Top 5 Alchemy alternatives in 2026

Teams look for Alchemy alternatives for practical reasons: a 30M compute unit free plan that drains quickly on heavy methods, per-method CU weights such as 60 CU for eth_getLogs, and dedicated infrastructure sold through sales. Alchemy is a capable platform. This guide compares it with Chainstack, Dwellir, OnFinality, dRPC, and Quicknode, checked against provider pages and docs in October 2026.

We publish this on the Chainstack blog, so Chainstack is first and you should weigh that. Every price comes from a live provider page, and the performance section uses the public Chainstack RPC benchmark reports, including where Alchemy and Quicknode beat us. Moving off Alchemy? Start with our Alchemy to Chainstack switch guide or jump to the migration steps below.

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

Why teams look for Alchemy alternatives

Alchemy does a lot well. It lists 100+ chains, keeps archive data on its free plan, and bundles Node API access with Token, NFT, Portfolio, Transfers and Prices APIs, Webhooks, Wallet APIs and Solana gRPC. Teams most often compare options for these reasons.

• Method-weighted pricing. Each method has its own weight: eth_blockNumber is 10 CU, eth_call 26 CU, eth_getLogs 60 CU and debug_traceTransaction 40 CU. At the Pay As You Go rate of $0.525 per 1M CU, a million eth_getLogs calls cost $31.50 and a million eth_blockNumber calls cost $5.25. Alchemy’s pricing page and Pay As You Go FAQ list a flat $0.525 per 1M CU, which a price tracker first saw in its September 14, 2026 capture; an Alchemy support article still shows the old $0.45 and $0.40 tiers, so confirm it in your dashboard.
• Free plan size. The free plan includes 30M CU a month, roughly 500,000 eth_getLogs calls (Free limits each call to a 10-block range) or 3 million eth_blockNumber calls. A price tracker records the free allowance falling from 100M to 30M CU between its July and October 2025 captures; we could not confirm the earlier figure on an Alchemy page.
• Throughput is metered in CU per second. Free allows 15 requests per second (300 CU/s), and Pay As You Go includes 300 requests per second (10,000 CU/s) with extra capacity at $160 a month per 5,000 CU/s block. On Pay As You Go (Free has no debug or trace), debug_traceTransaction bills 40 CU but counts 1,000 throughput CU against the per-second limit, so about 10 calls per second fit in 10,000 CU/s.
• Dedicated nodes go through sales. Dedicated Clusters are priced on provisioned capacity and quoted after contact, with no self-serve option on the pricing page.
• Support and compliance. Target response times are 48 hours on Free, 24 hours on Pay As You Go, and custom on Enterprise, with Enterprise Premium Support packages at 12, 4 and 2 hours (Bronze, Silver, Gold). Alchemy describes itself as SOC 2 Type II certified and lists a SOC 2 Type II report on its trust center. We found no ISO 27001 certification published by Alchemy.

Alchemy alternatives compared

The table below summarizes public positioning as of October 2026. Plans and prices change often, so check each provider’s page before you decide.

Provider	Pricing model	Free tier	Dedicated nodes	Archive & trace	Standout
Alchemy (for reference)	Method-weighted CU, $0.525 per 1M CU	Yes, 30M CU a month, 15 RPS	Dedicated Clusters through sales	Full archive on all plans; Debug and Trace APIs on Pay As You Go and Enterprise, not on Free	Token, NFT and Portfolio APIs, 100+ chains
Chainstack	Flat request units, 1 RU full, 2 RU archive, debug and trace	Yes, Developer plan, 3M RU, 25 RPS	Yes, from the Pro plan	Archive and debug and trace from Growth ($49)	Best score in its own October 2026 benchmarks (disclosed below), SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001
Dwellir	1 credit per response, no compute units	Yes, 100,000 daily responses, 20 RPS, no eth_getLogs	Dedicated Node Clusters, archive from $2,400 a month (Ink)	Trace and debug from the $49 Developer plan	150+ networks
OnFinality	Response units, 1 for most methods	Yes, 400,000 response units daily	Dedicated nodes, pay-as-you-go	Archive on every plan, Trace API from Growth	Substrate and Cosmos coverage
dRPC	Flat, $6 per 1M requests	Yes, 210M CU a month (about 10.5M requests at 20 CU each), public nodes only	Not listed, NodeCore is open-source self-hosted	Same price for full and archive, debug and trace on Growth	130+ chains
Quicknode	Credits with a per-chain multiplier, 20 per call on Ethereum	1-month trial, 10M credits, 15 RPS, no card	Dedicated Clusters on Enterprise	Archive on every plan, trace and debug from Build	75+ chains, Streams, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001

