Top 6 Stellar RPC providers for payments and stablecoin infrastructure in 2026

Stellar is a layer-1 network purpose-built for cross-border payments and asset tokenization, running its own Stellar Consensus Protocol rather than an EVM- or Solana-style execution model. One clear sign that RPC access on Stellar is changing: Horizon, the REST API that has served the chain since its early years, is nearing end-of-life per Stellar’s own documentation — no new feature development, though it keeps receiving compatibility updates with no published shutdown date — with Stellar RPC, rebranded from Soroban-RPC in late 2024, now the recommended way to read ledger and Soroban contract data going forward.

That shift is landing right as Stellar’s Protocol 23 “Whisk” upgrade shipped parallel transaction execution aimed at pushing theoretical throughput toward 5,000 TPS, on-chain stablecoin supply grew 22% quarter-over-quarter to roughly $297 million in Q1 2026, led by USDC’s 14.9% jump to $256.3 million, and DeFi TVL sat around $213 million when this article was first written (August 2026) — check the live DeFiLlama figure rather than trusting a snapshot, since it’s swung from under $200 million to a $235 million April peak and back within the past few months. It’s a small base compared to Ethereum or Solana, but it is growing, and in our assessment RPC reliability matters more than it did a year ago — providers still built around Horizon’s older REST model, or that haven’t adapted to Stellar RPC’s bounded retention window, may fall behind.

This guide compares six providers that offer Stellar RPC access as of August 2026 — including Chainstack, which added Stellar node support on August 20, 2026, and publishes this page — against the aggregators and specialists filling out the rest of the field.

Quick verdict: best Stellar RPC providers for payments and stablecoin infrastructure in 2026

Chainstack is our top pick for payments and stablecoin infrastructure on Stellar (an editorial judgment, not a benchmark result), based on flat 1 request unit billing for every call, published SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification, and Dedicated Nodes. Chainstack publishes this page and is one of the 6 listed providers, and its Stellar support is new (added August 20, 2026) and HTTPS-only with no WebSocket access, so read how we compared and the latency section before relying on the ranking. No latency benchmark covers Stellar, so none of the 6 providers is measured here. Last updated October 29, 2026. The best fit by need:

• Best for predictable per-call cost with certification paperwork: Chainstack (flat 1 RU per call, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, Dedicated Nodes; no WebSocket and no archive product on Stellar).
• Best for pooled multi-provider routing with unified APIs and webhooks: Uniblock (55+ underlying providers; no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 publicly confirmed).
• Best for watching payment channels over WebSocket and for one-click Dedicated Nodes: OnFinality (public and authenticated WSS endpoints; no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 publicly confirmed).
• Best for full settlement history and audit trails: Validation Cloud (Stellar RPC and Horizon nodes bundled; SOC 2 Type 2; ISO 27001 not confirmed).
• Best for indexed transfer history and a permanent free tier: Alchemy (Data APIs for transfers, token balances and NFT holdings; no standard dedicated nodes for Stellar).
• Best for push delivery of payment events with dual certification: Quicknode (Streams and Webhooks, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001; Stellar access starts as a one-month trial).

Provider comparison: 6 Stellar RPC providers for payments and stablecoin infrastructure (2026)

The table below summarizes public positioning as of August 2026. The rank is the editorial order used in this article (see how we compared), not a benchmark result: no latency benchmark covers Stellar (see Stellar RPC latency).

Rank	Provider	Best for	Pricing model	Free tier	Dedicated nodes	Historical data access	WebSocket support
1	Chainstack	Flat 1 RU per call, SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001, Dedicated Nodes (Stellar support added August 20, 2026)	Flat 1 RU per call, no archive split on Stellar	Permanent Developer plan — 3M RU/mo, 25 RPS, no card required	Yes — Global Nodes and Dedicated Nodes, Mainnet and Testnet	Bounded rolling window via Stellar RPC	Not supported (HTTPS only)
2	Uniblock	Pooled multi-provider routing with unified APIs and webhooks	Per-request pricing pooled across 55+ underlying providers	Free tier available	Not documented for Stellar	Depends on the underlying provider routed to	Not documented
3	OnFinality	WebSocket endpoints and one-click Dedicated Nodes	Tiered RPS — free public endpoint plus paid Growth plan	Free plan, up to 40 RPS	Yes — one-click Dedicated Node deployment	Not documented beyond the RPC retention window	Yes — public and authenticated WSS endpoints
4	Validation Cloud	Full history through bundled Horizon nodes, SOC 2 Type 2	Usage-based, scales from a free starter tier	Free starter tier	Not documented as a discrete product	Full history via bundled Horizon nodes alongside Stellar RPC	Not documented
5	Alchemy	Indexed Data APIs and a permanent free tier	Method-weighted CU billing	Permanent free tier	No standard dedicated nodes	Indexed Data APIs extend past the RPC retention window	Yes — RPC and WebSocket
6	Quicknode	Streams and Webhooks with SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001	Method-weighted credit billing	1-month free trial — 10M credits, 15 RPS	Not documented for Stellar specifically	Core RPC (bounded window); Streams/Webhooks for push delivery	Not documented for Stellar

