams, cheapest for reads, sends and bots.
2. QuickNode, 7.6: best for DAS-heavy apps, vendor reviews and multi-chain stacks.
3. Triton One, 6.6: best for account scans, full history and dedicated gRPC.

How to Run a One-Week Bake-Off

A week of side-by-side traffic answers what a pricing page cannot. Send the same calls to all three endpoints from the region where your servers run. Log median and tail latency, error rates, slot lag and response sizes, then price that week’s mix on each meter.

for url in "$HELIUS_URL" "$QUICKNODE_URL" "$TRITON_URL"; do
  curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{time_total} %{size_download}\n" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"getSlot","params":[{"commitment":"processed"}]}' \
    "$url"
done

The size_download column matters for Triton One, since bandwidth drives its bill. Use Helius Free, the QuickNode trial and the minimum Triton One deposit for the test. Read the full RPC providers hub for more comparisons.

Frequently Asked Questions