True cost per call = (method’s unit weight × price per million units) ÷ 1,000,000. Multiply by monthly call volume for the real bill. Here it is for one method, eth_getLogs on Ethereum, at each provider’s entry paid plan, assuming you use the included allowance in full.

Provider	Unit weight for eth_getLogs	Entry paid plan	Cost per 1M calls
Alchemy	60 CU	Pay As You Go, $0.525 per 1M CU, no allowance	$31.50
Chainstack	1 RU, 2 RU if fromBlock is 127 or more blocks behind	Growth, $49 with 20M RU, $15 per extra 1M RU	$2.45 in allowance ($4.90 archive), $15 at overage
Dwellir	1 credit	Developer, $49 with 25M responses, $5 per extra 1M	$1.96 in allowance, $5.00 at overage
OnFinality	3 response units on Ethereum	Growth, $49 plus node and API usage costs, 20M response units, $6 per extra 1M	$7.35 in allowance, $18.00 at overage
dRPC	Flat, 20 CU per request	Growth, $6 per 1M requests	$6.00
Quicknode	20 credits on Ethereum	Build, $49 a month ($34 billed annually) with 80M credits, $0.62 per extra 1M	$12.25 in allowance on monthly billing ($8.50 on annual), $12.40 at overage

Sources: Alchemy, Chainstack request units, Dwellir, OnFinality, dRPC and Quicknode API credits. Block-range caps on eth_getLogs differ by plan and provider. To model your own mix, use the interactive cost calculator.

Performance proof: Chainstack RPC benchmark reports

Chainstack publishes monthly RPC benchmarks for Ethereum, BNB Chain and Hyperliquid that rank Chainstack, Quicknode, Alchemy and dRPC. Disclosure: Chainstack runs the monitoring service, the dashboard and the scoring formula, and is one of the four ranked providers. Data comes from Chainstack Compare: a rolling 7-day window, probes from DE, US and SG (JP instead of SG for Hyperliquid), each provider on its first paid plan. Score is p95 response time divided by success rate cubed, averaged across regions, so lower is better.

The tables below reproduce the October 2026 editions, all published October 8, 2026: Ethereum, BNB Chain and Hyperliquid.

Ethereum, 7-day window ending October 8, 2026:

BNB Chain, 7-day window ending October 8, 2026:

Hyperliquid, 7-day window ending October 8, 2026:

Chainstack has the best score on all three chains, and the reports show where it does not lead:

• Ethereum, US traffic. Alchemy (80 ms) and Quicknode (98 ms) have a lower US P95 than Chainstack (143 ms), and Quicknode is ahead in DE (40 ms against 47 ms).
• BNB Chain, median and tail. Alchemy has the lowest P50 (32 ms against 35 ms) and DE P95 (75 ms against 97 ms). Quicknode (193 ms) and Alchemy (222 ms) have a lower P99 than Chainstack (270 ms), and the two are effectively tied for second (0.135 and 0.136).
• Hyperliquid, availability. Chainstack’s 99.74% is the lowest in the set, against 100.00% for Alchemy and dRPC and 99.98% for Quicknode. The report says this costs about 0.8% of score and does not change the ranking.

