Best Yellowstone gRPC providers for Solana in 2026

Solana is not a slow blockchain. In production, the network processes 3,000–4,000 non-vote transactions per second, and with the Firedancer validator client targeting 65,000+ TPS on mainnet, those numbers will only climb. For most dApp developers, standard JSON-RPC polling is good enough. For MEV searchers, arbitrage bots, liquidation engines, and real-time indexers, it is a fundamental architectural mismatch: by the time you have polled getAccountInfo and received a response, multiple slots have already passed.

The problem is not latency alone — it is the polling model itself. Repeatedly hammering getConfirmedSignaturesForAddress2 or getProgramAccounts to detect account state changes burns RPC credits, introduces variable lag, and creates race conditions that cost money on Solana where block times are 400 ms. What these workloads actually need is a push-based streaming interface that the validator feeds directly.

That interface is the Geyser plugin — and its most widely used implementation is Yellowstone gRPC (also known as Dragon’s Mouth). Not all Solana RPC providers support it, and among those that do, the quality of the implementation varies from shared, rate-limited streams to fully isolated, co-located infrastructure. This guide covers what Geyser is, what infrastructure it demands, how six major providers compare for Geyser workloads, and how to get started with a production Chainstack Geyser endpoint.

Already on Chainstack? Jump straight to the Solana Yellowstone gRPC documentation or deploy your Geyser endpoint in minutes.

Quick verdict: best Yellowstone gRPC providers for Solana in 2026

Chainstack is our top pick for Yellowstone gRPC on Solana, based on published stream pricing ($49/month for 2 streams, $149/month for 7, $449/month for 25), dedicated nodes, and SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification. That is an editorial judgment about fit, not a speed claim: Chainstack publishes this page and is one of the 6 listed providers (see how we compared), and no benchmark of gRPC streaming latency applies to any of the six providers. The best fit by need:

• Best for published stream pricing, dedicated nodes and SOC 2 Type II: Chainstack (no free Geyser tier; Growth plan or above).
• Best for managed event routing to webhooks and Kafka: Quicknode (credit-based pricing).
• Best for Solana-native teams that want parsed transaction APIs next to streaming: Helius (SOC 2 compliance listed on its pricing page, report type not verified).
• Best for teams that want the original Yellowstone implementer: Triton One (this article states no SOC 2).
• Best for indexers that need slot replay and SOC 2 Type II: Alchemy (6,000-slot replay; shared endpoints per this article).
• Best for pay-as-you-go JSON-RPC: dRPC (Yellowstone support unconfirmed; see the dRPC section).

Yellowstone gRPC providers for Solana compared (2026)

The rank column is an editorial order, not a benchmark result; see how we compared. Chainstack publishes this page and is listed first. Cells marked “May 2026” come from the original text of this article; cells marked “checked October 29, 2026” come from the vendor pages linked in each provider section.

Rank (editorial)	Provider	Geyser / Yellowstone	Dedicated nodes	SOC 2	Pricing model	Free Geyser tier	Best for
1	Chainstack	Yes — Yellowstone gRPC add-on (Growth plan and above)	Yes	Yes (Type II; also ISO 27001)	RU-based + flat add-ons ($49, $149, $449 per month for 2, 7, 25 streams)	No	Published stream pricing, dedicated nodes, SOC 2 Type II
2	Quicknode	Yes — Yellowstone gRPC	Yes	Yes (Type II)	Credit-based	No	Managed event routing to webhooks and Kafka
3	Helius	Yes — Yellowstone gRPC (May 2026); gRPC streaming marketed as LaserStream (checked October 29, 2026)	Yes, from $2,900/month (checked October 29, 2026; the May 2026 text said No)	SOC 2 compliance listed on its pricing page (checked October 29, 2026; report type not verified)	Credit-based plans; LaserStream included from the $499/month Business plan; data add-ons from $400/month (checked October 29, 2026)	No	Parsed transaction APIs next to streaming
4	Triton One	Yes — Yellowstone gRPC (original implementer)	Yes	No (May 2026)	Pay-as-you-go, prepaid $125 minimum deposit, $0.08/GB bandwidth for streaming (checked October 29, 2026; the May 2026 text said custom / enterprise)	No free tier stated	Teams that want the original implementer
5	Alchemy	Yes — Yellowstone gRPC (added 2025)	No (May 2026); Dedicated Clusters now listed, not evaluated	Yes (Type II)	CU-based	No	Slot replay (6,000 slots) and SOC 2 Type II
6	dRPC	Unconfirmed: the May 2026 text said Limited / no Yellowstone; the pricing page now lists Solana Mainnet gRPC at $60/TB (checked October 29, 2026)	Enterprise tier lists dedicated clusters (checked October 29, 2026)	No (May 2026)	Pay-as-you-go; Solana gRPC billed per TB	No	Pay-as-you-go JSON-RPC

What changed since May 2026. Four provider statements in the original text no longer match the vendors’ own pricing pages (Helius dedicated nodes, Triton One pricing, Alchemy Dedicated Clusters, dRPC Solana gRPC). The table and provider sections now show both the May 2026 statement and what each pricing page showed on October 29, 2026. SOC 2 statuses for Triton One and dRPC are still as stated in May 2026 and were not re-verified; Helius’s pricing page now lists SOC 2 compliance (report type not verified).