How we compared Stellar RPC providers for payments and stablecoin infrastructure

Disclosure: this comparison is published by Chainstack. Chainstack is one of the 6 listed providers and is ranked first, so read the ranking as a vendor perspective and check the figures against the official pricing pages linked in each provider section.

Criteria. Each provider is compared on the same attributes: pricing model and free tier, dedicated infrastructure, historical data access beyond the Stellar RPC retention window (Horizon or indexed APIs), WebSocket and push-delivery options, published SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification, and fit for payments and stablecoin, RWA and enterprise workloads. The order is editorial judgment for payments and stablecoin workloads on Stellar. It is not a benchmark result, because no latency benchmark covers Stellar.

Sources. Prices, limits and certifications come from each provider’s public pages as summarized on this page as of August 2026 unless a section says otherwise. On October 29, 2026 the author re-read four public pages: OnFinality’s homepage (Stellar public RPC at 5 requests per second, with HTTPS and WSS endpoints), Validation Cloud’s homepage (SOC 2 Type 2 compliance), Quicknode’s security page (SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001) and Stellar’s official RPC providers list. Alchemy’s security page points to a Trust Center, which lists a SOC 2 Type II report held by Alchemy Insights, Inc. and no ISO 27001 (read October 29, 2026). Chainstack, Alchemy and Quicknode pricing, limits and certification details were also re-read on October 29, 2026 and corrected where they differed; other providers’ prices and free-tier limits were not re-verified.

Not covered. Stellar’s official providers list also names Blockdaemon, NowNodes, Gateway, Ankr, Infstones, Obsrvr, Nodies, Lightsail Network, Exaion and GetBlock; they are not part of this comparison. Chainstack does not appear on that list as of October 29, 2026. Other Stellar RPC providers may also exist.

Latency data. None of the 6 listed providers is measured: see Stellar RPC latency for the not-monitored statement and a command to measure latency yourself.

Already using Chainstack? Jump straight to the Stellar tooling docs or deploy your endpoint in minutes.

Why RPC provider choice matters for Stellar

Stellar’s RPC model doesn’t map cleanly onto EVM or Solana conventions, and in our assessment that mismatch is where thin integrations show their limits. There’s no eth_getLogs, no account-level archive tier, and no protocol-native mempool subscription stream — Stellar RPC exposes ledger, transaction, and Soroban contract state through a comparatively small method surface (getLedgerEntries, getTransaction, getEvents, sendTransaction, simulateTransaction, and a handful of others), keeping only a rolling window of recent history rather than the full chain state Horizon used to expose.

That narrow, bounded-history design changes what matters when picking a provider: less raw archive depth, more how each provider fills the gap Stellar RPC’s retention window leaves open, how consistently they sustain throughput on a payments-heavy chain, and how honestly they price a network most of them only added support for in the past year or two.

• Cost predictability and pricing model. Chainstack bills every Stellar RPC call — reads and sendTransaction submissions alike — as a flat 1 request unit, and Stellar has no archive tier to weight differently in the first place. Alchemy and Quicknode still price Stellar through the same method-weighted CU/credit systems they run everywhere else, so a workload heavy on indexed queries or push delivery can cost more than the headline price implies. See the cost comparison between Chainstack, Quicknode, and Alchemy for worked examples on other chains.
• Historical data access and the Horizon transition. Stellar RPC nodes retain only a bounded recent window — getHealth‘s oldestLedger field reports the actual floor, since the configured retention window is a ceiling, not a guarantee. Anything further back means Horizon, a third-party indexer, or a provider that bundles both. Horizon itself is nearing end-of-life per Stellar’s own docs — no new feature development, though compatibility updates continue with no announced shutdown date — so integrations still leaning on Horizon alone are on a runway that’s shrinking, just not on a fixed clock yet.
• Throughput stability under load. Protocol 23 raised Stellar’s own theoretical throughput ceiling, but a shared RPC endpoint can still throttle well below that. Dedicated infrastructure starts to matter once polling volume gets sustained rather than bursty.
• Support quality and responsiveness. A getTransaction call returning an unexpected result at 2 a.m. is a different debugging problem on a network most support teams have covered for months rather than years. Check whether free-tier support is community-only or has engineers actually in the loop, and what paid tiers commit to in writing.
• Free-tier reality. Chainstack, Alchemy, and Validation Cloud all offer standalone free tiers with no time limit. Quicknode’s Stellar access currently starts as a time-limited trial. That distinction matters most for hackathon and pilot-stage payments or RWA teams evaluating before they commit budget.
• WebSocket and subscription support. Stellar RPC itself has no native WebSocket layer, so this varies entirely by provider: OnFinality and Alchemy publish WebSocket endpoints for Stellar, Chainstack’s current integration is HTTPS-only, and the rest are not documented either way on this page.
• SLA and compliance certifications. Stellar’s growing stablecoin and RWA activity means SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 — or their absence — start mattering to a different kind of buyer than the typical hackathon team. See the certification breakdown in the enterprise use case below and the sources note on what was re-checked.