The September 2026 editions (Ethereum, BNB Chain, Hyperliquid) ranked the same four providers. Cells show score and global P95; each is one 7-day snapshot, so read them as two points in time and not a trend.

Chain (published)	Chainstack	Alchemy	Quicknode	dRPC
Ethereum (Sep 24)	0.086, 86 ms	0.123, 123 ms	0.178, 173 ms	0.541, 576 ms
BNB Chain (Sep 28)	0.091, 93 ms	0.124, 122 ms	0.122, 121 ms	0.419, 464 ms
Hyperliquid (Sep 24)	0.020, 23 ms	0.053, 56 ms	0.066, 76 ms	0.074, 112 ms

Quicknode’s Ethereum score improved from 0.178 to 0.097 and Alchemy’s Hyperliquid score from 0.053 to 0.036. The reports state their limits: one 7-day window per edition, the entry paid plan only, synthetic probes from three cloud regions, and no measurement of throughput under load, correctness, cost or end-user latency. Chainstack chose the formula and operates the probes, so another formula could reorder close pairs. No report covers Dwellir or OnFinality, and we do not imply a benchmark exists for them.

Top 5 Alchemy alternatives

Chainstack

Chainstack is a managed node provider across 70+ blockchains that bills flat request units: 1 RU for a full request and 2 RU for archive, debug and trace, with no per-method weights. The free Developer plan includes 3M RU and 25 RPS with no card required, and Growth starts at $49 a month ($40 billed annually) with 20M RU, 250 RPS, archive data and debug and trace APIs, per the pricing page.

Global Nodes route requests across Asia-Pacific, Europe and the United States, and Dedicated Nodes are single-tenant nodes from the Pro plan at $199 a month, billed on top for compute (from $0.50 an hour) and storage; an Ethereum mainnet full node lists from about $1,640 a month and an archive node from about $2,720. The Unlimited Node add-on swaps per-request billing for a flat fee by RPS tier, from $149 a month at 25 RPS. MEV protection is on by default at deployment, free on every plan, and can be turned off from the node’s Add-ons tab on Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain; on Arbitrum and Base the equivalent add-on is called optimized submission. Chainstack holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and its Enterprise SLA page states a 99.9% quarterly uptime commitment with service credits. Support is community-based on Discord and Telegram for the free plan, with a response target under 24 hours on paid plans and optional tiers at under 6 and under 1 hour. For history-heavy reads, see archive data.

Limitations: The free plan has no archive or debug and trace and is capped at 3M RU a month, and Dedicated Nodes require the Pro plan. Growth overage ($15 per 1M RU) is a little above Quicknode’s Build overage on Ethereum ($12.40 per 1M calls), and archive calls bill at 2 RU, so very high volume is better on a custom Pay As You Go plan (from $2.5 per 1M RU, arranged with sales for spend above about $1,000 a month) or an Unlimited Node. The catalog centers on node access, add-ons and marketplace apps, not a first-party token, NFT and portfolio API suite like Alchemy’s, and it lists fewer chains than dRPC or Dwellir.

Fit by workload:

• Archive-heavy analytics and indexers: Excellent, since debug and trace calls cost a flat 2 RU instead of Alchemy’s 40 CU for most debug and trace calls (80 CU for the trace_replay methods).
• Hyperliquid and BNB Chain trading infrastructure: Strong on the benchmark scores above, with the BNB Chain tail-latency caveat.

Dwellir

Dwellir is a bare-metal RPC provider covering 150+ networks across EVM, Substrate, Move and Cosmos, billed at one credit per response with no compute units, even for trace and debug. Its pricing page lists Free (20 RPS, 100,000 daily responses), Developer at $49 a month with 25M responses and 100 RPS, Growth at $299 with 150M and 500 RPS, and Scale at $999 with 500M and 5,000 RPS.