Yellowstone gRPC on Solana: what it is and why it matters

The Geyser plugin architecture

Solana validators expose a Geyser plugin interface — a Rust trait that allows external code to hook directly into the validator’s internal state machine. When a slot is processed, when a transaction lands, when an account is written — the Geyser plugin receives an event. This is not polling; the validator is pushing events out as they occur.

In practice, you do not run your own modified validator to use this. You connect to a Geyser-capable RPC provider that runs Yellowstone gRPC alongside its validators. Yellowstone gRPC, the implementation created by Triton One (the company that originally built the Dragon’s Mouth plugin and effectively established the ecosystem standard), exposes the Geyser event stream over a standard gRPC interface with bidirectional streaming. You send a subscription request; you receive a continuous stream of updates.

The six subscription streams

Yellowstone gRPC exposes six core subscription methods, each serving a different latency and data-volume profile:

• subscribeToSlots — Delivers slot status updates as a slot transitions through Processed, Confirmed, and Finalized. This is the lightest stream and the fastest signal for anything that needs to know what slot is current. MEV bots and trading bots typically subscribe to this stream to anchor their timing.
• subscribeToTransactions — Streams transactions as they are processed, with rich filtering options: by account keys included in the transaction (account_include), accounts that must not be present (account_exclude), program IDs, vote transactions, and failed transactions. This is the core stream for MEV bots and arbitrage monitors.
• subscribeToAccounts — Streams account state changes: every time an account’s data or lamport balance changes, you receive the full updated account struct. You can filter by pubkey, by owner program, or with memcmp filters against raw account data bytes — the same filters you would use with getProgramAccounts, but pushed in real time.
• subscribeToBlocks — Delivers full block data including all transactions, account updates, and rewards. High bandwidth. Appropriate for indexers that need a complete, ordered record of chain state.
• subscribeToBlocksMeta — Block metadata without individual transaction data: slot number, blockhash, parent slot, rewards, and block time. Significantly lower bandwidth than subscribeToBlocks. Useful when you need block-level timing signals but do not need to inspect every transaction.
• subscribeToEntry — Entry-level updates, the finest granularity available below the block level. Entries are the batches of transactions that validators package before hashing them into a block. This stream is relevant for latency-critical applications where you want the earliest possible signal that a transaction batch has been processed, before the full block is formed.

Why polling fails at Solana throughput

At 400 ms block times and thousands of TPS, polling getAccountInfo every second means you are checking state once every 2.5 blocks at best. For a lending protocol liquidation bot, that gap is the difference between catching a position at 100% utilization and arriving after another bot has already liquidated it. For a DEX arbitrage bot, a single missed block can mean a price discrepancy has already been closed.

Beyond latency, getProgramAccounts is an extraordinarily expensive RPC method — many providers rate-limit or entirely disable it. Repeatedly calling it to find changed accounts is not a substitute for account subscriptions.

Workloads that need Geyser

• MEV and arbitrage bots — Need subscribeToTransactions with account filters to detect sandwich opportunities and price discrepancies across DEX pools in real time
• Liquidation bots — Need subscribeToAccounts to monitor collateral ratios continuously without polling
• Order book mirrors — Need subscribeToAccounts to replicate on-chain order book state (OpenBook, Phoenix) into in-memory structures with sub-slot latency
• Real-time indexers — Need subscribeToBlocks or subscribeToTransactions to ingest every transaction without gaps
• Data pipelines — Need subscribeToBlocks or subscribeToBlocksMeta to drive downstream analytics without polling
• Real-time dashboards — Need subscribeToSlots and subscribeToAccounts to push live chain state to frontend clients

Yellowstone gRPC on Solana: infrastructure requirements

Latency

The speed advantage of Geyser over polling is real but depends heavily on the provider’s architecture. In our assessment, a Geyser endpoint that is physically co-located with a Solana validator can deliver events with much less delay than a shared endpoint hosted on a different server from the validator, behind a load balancer shared with many other tenants. The size of that gap was not measured for this article, and no gRPC latency figures are cited here (see how we compared). For latency-critical workloads like MEV, the architecture is worth testing directly before committing.