How to choose a Stellar RPC provider

Pricing model: flat vs weighted, and what that means at scale

Stellar has no archive tier to bill at a premium, so the EVM-style multiplier problem (20–26× weighting on heavy methods, per Chainstack’s own cost breakdown) doesn’t really exist on the chain itself — Chainstack bills every Stellar call, reads and sendTransaction submissions alike, as a flat 1 request unit. What still varies is provider overhead: Alchemy and Quicknode price Stellar through the same method-weighted CU/credit systems they run across every chain they support, so a workload heavy on indexed queries or push delivery can cost more than a plain getLedgerEntries poll suggests.

True cost per call = (method’s CU/credit weight × price per million units) ÷ 1,000,000 — multiply by monthly call volume for the real bill.

Stellar doesn’t yet have a widely used equivalent to eth_getLogs or debug_traceTransaction to build a representative per-method cost table around, since every provider’s Stellar pricing sits closer to flat than their EVM pricing does. The more useful move is running your own expected call mix through that same interactive calculator once you know it.

Archive, historical data, and the Horizon transition

Stellar RPC’s bounded retention window is the single biggest chain-specific constraint on this list — always confirm the actual floor via getHealth‘s oldestLedger rather than trusting the configured ceiling. For anything beyond that window — reconciliation, audits, RWA issuance history — you’re looking at Horizon, a third-party indexer, or a provider that runs both interfaces. Validation Cloud is the one provider here that bundles Stellar RPC and Horizon nodes natively; Alchemy’s indexed Data APIs cover a related gap from a different angle (transfer history, token balances, NFT holdings) without running Horizon itself.

Free-tier reality

Chainstack’s Developer plan, Alchemy’s free tier, and Validation Cloud’s starter tier are all permanent, no-card-required plans. Quicknode’s entry point into Stellar is a one-month free trial — 10 million credits, 15 requests per second, community support only — that exits into a paid tier or lapses once the month is up. That distinction matters for a hackathon team or an early-stage RWA pilot evaluating providers before committing to a subscription.

When dedicated infrastructure matters

Three concrete triggers for moving off a shared endpoint on Stellar: sustained polling well above a shared plan’s RPS ceiling (a payments processor watching thousands of accounts continuously behaves very differently from a wallet doing occasional balance checks); isolated infrastructure requirements for regulated RWA issuers who need contractual or data-residency guarantees a shared pool can’t offer; and custom retention needs that go beyond what any provider’s default Stellar RPC window covers.

Stellar RPC vs Horizon: picking the right interface

“Stellar RPC” is the current, correct name — it replaced “Soroban-RPC” in a late-2024 rebrand, though the older name still shows up across provider docs and comparison sites. RPC is a JSON-RPC 2.0 interface built for Soroban contract data and ledger reads (getHealth, getNetwork, getLatestLedger, getLedgers, getLedgerEntries, getTransaction, getTransactions, getEvents, getFeeStats, getVersionInfo, sendTransaction, simulateTransaction). Horizon is the older REST/HAL API that historically handled account, effects, and history queries; new integrations should default to RPC.

Support quality: tiered, not “SLA yes/no”

Chainstack runs four support tiers on Stellar the same as everywhere else: Community (free, Discord/Telegram), Standard (all paid plans, sub-24-hour response), Professional ($100/month, sub-6-hour response with 24×7 coverage), and Premium ($1,000/month, sub-1-hour response across all severities). Quicknode’s free trial includes community support only, with paid-tier response commitments kicking in above that. Validation Cloud advertises 24/7 support as a standard feature of its Node API rather than a paid add-on. Match the support tier to how much Stellar-specific troubleshooting experience you expect to need; this article did not verify how long each provider has run Stellar in production.