Trace and debug are included from Developer, and Growth and Scale add a 10,000-block eth_getLogs range and a dedicated account manager. Flat-fee unmetered nodes run from 25 to 1,000 RPS, starting at $119 a month. Dedicated Node Clusters are redundant archive clusters with no request counting and a 99.99% uptime SLA, listed from $2,400 a month (Ink), with Base at $3,366 and Ethereum at $12,600; the final quote depends on regions and cluster size.

Limitations: The free plan is capped at 20 RPS and 100,000 daily responses and has no eth_getLogs, trace or debug access, Dwellir’s own comparison calls its enhanced API offering less extensive than Alchemy’s, and we found no published SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 on its site. Dedicated clusters are quoted per chain and region after a call, and the Chainstack benchmark does not include Dwellir, so there are no comparable latency figures here.

Fit by workload:

• A flat per-response meter: Excellent, since a trace call costs the same credit as a balance read.
• Polkadot, Substrate and long-tail chains: Strong, with 150+ networks listed (Dwellir’s own count) and depth in Polkadot and Substrate.

OnFinality

OnFinality is a multi-chain node service that its homepage says covers 130+ networks (the same page also cites 90+ deployable networks), with shared RPC, dedicated nodes, enterprise nodes, indexer hosting and staking. Its pricing page lists a free Developer plan with 400,000 response units a day, Growth at $49 a month with 20M units and $6 per extra million, Accelerate at $249 with 100M units and $3.75 per extra million, and a custom Ultimate plan.

Rate limits are 40, 200 and 500 response units per second on Developer, Growth and Accelerate. Archive access is listed on every plan, the Trace API starts at Growth, and dedicated nodes are pay-as-you-go on every plan, capped at 5 nodes on Developer and 10 on Growth. Most methods are 1 response unit, but eth_getLogs is 3 on the Ethereum page and trace methods weigh 2 to 50 in the Trace API docs.

Limitations: Pricing is weighted by response unit, so heavy methods cost more than the headline suggests, and paying in crypto is listed only on the Ultimate plan. Growth and Accelerate list node and API usage costs on top of the monthly fee, we found no published SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 on its pages, and the Chainstack benchmark does not cover OnFinality.

Fit by workload:

• Substrate and Polkadot-ecosystem teams: Strong, since its tooling targets Substrate networks and it hosts indexers.
• Prototypes that need a larger free daily allowance: Good, at 400,000 response units a day.

dRPC

dRPC is a pay-as-you-go RPC provider that prices almost every request the same: $6 per 1M requests on its Growth plan, with no monthly limits, overage fees or expiration on requests, per its pricing page. It lists 130+ chains across 232 networks, and the free plan includes 210M CU a month on public nodes, about 10.5M requests at 20 CU each.

The page ties $6 per 1M requests to 20M CU, so each request counts as 20 CU, and its FAQ says archive requests cost the same as full ones. Growth lists debug and trace APIs, an AI-driven load balancer, frontrunning protection, 5,000 requests per second, a 99.99% uptime figure and Priority Support. Enterprise starts at 300M requests a month with an SLA, and dRPC also publishes NodeCore, an open-source self-hosted RPC load balancer.

Limitations: The free plan is limited to public nodes at roughly 100 RPS per IP (it can drop to about 40 under high demand), with 3-item batches and a 10,000-log cap, the pricing page lists no dedicated-node plan, and we found no published SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 on dRPC’s pages. In the Chainstack benchmark dRPC has the highest latency of the four ranked providers: on Ethereum its P95 is 641 ms with a 1,950 ms P99, with US and SG above 850 ms, though its BNB Chain profile is more even than in September.

Fit by workload:

• Budget-first multi-chain apps: Excellent when you want one flat rate across 130+ chains and no CU math.
• Archive reads at predictable cost: Strong, because full and archive requests are priced identically.
• Latency-sensitive trading or US-weighted Ethereum traffic: Weaker, based on the October Ethereum regions above.

Quicknode

Quicknode is the closest direct peer to Alchemy: a multi-chain provider with 75+ chains, Streams and Webhooks, selling credits instead of CU. Its pricing page lists a one-month free trial (10M credits, 15 RPS, no card required) and Build at $49 a month ($34 billed annually) with 80M credits and 50 RPS.