Throughput and filtering

A single busy Solana slot produces hundreds of transactions. An unfiltered subscribeToTransactions stream during peak activity can generate very large volumes of raw gRPC data; in our estimate, at 4,000 TPS with transaction sizes in the kilobyte range, on the order of 100 MB/s (an estimate, not a measurement). Filtering is not optional for production bots; it is a design requirement. Effective Geyser usage means defining tight account and program filters in your subscription request so you receive only the events your bot actually needs to act on.

Dedicated versus shared endpoints

Shared Geyser endpoints serve multiple tenants from the same stream. This introduces three problems for production workloads. First, rate limits: shared endpoints cap the number of subscriptions and the total data volume per client. Second, priority: during peak load, the provider’s infrastructure may apply back-pressure that delays your events relative to other tenants. Third, reliability: if a noisy neighbor saturates the shared stream, your bot may miss events or receive them out of order.

Dedicated Geyser infrastructure — a node where the Geyser stream is provisioned exclusively for your account — removes the shared-tenant causes of all three issues. In our assessment, dedicated is the safer choice for any workload where a missed event has a financial cost.

Geographic proximity

Solana’s validator set is distributed across three primary regions: US East (particularly New York and Virginia), Frankfurt, and Tokyo. Network propagation from a validator to your Geyser subscriber adds latency proportional to geographic distance. An MEV bot running in Frankfurt subscribing to a Geyser endpoint also in Frankfurt will receive events before a competing bot using an endpoint hosted in Singapore, all else being equal. Provider datacenter selection matters for latency-critical use cases.

gRPC versus WebSocket

Both WebSocket subscriptions (accountSubscribe, transactionSubscribe) and Yellowstone gRPC provide push-based updates. The differences matter at scale. gRPC uses HTTP/2 with binary encoding (Protocol Buffers), which is more compact than JSON, supports bidirectional streaming natively, and handles connection multiplexing at the protocol level. WebSocket is a single TCP connection carrying JSON text — higher overhead per message, no built-in binary framing, and no native multiplexing. For a bot subscribing to dozens of accounts or program transactions simultaneously, gRPC’s efficiency advantage compounds across every event received.

WebSocket subscriptions through standard JSON-RPC are a reasonable choice for simple use cases. They are not a substitute for Geyser in production MEV or indexer workloads.

Connection resilience

Geyser streams disconnect. Network hiccups, provider maintenance, and validator restarts all cause stream interruptions. Production Geyser clients must implement reconnection logic that tracks the last received slot and resumes without assuming continuity. A naive reconnect that does not account for missed slots during the gap can cause a liquidation bot to miss a critical account update or an indexer to produce gaps in its database. This is an implementation responsibility, but it is worth selecting a provider that minimizes connection interruptions in the first place.

Chainstack for Yellowstone gRPC workloads

Chainstack’s Yellowstone gRPC offering is built on the standard Yellowstone/Dragon’s Mouth protocol, available as an add-on starting at $49/month for 2 streams, $149/month for 7 streams, and $449/month for 25 streams. It runs on paid plans (Growth and above).

For teams that need isolated infrastructure without shared rate limits, Chainstack’s Dedicated Nodes provision an exclusive Solana node with no other tenants on the same machine. Compute is priced at $0.50/hour, and you get full control over configuration including Geyser stream access without the unpredictability of a shared environment.

For teams running high-throughput bots that need predictable billing rather than per-request pricing, the Unlimited Node add-on provides flat-fee RPS tiers starting at $149/month — in our assessment, a useful cost-control option when your bot is generating thousands of RPC calls per minute alongside its Geyser subscription.

Chainstack holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification, with the audit covering security, availability, and confidentiality Trust Services Criteria. For institutional teams with compliance requirements, SOC 2 Type II can be a procurement requirement; the comparison table shows which listed providers this article states hold it.

Connecting to Chainstack Yellowstone gRPC

The following example shows a Python gRPC client subscribing to transaction events for a specific program. Full import paths and SDK setup are documented in the Chainstack Yellowstone gRPC docs.

import grpc
from solders.pubkey import Pubkey
# Yellowstone gRPC — subscribe to account updates for a program
# Full SDK: https://docs.chainstack.com/docs/yellowstone-grpc-geyser-plugin
channel = grpc.secure_channel(
    "your-geyser-endpoint.chainstack.com:443",
    grpc.ssl_channel_credentials()
)
# Subscribe to all transactions for a specific program
request = SubscribeRequest(
    transactions={
        "my_filter": SubscribeRequestFilterTransactions(
            vote=False,
            failed=False,
            account_include=["YourProgramPubkeyHere"],
        )
    }
)

Provider-by-provider breakdown

1. Chainstack: best for published stream pricing, dedicated nodes and SOC 2 Type II

Verdict: Chainstack is best for published stream pricing, dedicated nodes and SOC 2 Type II; the main trade-off is that Yellowstone gRPC is a paid add-on (Growth plan or above, no free Geyser tier, Solana mainnet only), no gRPC latency benchmark exists to support a speed claim, and Chainstack publishes this page. Official pricing.