Latency consistency vs. average latency

Average latency is the number providers tend to quote; tail latency (p95/p99) is, in our assessment, the number that determines whether a payment confirmation flow feels reliable under real load. Stellar was not tracked on Chainstack’s own performance benchmarks as of October 29, 2026, so there is no pre-computed ranking to lean on here; see Stellar RPC latency.

Stellar RPC latency: not monitored by Chainstack Compare (October 29, 2026)

Chainstack Compare (compare.chainstack.com) did not monitor Stellar when this article was updated (October 29, 2026), the Chainstack performance dashboard does not cover it either, and none of the Chainstack research reports covers Stellar (the reports cover Ethereum, BNB Chain and Hyperliquid). This article therefore publishes no latency figures for the 6 listed providers, and no other public real-time dashboard for Stellar RPC providers was cited. Benchmark before you commit: run a latency test against each provider’s endpoint from your target region, hitting getHealth and one heavier call like getTransactions over a wide ledger range, and compare p95 and p99 rather than the average.

Reproduce a latency check. The command below returns the total round-trip time for one getHealth call. Replace the placeholder with the HTTPS endpoint you are testing, run it repeatedly against each provider, and compare the median and the 95th percentile. See how to measure RPC latency (P50, P95, P99) for the full method.

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{time_total} s" -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"getHealth"}' https://YOUR_STELLAR_RPC_ENDPOINT

Choose by use case

Stellar for stablecoin and cross-border payments infrastructure

Payments are Stellar’s reason for existing, and that shows up in the RPC load pattern: a payments backend is mostly sendTransaction and getTransaction calls at high, steady frequency, plus continuous balance and trustline reads, rather than the bursty read-heavy pattern more common on general-purpose chains. Reliability and consistent tail latency matter more here than raw throughput ceilings, since a delayed confirmation on a cross-border transfer is a support ticket, not just a slow page load.

Chainstack’s flat per-call billing means cost scales with call count rather than with method weights as volume grows (Chainstack publishes this page), and OnFinality’s WebSocket gateway is an option for watching payment channels without constant polling. Validation Cloud’s bundled Horizon access fits teams that also need full settlement history for reconciliation, not just the RPC window.

Stellar for RWA and tokenized asset infrastructure

Real-world asset issuance on Stellar — tokenized treasuries, funds, and similar instruments — leans hard on exactly the historical-data gap Stellar RPC’s bounded window creates. Issuers and transfer agents need full, queryable transaction history for audit trails, not just a rolling week or two of recent ledgers, and they need it from infrastructure that can hold up to a compliance review.

In our assessment, Validation Cloud’s combined Stellar RPC and Horizon offering is the closest fit here, since it covers real-time contract state and full history from one vendor rather than stitching two providers together. Alchemy’s indexed Data APIs for token balances and NFT holdings cover a related but narrower slice of the same problem. Chainstack’s Dedicated Nodes are worth evaluating once an issuance platform needs isolated infrastructure rather than a shared endpoint, even without a bundled archive product on Stellar today.

Stellar for enterprise and regulated fintech infrastructure

Payments and RWA activity on Stellar both eventually run into the same institutional buyer: a compliance or procurement team that wants published, audited certifications rather than a vendor’s word for it. That team is going to ask about SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 specifically, and the answers vary across this provider set. Chainstack holds both SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and Quicknode’s security page lists both; Alchemy’s Trust Center lists a SOC 2 Type II report but no ISO 27001; Validation Cloud is SOC 2 Type 2 certified; Uniblock and OnFinality don’t publicly confirm either as of this writing.

For contractual guarantees rather than self-reported uptime, Chainstack’s Enterprise plan adds SSO, role-based access, and a dedicated account team, backed by the response-time commitments and service credits detailed in the Enterprise Support SLA. None of that is Stellar-specific — it’s the same enterprise stack Chainstack runs across every supported chain — but for a network whose primary use case is regulated payments and asset issuance, it’s worth checking before assuming a smaller specialist’s compliance posture matches.

Stellar RPC rate limits and free tiers compared

Rate limits and billing units differ between providers, so the same number of calls can cost different amounts. This table uses only the figures given on this page; “Not stated here” means this article gives no figure.