Chainstack supports Yellowstone gRPC natively with tiered stream pricing ($49/month for 2 streams up to $449/month for 25 streams; these tiers match the Chainstack Yellowstone gRPC documentation, checked October 29, 2026). The add-on is available on Growth and above plans. Dedicated Nodes are available for teams that need isolated infrastructure: no shared tenants, no shared rate limits, compute billed at $0.50/hour. The Unlimited Node add-on adds flat-fee RPS billing on top for bots with predictable high throughput.

The SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification (SOC 2 Type II in December 2025, ISO 27001 in July 2026) covers security, availability, and confidentiality — in our assessment, a relevant differentiator for fintech and institutional clients. Geographic coverage includes US East, Frankfurt, and Tokyo for Solana, aligning with where the majority of Solana validators operate.

Fit by workload (editorial rating):

• MEV and arbitrage bots: Strong. Dedicated nodes eliminate shared-stream unpredictability; co-location options in US East and Frankfurt align with high-density validator regions.
• Indexers and data pipelines: Strong. subscribeToBlocks with filtering, combined with flat-fee billing, prevents surprise costs during high-activity periods.
• Liquidation and DeFi automation: Strong. subscribeToAccounts with memcmp filtering maps directly to monitoring collateral accounts across a lending protocol.

2. Quicknode: best for managed event routing from Geyser streams

Verdict: Quicknode is best for managed event routing from Geyser streams to webhooks and Kafka; the main trade-off is credit-based pricing, which can make cost estimation harder for high-throughput Geyser workloads. Official pricing.

Quicknode offers Yellowstone gRPC (branded as Yellowstone Streaming) as part of its Solana infrastructure. Quicknode is one of the more established providers for Geyser, with tooling around its Streams product that which can route Geyser events to webhooks, Kafka, and other downstream targets — useful for data pipeline use cases where you want managed delivery rather than a raw gRPC client.

Quicknode holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification and offers dedicated endpoint options. Quicknode’s pricing is credit-based, which can make cost estimation harder for high-throughput Geyser workloads compared to flat-fee models. The credit system applies multipliers to certain RPC methods, so teams should audit their method mix against Quicknode’s credit schedule before committing.

Fit by workload (editorial rating):

• MEV and arbitrage bots: Good. Yellowstone gRPC is supported and dedicated options are available.
• Indexers and data pipelines: Very good. The Streams routing product simplifies event delivery to downstream systems.
• Liquidation and DeFi automation: Good. Full Yellowstone support covers the subscription patterns these bots need.

3. Helius: best for Solana-native teams that want parsed transaction APIs next to streaming

Verdict: Helius is best for Solana-native teams that want parsed transaction APIs next to streaming; the main trade-off is that its SOC 2 report type is not verified here (its pricing page lists SOC 2 compliance), and dedicated nodes, listed on Helius’s pricing page from $2,900/month (checked October 29, 2026), are a separate, higher-priced tier. Official pricing.

Helius is a Solana-only provider that has built significant tooling around the Solana ecosystem, including enhanced APIs for parsing transactions and NFT data. Helius supports Yellowstone gRPC as of the May 2026 text of this article, and its pricing page now markets gRPC streaming as LaserStream, described there as a drop-in replacement for Geyser gRPC.

The original version of this article (May 2026) listed the absence of dedicated node infrastructure as the limitation for production Geyser workloads. Helius’s pricing page now lists dedicated nodes starting from $2,900/month (checked October 29, 2026), so isolation is available at that tier; shared plans remain the entry point, and LaserStream is listed as included with Business plans ($499/month) and higher, with data add-ons starting at $400/month. Helius’s pricing page lists SOC 2 compliance (Enterprise plan) without stating the report type or date (checked October 29, 2026; not verified here), which may matter for enterprise procurement; the May 2026 statement that Helius does not hold SOC 2 is outdated.

Fit by workload (editorial rating):

• MEV and arbitrage bots: Moderate. Yellowstone is available on shared plans; in our assessment, production MEV bots generally need isolation, which Helius now offers on its dedicated nodes tier.
• Indexers and data pipelines: Good. Helius’s enhanced transaction parsing APIs add value for indexers that need decoded program data alongside raw events.
• Liquidation and DeFi automation: Moderate. Shared Geyser works for less latency-sensitive liquidation bots; high-frequency liquidators should consider dedicated infrastructure.

4. Triton One: best for teams that want the original Yellowstone implementer

Verdict: Triton One is best for teams that want the original Yellowstone implementer; the main trade-off is that this article states no SOC 2 certification, and the pricing model is prepaid (a $125 minimum deposit on the pricing page, checked October 29, 2026). Official pricing.

Triton One is the company that created the original Yellowstone gRPC plugin (Dragon’s Mouth), which gives Triton One the longest track record with Yellowstone. In our assessment, its infrastructure suits Solana-native teams that need raw streaming performance; this article did not benchmark it.

Triton One operates primarily at the enterprise and institutional level. The original version of this article (May 2026) said Triton One did not publicly list pricing and had minimal self-serve onboarding; Triton One’s pricing page now lists pay-as-you-go pricing (a prepaid $125 minimum deposit, $0.08/GB bandwidth for streaming services, and a Dedicated Nodes option, checked October 29, 2026), so those statements are outdated. This article states that Triton One does not hold SOC 2 certification (as of May 2026, not re-verified). For a trading firm with engineering resources and a need for deep Geyser coverage, Triton One is worth evaluating.

Fit by workload (editorial rating):

• MEV and arbitrage bots: Excellent in our assessment for teams that have the operational capacity to work with an enterprise provider, given that Triton One built the original plugin.
• Indexers and data pipelines: Excellent in our assessment for the same reason: Triton One’s implementation is the reference for all six subscription streams.
• Liquidation and DeFi automation: Excellent technically in our assessment; enterprise-level onboarding may make iteration slower for small teams.

5. Alchemy: best for indexers that need slot replay and SOC 2 Type II

Verdict: Alchemy is best for indexers that need slot replay and a SOC 2 Type II posture; the main trade-off is that this article states Alchemy operates shared endpoints (no stream isolation) and prices by compute unit. Official pricing.

Alchemy added Yellowstone gRPC support in 2025 with a distinct architectural approach: rather than a single node feeding a gRPC stream, Alchemy runs a multi-producer, multi-consumer setup where multiple Solana nodes feed data simultaneously. The intended benefit is resilience — if one node falls behind during a congestion event, other nodes continue feeding the stream. Alchemy also offers 6,000-slot replay, allowing subscribers to recover from connection drops without gaps.

Alchemy’s Trust Center lists a SOC 2 Type II report (held by Alchemy Insights, Inc.) and no ISO 27001 as of October 29, 2026, and its pricing page lists signed SLAs for Enterprise, which matters for institutional teams that need vendor compliance documentation. The limitation stated in the May 2026 text is the absence of dedicated node infrastructure: Alchemy operates shared endpoints, so stream isolation for latency-critical MEV is not available. Alchemy’s website now lists Dedicated Clusters among its scale products (checked October 29, 2026); this article has not evaluated whether they include Yellowstone streams. Pricing is CU-based, which makes cost forecasting harder for sustained high-throughput Geyser workloads than flat-fee models.

Fit by workload (editorial rating):

• MEV and arbitrage bots: Moderate. Yellowstone is available and multi-node resilience helps with uptime, but no dedicated stream isolation for latency-critical trading.
• Indexers and data pipelines: Good. The 6,000-slot replay is useful for indexers recovering from restarts; combined with Alchemy’s enhanced token and NFT APIs, it suits data pipeline use cases.
• Liquidation and DeFi automation: Moderate. Real-time account monitoring via Geyser is supported; shared infrastructure limits it for the most latency-sensitive liquidation strategies.

6. dRPC: best for pay-as-you-go JSON-RPC; Yellowstone support unconfirmed

Verdict: dRPC is best for pay-as-you-go JSON-RPC; the main trade-off is that Yellowstone support is unconfirmed: the May 2026 text said dRPC did not offer it, while dRPC’s pricing page now lists Solana Mainnet gRPC billed at $60/TB (checked October 29, 2026). Official pricing.

dRPC is a decentralized RPC network that routes requests across a distributed set of node operators. It supports Solana’s standard JSON-RPC methods and has competitive pay-as-you-go pricing, making it attractive for development and low-to-medium throughput workloads.

The original version of this article (May 2026) stated that dRPC did not offer Yellowstone gRPC streaming. That statement may be outdated: dRPC’s pricing page now lists Solana Mainnet gRPC at $60/TB on paid plans and “Custom gRPC Limits” on its Enterprise tier (checked October 29, 2026). This article has not verified whether dRPC’s gRPC product is Yellowstone-compatible, so confirm it with dRPC before relying on it for Geyser workloads.

dRPC can play a supporting role in a hybrid stack for JSON-RPC calls; whether it can also serve as a Geyser provider depends on the verification above.

Fit by workload (editorial rating):

• MEV and arbitrage bots: Not assessed (Yellowstone support unconfirmed).
• Indexers and data pipelines: Not assessed for real-time streaming.
• Liquidation and DeFi automation: Not assessed for real-time account monitoring via Geyser.