Provider	Free tier	Free-tier rate limit	Paid tiers or other limits stated here	Billing unit
Chainstack	Permanent Developer plan, 3M RU/month, no card required	25 RPS	Growth $49/month (20M RU, 250 RPS); Pro, Business and Enterprise scale up from there; Dedicated Nodes for Stellar Mainnet and Testnet	Request Units: flat 1 RU per call on Stellar
Uniblock	Free tier available	Not stated here	Not stated here	Per request, pooled across 55+ providers
OnFinality	Free plan; free public Stellar endpoint	40 RPS (free plan); 5 RPS (public Stellar endpoint)	Authenticated plans up to 500+ RPS; paid Growth plan adds RPC analytics, priority support and no daily response limit; one-click Dedicated Nodes	Tiered RPS
Validation Cloud	Free starter tier	Not stated here	Not stated here (usage-based)	Usage-based
Alchemy	Permanent free tier	Not stated here	Pay-as-you-go; no standard dedicated nodes for Stellar	Compute units (method-weighted)
Quicknode	1-month free trial, 10M credits	15 RPS	Build tier from $49/month; plans run up to custom Enterprise	Credits (method-weighted)

Chainstack alternatives for Stellar RPC

If Chainstack is not the right fit, these are the head-to-head differences between Chainstack and each alternative, using the facts on this page:

• Chainstack vs Uniblock: Uniblock pools 55+ providers with automatic routing and failover and offers unified APIs and webhooks, but its Stellar-specific throughput, pricing and dedicated-node documentation is thinner and no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 is publicly confirmed; Chainstack offers Dedicated Nodes and both certifications, but only HTTPS access.
• Chainstack vs OnFinality: OnFinality offers WebSocket endpoints and one-click Dedicated Nodes, which Chainstack’s HTTPS-only Stellar integration lacks (Chainstack offers Dedicated Nodes too), but its public endpoint is capped at 5 RPS and no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 is publicly confirmed; Chainstack publishes both certifications.
• Chainstack vs Validation Cloud: Validation Cloud bundles Stellar RPC and Horizon nodes for full history and is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, while Chainstack has no archive product on Stellar today and needs a companion service for long-window history; Chainstack publishes its plans, Dedicated Nodes and ISO 27001.
• Chainstack vs Alchemy: Alchemy offers indexed Data APIs, WebSocket access and a permanent free tier, but has no dedicated clusters for Stellar, method-weighted CU billing and no published ISO 27001; Chainstack bills a flat 1 RU per call and offers Dedicated Nodes.
• Chainstack vs Quicknode: Quicknode adds Streams and Webhooks for push delivery and publishes SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, but Stellar access starts as a one-month trial, billing is method-weighted and no dedicated option is documented for Stellar; Chainstack has a permanent free plan and flat per-call billing, but no push-delivery product on Stellar.

Provider-by-provider breakdown: 6 Stellar RPC providers (2026)

1. Chainstack: best for predictable per-call cost with certification paperwork

Verdict: Flat 1 RU per call on Stellar, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, Global and Dedicated Nodes. Trade-off: Stellar support is new (added August 20, 2026), HTTPS-only with no WebSocket, no archive product, and not yet on Stellar’s official providers list. Official pricing.

Chainstack added Stellar support on August 20, 2026, and runs Stellar RPC across Global Nodes and Dedicated Nodes on Stellar Mainnet and Testnet, with every request — reads and transaction submissions alike — billed as a flat 1 request unit, since Stellar has no separate archive tier to bill.

Integration uses Stellar’s own SDKs against a Chainstack endpoint — @stellar/stellar-sdk in JavaScript (rpc.Server) or stellar-sdk in Python (SorobanServer) — with no proprietary wrapper layer. Global Nodes handle geo-distributed shared access; Dedicated Nodes suit teams that need isolated Stellar infrastructure without operating validators themselves. Pricing follows Chainstack’s standard tiers: a permanent Developer plan (3M RU/month, 25 RPS, no card required), Growth at $49/month (20M RU, 250 RPS), and Pro, Business, and Enterprise scaling up from there — the same tiers that apply across every Chainstack-supported chain.

Chainstack’s SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications and four-tier support structure (Community through $1,000/month Premium with sub-1-hour response) apply to Stellar the same as any other supported chain, and Stellar RPC access is also reachable through Chainstack MCP for teams working from an AI coding agent.

Limitations: WebSocket access isn’t available for Stellar on Chainstack yet — the current integration is HTTPS-only. There’s also no third-party track record to point to: Chainstack’s own Stellar support was weeks old when this article was first written, and Chainstack does not appear on Stellar’s official RPC providers list (checked October 29, 2026).

Fit by workload:

• Stablecoin and payments infrastructure: Strong (our assessment; Chainstack publishes this page) — flat billing means high-volume payment polling doesn’t multiply against a credit weight as call volume grows.
• RWA and tokenized asset infrastructure: Strong, with a caveat — Dedicated Nodes give isolated throughput, but there’s no archive product on Stellar today, so long-window historical queries still need a companion service.
• Enterprise and regulated fintech: Strong on paper (our assessment) — SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 plus a published SLA — though the Stellar integration itself is measured in weeks, not years.