Yellowstone gRPC pricing, free tiers and limits compared (2026)

Figures below are the ones stated in this article. Chainstack’s stream tiers were checked against its Yellowstone gRPC documentation on October 29, 2026; other figures come from the vendor pages noted in each cell (checked October 29, 2026) or from the May 2026 text. Confirm current figures on the official pricing pages linked in each provider section.

Provider	Free Geyser tier	Geyser pricing and limits stated in this article	Isolation stated in this article
Chainstack	No	Add-on: $49/month for 2 streams, $149/month for 7, $449/month for 25; requires a paid plan (Growth at $49/month or above); Unlimited Node add-on from $149/month; Dedicated Nodes compute $0.50/hour	Dedicated Nodes: exclusive Solana node, no other tenants
Quicknode	No	Credit-based pricing (no Geyser figure stated)	Dedicated endpoint options
Helius	No	Credit-based plans; LaserStream included with Business plans ($499/month) and higher; data add-ons from $400/month (Helius pricing page)	Shared on standard plans; dedicated nodes from $2,900/month (Helius pricing page)
Triton One	No free tier stated	Pay-as-you-go: $125 prepaid minimum deposit, $0.08/GB bandwidth for streaming services (Triton One pricing page)	Dedicated Nodes option listed on the pricing page
Alchemy	No	CU-based pricing (no Geyser figure stated); 6,000-slot replay	Shared endpoints (May 2026); Dedicated Clusters listed on Alchemy’s site, not evaluated
dRPC	No	Solana Mainnet gRPC billed at $60/TB on paid plans (dRPC pricing page); Yellowstone compatibility not verified	Enterprise tier lists dedicated clusters and custom gRPC limits

How we compared Yellowstone gRPC providers for Solana

Disclosure: this comparison is published by Chainstack. Chainstack is one of the 6 providers listed 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. This article does not give providers numeric ratings: no published method exists that would let a reader reproduce one. The table below instead lists the criteria that were checked and which facts on this page support each one. Provider order is editorial judgment based on these criteria. It is not a benchmark result.

Criterion	What was checked	Evidence on this page
Yellowstone gRPC support	Whether the provider offers Yellowstone (Dragon’s Mouth) streaming	Chainstack, Quicknode, Helius, Triton One and Alchemy: yes per the comparison table. Triton One created the original plugin. Alchemy: multi-node architecture and 6,000-slot replay. Quicknode: Streams routing to webhooks and Kafka. dRPC: unconfirmed (see the dRPC section).
SOC 2 and compliance	Attestations stated in this article	Chainstack: SOC 2 Type II (December 2025) and ISO 27001 (July 2026). Quicknode: SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001. Alchemy: SOC 2 Type II report listed on its Trust Center, no ISO 27001 listed (as of October 29, 2026). Helius: SOC 2 compliance listed on its pricing page (report type not verified). Triton One and dRPC: no SOC 2 stated (May 2026, not re-verified).
Pricing transparency	Whether Geyser pricing is published and what it is based on	Chainstack: published stream tiers. Helius: plans and LaserStream tiers on its pricing page. Triton One: pay-as-you-go pricing page. dRPC: per-TB Solana gRPC price on its pricing page. Quicknode and Alchemy: credit-based and CU-based pricing, no Geyser figure stated here.
Dedicated infrastructure	Whether stream isolation from other tenants is offered	Chainstack, Quicknode and Triton One: yes. Helius: from $2,900/month (pricing page). Alchemy: shared endpoints in the May 2026 text; Dedicated Clusters listed, not evaluated. dRPC: Enterprise tier lists dedicated clusters.
Uptime and SLA	Whether the article can support an uptime or SLA statement	No uptime figure for any provider’s Geyser product is compared, because no public status component covers Yellowstone streaming for these providers. Alchemy offers enterprise SLAs (stated in the May 2026 text); Quicknode’s pricing page lists contractual uptime SLAs on its Enterprise plan (checked October 29, 2026).
Streaming latency	Whether a benchmark applies	None applies; see the latency statement below.

Sources. Capability, certification and pricing statements come from each provider’s public documentation as summarized in the May 2026 text of this article, except where a cell or sentence is marked “checked October 29, 2026”. Those were read directly from the vendor pages linked in the provider sections (Helius, Triton One, dRPC and Quicknode pricing pages, Alchemy’s website, and Chainstack’s Yellowstone gRPC documentation). Chainstack platform uptime is 99.99%+ (status.chainstack.com, Solana Mainnet, 99.99%+ over the 90 days to October 29, 2026). That figure is for the Solana Mainnet component only; no status component covers the Yellowstone gRPC add-on, so it is not an uptime figure for the Geyser product. Status-page figures are for the Mainnet component of each chain; testnet components are tracked separately. Platform uptime is not an SLA and not a guarantee, and it covers Chainstack only.

Not covered. Other Solana RPC providers may also offer Yellowstone gRPC or similar streaming. They are not part of this comparison.

Latency data. No benchmark of Yellowstone gRPC streaming latency is cited for any provider. Chainstack Compare tracks Solana JSON-RPC response times, not gRPC streaming, so its figures do not apply to this comparison and are not used here; Triton One is not measured by Compare. The provider order is not a latency ranking. To compare providers yourself, subscribe to the slot stream on each endpoint from the same host and compare the arrival time of each slot update. For JSON-RPC response time, the command below returns the total round-trip time for one getSlot call; run it repeatedly against each endpoint and compare the median and the 95th percentile. See how to measure RPC latency (P50, P95, P99) for the full method. This measures JSON-RPC, not gRPC streaming.

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

Chainstack alternatives for Yellowstone gRPC on Solana

• Chainstack vs Quicknode: Quicknode adds Streams routing to webhooks and Kafka and also holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001; Chainstack publishes flat stream-tier prices ($49, $149, $449 per month) while Quicknode prices by credits.
• Chainstack vs Helius: Helius pairs streaming with parsed transaction APIs and lists dedicated nodes from $2,900/month; Helius’s pricing page lists SOC 2 compliance (report type not verified here), while Chainstack holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001.
• Chainstack vs Triton One: Triton One created the original Yellowstone plugin and lists pay-as-you-go pricing with a $125 prepaid minimum; this article states no SOC 2 for Triton One. Chainstack offers SOC 2 Type II and flat add-on tiers; no benchmark compares their streaming latency.
• Chainstack vs Alchemy: Alchemy offers 6,000-slot replay and a multi-node architecture and holds SOC 2 Type II; this article states Alchemy’s endpoints are shared (May 2026), while Chainstack offers Dedicated Nodes with $0.50/hour compute.
• Chainstack vs dRPC: dRPC offers pay-as-you-go pricing and now lists Solana gRPC at $60/TB, but Yellowstone compatibility is unverified here; Chainstack documents Yellowstone gRPC with published stream tiers.

Getting started with Geyser on Chainstack

Step 1: Sign up or log in

Create an account at console.chainstack.com if you do not have one, or log in to your existing account. A Growth plan or above is required for Yellowstone gRPC access.

Step 2: Create a project and deploy a Solana Mainnet node

In the Chainstack console, create a new project and deploy a Solana Mainnet node. Select your preferred region (US East, Frankfurt, or Tokyo depending on where latency matters most for your workload).

Step 3: Add the Yellowstone gRPC add-on

From the node dashboard, navigate to the marketplace and add the Yellowstone gRPC add-on. Select the appropriate stream tier (2, 7, or 25 streams) based on your application’s subscription requirements.

Step 4: Copy your gRPC endpoint and API key

Once provisioned, the node dashboard displays your gRPC endpoint URL (format: your-node.solana-mainnet.chainstack.com:443) and your API key. These are the two credentials your gRPC client needs.

Step 5: Install the Yellowstone protobuf SDK and connect

Install the Yellowstone gRPC Python package and connect to your endpoint. The following example subscribes to slot updates — the lightest stream and a good starting point for verifying connectivity:

import grpc
import yellowstone_grpc_proto.geyser_pb2 as pb
import yellowstone_grpc_proto.geyser_pb2_grpc as pb_grpc

endpoint = "your-node.solana-mainnet.chainstack.com:443"
token = "YOUR_API_KEY"

creds = grpc.ssl_channel_credentials()
auth = grpc.metadata_call_credentials(
    lambda ctx, cb: cb([("x-token", token)], None)
)
composite_creds = grpc.composite_channel_credentials(creds, auth)

channel = grpc.secure_channel(endpoint, composite_creds)
stub = pb_grpc.GeyserStub(channel)

request = pb.SubscribeRequest(
    slots={"slots": pb.SubscribeRequestFilterSlots()},
)

for update in stub.Subscribe(iter([request])):
    if update.HasField("slot"):
        print(f"Slot {update.slot.slot}: {update.slot.status}")

For the full SDK setup, protobuf installation, and more subscription examples including subscribeToAccounts and subscribeToTransactions, see the Chainstack Yellowstone gRPC documentation.

You can also access Chainstack Solana RPC and Geyser endpoints directly from Claude, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, or Windsurf using Chainstack MCP. Learn more about Chainstack MCP.

Conclusion

In our assessment, Geyser provider selection in 2026 comes down to two questions: does the provider run Yellowstone natively on infrastructure they control, and is the stream isolated from other tenants? Everything else — pricing, SOC 2, geographic coverage — matters, but only after those two questions are answered.