2. Uniblock: best for pooled multi-provider routing with unified APIs and webhooks

Verdict: Pooled routing across 55+ providers with a free tier. Trade-off: thinner Stellar-specific documentation, no dedicated-node option documented, no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 publicly confirmed. Official pricing.

Uniblock is a managed multi-chain infrastructure layer offering unified JSON-RPC and HTTP API access to Stellar across 300+ blockchains and 55+ underlying providers, with the Stellar ecosystem itself listed among Uniblock’s production customers (as stated by Uniblock; not independently verified here).

Uniblock’s product sits in three tiers: Unified JSON-RPC for raw RPC access, Unified APIs for higher-level token, NFT, market, and webhook data, and Direct Provider APIs for pass-through access to specific underlying providers. The pooled-provider model means automatic routing and failover across whichever backends Uniblock integrates for a given chain, smoothing over a single provider’s rate limits without the integrating team managing multiple accounts. Uniblock states that it raised $5.2 million in a March 2026 round and reports over 4,000 developers and 3,000 projects on the platform, including Plume Network and Apechain alongside Stellar.

Limitations: Public documentation of Stellar-specific throughput, pricing, and dedicated-node options is thinner than Uniblock’s EVM coverage, and no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification is publicly confirmed for Uniblock as of this writing.

Fit by workload:

• Stablecoin and payments infrastructure: Good (our assessment) — pooled provider capacity helps absorb bursty payment traffic without a single point of failure.
• RWA and tokenized asset infrastructure: Good (our assessment) — the Unified APIs layer is an advantage for teams also pulling token or NFT metadata alongside raw ledger data.
• Enterprise and regulated fintech: Moderate, mainly because there’s nothing public yet to point a compliance reviewer toward.

3. OnFinality: best for WebSocket access and one-click Dedicated Nodes

Verdict: Public and authenticated Stellar endpoints including WSS, free plan up to 40 RPS. Trade-off: the free public endpoint is capped at 5 RPS and no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 is publicly confirmed. Official pricing.

OnFinality runs dedicated public and authenticated Stellar RPC endpoints — including a WebSocket gateway — with the public tier capped at 5 requests per second and authenticated plans scaling to 500+ RPS, alongside one-click Dedicated Node deployment for teams that want isolated Stellar infrastructure without running validators themselves.

The free plan raises that ceiling to 40 RPS for general API access, with the paid Growth plan adding RPC analytics, priority support, and no daily response limit. OnFinality’s broader platform spans 100+ networks and includes managed SubQuery indexer hosting elsewhere in its catalog — a differentiator for indexing-heavy workloads, though SubQuery support specifically for Stellar isn’t independently confirmed at the time of writing.

Limitations: The free public endpoint’s 5 RPS ceiling is thin for anything beyond prototyping, and moving past it means an authenticated paid plan. No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification is publicly confirmed for OnFinality itself.

Fit by workload:

• Stablecoin and payments infrastructure: Strong (our assessment) — the WebSocket gateway is a plus for anything watching payment channels in near-real time instead of polling.
• RWA and tokenized asset infrastructure: Good — OnFinality’s one-click dedicated node option provides isolated throughput, though full historical depth still depends on a companion indexer.
• Enterprise and regulated fintech: Moderate — nothing publicly confirmed on the compliance side to hand to a procurement checklist yet.

4. Validation Cloud: best for full settlement history and audit trails

Verdict: Stellar RPC and Horizon nodes bundled, SOC 2 Type 2, free starter tier. Trade-off: no Stellar-specific throughput ceilings or dedicated-node pricing published, ISO 27001 not confirmed, lower brand recognition. Official site (no public pricing page found: /pricing returned 404 on October 29, 2026).

Validation Cloud is a Stellar-native infrastructure provider running both Stellar RPC (for Soroban smart contract data) and Horizon nodes side by side, giving teams full historical account and transaction history through Horizon while using RPC for real-time ledger and contract queries — a combination this article did not find bundled natively at the other five providers.

The platform is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and built around what it calls Smart Routing, which manages request traffic for consistent performance rather than leaving failover entirely to the client. Pricing scales from a free starter tier upward with usage, and the company — headquartered in Zug, Switzerland — positions itself as a Web3 data-streaming and infrastructure specialist rather than a general-purpose multi-chain reseller, with 24/7 support advertised as standard rather than a paid add-on.

Limitations: Validation Cloud doesn’t publish Stellar-specific throughput ceilings or dedicated-node pricing the way the larger generalist providers do, and it carries far less brand recognition among teams evaluating providers by reputation alone.