Recommendation matrix by use case:

• MEV and arbitrage bots — Chainstack or Triton One for isolated Geyser infrastructure (latency was not benchmarked here); Chainstack for teams that also need SOC 2 compliance; Triton One for teams that want the original implementer
• Indexers and data pipelines — Chainstack for integrated billing and dedicated infrastructure; Quicknode if you want managed event routing to Kafka or webhooks
• Liquidation and DeFi automation — Chainstack or Helius for standard liquidation bots; in our assessment, dedicated infrastructure is recommended for latency-sensitive liquidators
• Mixed JSON-RPC + Geyser stacks — The five providers this article lists as Geyser-capable (Chainstack, Quicknode, Helius, Triton One, Alchemy) can serve both streaming and JSON-RPC; pair based on compliance and throughput needs. This recommendation comes from Chainstack, which publishes this page.

FAQ

What is the difference between Geyser plugin and Yellowstone gRPC?

The Geyser plugin is the plugin interface built into the Solana validator that allows external code to receive real-time state change events (account updates, transactions, slot transitions). Yellowstone gRPC is the specific gRPC-based implementation of that interface, originally created by Triton One under the name Dragon’s Mouth. It is widely used to consume Geyser data, and “Geyser endpoint” usually means a Yellowstone gRPC endpoint.

Can I use WebSocket subscriptions instead of Geyser for MEV bots?

WebSocket subscriptions (accountSubscribe, transactionSubscribe) provide push-based updates and are suitable for light monitoring. For production MEV bots, the limitations become significant: JSON encoding adds overhead compared to Protocol Buffers, WebSocket connections are less resilient under high event volumes, and standard WebSocket subscriptions do not provide the same filtering granularity as Yellowstone’s subscribeToTransactions with account includes. For latency-critical MEV workloads, Yellowstone gRPC is, in our assessment, the better interface.

Which Solana RPC providers offer Yellowstone gRPC in 2026?

Of the major providers, Chainstack, Quicknode, Helius, Triton One, and Alchemy all offer Yellowstone gRPC in 2026. Whether dRPC offers Yellowstone streaming is unconfirmed: the May 2026 text said it did not, and dRPC’s pricing page now lists Solana Mainnet gRPC (checked October 29, 2026). Alchemy added Yellowstone with a multi-node architecture and 6,000-slot replay in 2025. The comparison table in this article summarizes the landscape as of May 2026, with updates checked on October 29, 2026.

How much does a Chainstack Yellowstone gRPC endpoint cost?

Chainstack’s Yellowstone gRPC add-on is priced at $49/month for 2 streams, $149/month for 7 streams, and $449/month for 25 streams. The add-on requires a paid base plan (Growth at $49/month or above). For teams needing a dedicated node, compute is billed separately at $0.50/hour. The stream tiers match Chainstack’s Yellowstone gRPC documentation as checked on October 29, 2026. Full pricing details are at chainstack.com/pricing/.

Do I need a dedicated node for Geyser, or is a shared endpoint enough?

It depends on your workload’s latency and reliability requirements. For development, testing, and low-frequency monitoring, a shared Geyser endpoint is sufficient. For production MEV bots, high-frequency arbitrage, or any workload where a missed event has a direct financial cost, a dedicated node is, in our assessment, recommended. Shared endpoints are subject to rate limits and can be affected by other tenants’ usage patterns.

What gRPC filtering options does Yellowstone support?

Yellowstone gRPC supports several filtering mechanisms depending on the subscription type. For subscribeToTransactions: filter by account_include (pubkeys that must appear), account_exclude (pubkeys that must not appear), account_required (all listed pubkeys must appear), vote (include or exclude vote transactions), and failed (include or exclude failed transactions). For subscribeToAccounts: filter by specific pubkeys, by owner program, and with memcmp byte-pattern filters against raw account data — the same filtering semantics as getProgramAccounts. Multiple named filters can run concurrently on a single subscription request.

Additional resources

• Solana tooling guide on Chainstack
• Blockchain protocol tutorials
• Chainstack Solana articles
• Chainstack pricing
• Chainstack network status dashboard

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 ranked comparison table with best-for picks, numbered provider headings with verdict lines and official pricing links, a pricing and free tier table, a “how we compared” section with disclosure and a criteria table, a Chainstack alternatives section, and a note that no gRPC latency benchmark applies. Replaced the provider ratings chart with a criteria table that lists the supporting facts. Updated Helius, Triton One, Alchemy and dRPC statements that no longer matched their pricing pages. Rewrote unsupported latency and superlative statements, and corrected vendor pricing, limits and certification details.
• May 14, 2026: Original publication.