Fit by workload:

• Stablecoin and payments infrastructure: Strong — Horizon access alongside RPC covers both real-time and full-history payment queries from a single vendor.
• RWA and tokenized asset infrastructure: Strong (our assessment) — full transaction history is exactly what asset-issuance audit trails need, and here it’s bundled rather than sourced from a second provider.
• Enterprise and regulated fintech: Strong — SOC 2 Type 2 certified and built specifically around Soroban and Stellar, though ISO 27001 isn’t confirmed either way.

5. Alchemy: best for indexed transfer history and a permanent free tier

Verdict: Data APIs for transfers, token balances and NFT holdings, JSON-RPC and WebSocket, permanent free tier. Trade-off: no dedicated clusters for Stellar, method-weighted CU billing, no published ISO 27001. Official pricing.

Alchemy went live with full Stellar support in April 2026, shipping JSON-RPC and WebSocket access plus indexed Data APIs for transfer history, token balances, and NFT holdings across both classic Stellar operations and Soroban contracts — and has stood up its own three-validator Stellar node cluster while working toward tier-1 validator status — Alchemy’s own posts frame this as a “path to,” not an achieved status yet — which means an RPC provider is participating in the network’s consensus infrastructure rather than just serving reads against it.

The indexed APIs are the headline feature for Stellar specifically: instead of building a custom indexer against Stellar RPC’s bounded retention window, teams can query transfer history and balances directly. Alchemy’s free tier for Stellar is permanent rather than time-limited, a point in its favor next to Quicknode’s trial-based entry. Method-weighted CU billing applies here the same as on Alchemy’s other chains — pay-as-you-go pricing adds up fast past the free tier, so it’s worth running the numbers before committing to production volume.

Limitations: Alchemy’s Dedicated Clusters product isn’t currently extended to Stellar, a real gap for teams needing isolated throughput. Alchemy’s Trust Center (read October 29, 2026) lists a SOC 2 Type II report, available on request; no ISO 27001 is listed — don’t assume dual certification just because some competitors here hold it.

Fit by workload:

• Stablecoin and payments infrastructure: Strong — indexed transfer-history APIs are a direct fit for payment reconciliation without building a custom indexer.
• RWA and tokenized asset infrastructure: Strong — token and NFT holdings APIs cover tokenized-asset bookkeeping out of the box.
• Enterprise and regulated fintech: Good, with a gap — a SOC 2 Type II report is listed on its Trust Center, but no ISO 27001 and no dedicated nodes will matter for some regulated buyers’ checklists.

6. Quicknode: best for push delivery of payment events with dual certification

Verdict: Streams and Webhooks, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001. Trade-off: no permanent free tier (one-month trial), method-weighted credits, no dedicated option documented for Stellar. Official pricing.

Quicknode offers Core RPC API access plus Streams and Webhooks for Stellar mainnet and testnet, giving teams a push-based option for transaction and payment events on top of standard JSON-RPC polling, backed by both SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification.

Streams and Webhooks are the practical differentiator for Stellar: instead of polling getTransactions on a schedule, a payments backend can subscribe to push delivery for relevant events. Quicknode’s broader plan structure runs from a Build tier at $49/month through Accelerate, Scale, and multiple Business+ tiers up to custom Enterprise pricing. Credits are method-weighted, so model credit consumption against the expected call mix before moving past the free trial.

Limitations: There’s no permanent free tier — the entry point is a one-month trial (10 million credits, 15 RPS, community support only) that exits into a paid plan or lapses. No dedicated-node option is documented specifically for Stellar.

Fit by workload:

• Stablecoin and payments infrastructure: Good — Streams and Webhooks fit payment-event pipelines well, though credit costs need modeling before committing to volume.
• RWA and tokenized asset infrastructure: Moderate — no Stellar-specific archive or indexing product beyond Core RPC and Streams.
• Enterprise and regulated fintech: Strong — dual SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification checks a box many procurement teams look for first.

Getting started with Stellar on Chainstack

Deploy a production Stellar endpoint in a few steps:

1. Log in to the Chainstack console (or create an account).
2. Create a new project
3. Select Stellar as your blockchain protocol
4. Choose network: Stellar Mainnet or Testnet
5. Deploy the node
6. Open Access and credentials and copy your HTTPS endpoint

For issuance platforms or payment processors that need isolated throughput rather than a shared endpoint, Dedicated Nodes are available for Stellar Mainnet and Testnet alongside the same initial deploy.

import { rpc } from "@stellar/stellar-sdk";

const server = new rpc.Server("YOUR_CHAINSTACK_ENDPOINT");

// Confirm the node is healthy and see how far back its ledger history goes
const health = await server.getHealth();
console.log(`Status: ${health.status}, oldest ledger: ${health.oldestLedger}`);

const network = await server.getNetwork();
console.log(`Passphrase: ${network.passphrase}`);

📖 For the full integration guide, see the Chainstack Stellar tooling documentation.

🤖 You can also access Chainstack Stellar RPC directly from Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Pi, or any MCP-compatible agent using Chainstack MCP. For a fuller agent stack — MCP, the Chainstack skill, llms.txt for context ingestion, and WebMCP for agentic browsers — see the Chainstack Agents page.

Conclusion

For a chain whose RPC interface only fully stabilized in the past two years, and whose biggest 2026 headline is a wave of major providers just now shipping real support, the question worth asking first is whether a provider treats Stellar as a first-class integration or a fast follower. No latency benchmark covers Stellar (see Stellar RPC latency), so test the shortlisted endpoints from your own region.

• For stablecoin and payments infrastructure: in our assessment, Chainstack (published by Chainstack, see how we compared) for predictable flat billing, or Validation Cloud where full settlement history via Horizon matters as much as real-time reads.
• For RWA and tokenized asset issuance: Validation Cloud for bundled full-history access, or Alchemy for indexed token and NFT APIs.
• For teams already standardized on Alchemy or Quicknode for other chains: both now support Stellar, but check the certification and dedicated-node gaps above before assuming full parity with their EVM offerings.
• For prototyping and hackathons: Chainstack’s and Alchemy’s permanent free tiers avoid Quicknode’s time-limited trial entirely.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What’s the difference between Stellar RPC and Horizon?

Stellar RPC is a JSON-RPC 2.0 interface for real-time ledger reads and Soroban smart contract data, retaining only a bounded recent window of history. Horizon is the older REST/HAL API that historically handled account, effects, and history queries; per Stellar’s own docs it’s now nearing end-of-life and no longer receives new feature development, though it continues to receive compatibility updates and has no published shutdown date.

Q: Which Stellar RPC providers have a permanent free tier?

Chainstack, Alchemy, and Validation Cloud all offer standalone free tiers with no time limit and no card required at signup. Quicknode’s Stellar access currently starts as a one-month free trial (10 million credits, 15 RPS) rather than a permanent plan.

Q: Do I need to migrate off Horizon?

Not immediately — Horizon still works and continues to get protocol-compatibility updates — but Stellar’s own documentation recommends RPC for new integrations, and Horizon isn’t receiving new features going forward. Teams building anything new should default to Stellar RPC and treat Horizon as a legacy or historical-data companion rather than the primary interface.

Q: How do I benchmark Stellar RPC latency across providers?

Stellar was not tracked on Chainstack Compare or Chainstack’s public performance dashboards as of October 29, 2026, so there’s no ready-made ranking to check (see Stellar RPC latency for a command). Run your own test — a curl loop or k6 script hitting getHealth and a heavier call like getTransactions over a wide ledger range from your target region — and compare p95/p99, not just average response time.

Q: Which Stellar RPC providers are SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certified?

Chainstack holds both SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and Quicknode lists both on its security page. Alchemy’s Trust Center lists a SOC 2 Type II report but no ISO 27001. Validation Cloud is SOC 2 Type 2 certified. Uniblock and OnFinality don’t publicly confirm either certification as of this writing.

Q: Why does Stellar RPC pricing look different from Ethereum or Solana RPC pricing?

Stellar has no archive or debug/trace tier to bill at a premium, so a flat-billing provider like Chainstack bills the same 1 RU for every Stellar call rather than flat-on-simple-calls only. Method-weighted providers like Alchemy and Quicknode still apply their standard CU/credit models, but the gap between “cheap” and “expensive” calls on Stellar is narrower than it is on an EVM chain with debug_traceTransaction or wide-range eth_getLogs queries in the mix.

Additional resources

• Chainstack introduces Stellar support
• Chainstack pricing
• Stellar RPC providers — official list
• Stellar RPC methods reference
• Stellar developer documentation

Changelog

We review this comparison regularly so that the information stays accurate, clear, and easy to verify. This page was reviewed to improve how the comparison is structured and sourced.

• October 29, 2026: Added a quick verdict, a Rank and Best for column in the provider comparison table (moved up), a methodology and disclosure section, a Stellar RPC latency section stating that Stellar is not monitored by Chainstack Compare with a reproducible latency command, a rate limits and free tiers comparison, alternatives guidance, numbered provider sections with one-line verdicts and official pricing links, re-checked certification and provider-list sources, corrected vendor pricing, limits and certification details, and wording clarifications.
• August 26, 2026: Original publication.