Credit weights are set per chain, not per method. On Ethereum and most EVM chains every method is 20 credits, trace and debug carry a 2x multiplier and specialized calls 4x, per the API credits table. Archive data is on every plan, trace and debug appear from Build, and dedicated clusters are an Enterprise feature. Support runs from community on the trial to a 24-hour ticket SLA on Build, 12 hours on Accelerate and 8 on Scale. Quicknode’s security page states SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001, with reports available from your account representative.

Limitations: The free entry is a trial, so teams that prototype for months move to a paid plan after one month. At Build’s $0.62 overage rate, a 40-credit trace call is about $24.80 per million. Dedicated clusters need an Enterprise contract, and in the benchmark Quicknode’s Hyperliquid P95 is 76 ms against 22 ms for Chainstack, with 128 ms in JP.

Fit by workload:

• One vendor for RPC plus data streams: Strong, since Streams and Webhooks sit next to the node product.
• Ethereum reads from Germany or the US: Quicknode posted the lowest DE P95 (40 ms) and second-lowest US P95 (98 ms) in the October benchmark.

How to migrate from Alchemy to Chainstack

Most migrations are an endpoint swap plus a testing pass. A coding agent can run the assessment from the Chainstack MCP migration runbook, and the Alchemy switching page lists supported chains.

1. Assess endpoints and usage. List every Alchemy URL, its network, and the methods, WebSocket subscriptions and Alchemy data API calls (Token, NFT, Portfolio, Transfers) you use, since those are not standard JSON-RPC.
2. Deploy a node. Create a project and deploy a node per network, starting with Global Nodes and adding Dedicated Nodes if you need isolation.
3. Swap the endpoint URL. Replace the Alchemy HTTPS and WebSocket URLs with your Chainstack endpoints behind a config flag so you can roll back.
4. Test methods. Run your real mix: eth_getLogs ranges, historical eth_call, debug and trace calls and subscriptions, and check block-range caps and error handling.
5. Compare cost. Export 30 days of usage, convert compute units to request units, and check the result against the pricing page, where heavy methods bill at 1 or 2 RU.
6. Cut over gradually. Shift a share of traffic, watch errors and latency from your regions, then move the rest.

Getting started with Chainstack

Deploy an Ethereum endpoint in a few steps:

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

Then connect with ethers.js, using the setup from the Chainstack tooling docs:

import { ethers } from 'ethers';
// Using HTTP provider
const httpProvider = new ethers.JsonRpcProvider("YOUR_CHAINSTACK_ENDPOINT");
httpProvider.getBlockNumber().then(console.log);
// Using WebSocket provider
const wsProvider = new ethers.WebSocketProvider("YOUR_CHAINSTACK_WSS_ENDPOINT");
wsProvider.getBlockNumber().then((blockNumber) => {
  console.log(blockNumber);
  wsProvider.destroy();
});

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

Need testnet ETH? Grab some from the Chainstack Sepolia faucet. For isolated throughput, evaluate Dedicated Nodes after the first deploy.

🤖 You can also access Chainstack Ethereum RPC directly from Claude, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Antigravity, Claude.ai, or ChatGPT 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

The deciding question when you leave Alchemy is how your own method mix is billed, because the same traffic costs very different amounts under a CU weight, a flat request unit and a per-chain credit. Run your real calls through each provider’s rules and test latency from the regions your users sit in.

• Archive, trace and indexing workloads: Chainstack for flat 2 RU archive and trace billing, or Dwellir for one flat per-response credit.
• Substrate, Polkadot and long-tail networks: Dwellir or OnFinality.
• One flat per-request price across 130+ chains, with no CU math: dRPC.
• Dedicated infrastructure and compliance paperwork: Chainstack Dedicated Nodes with SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, or a Quicknode Enterprise contract.
• A close Alchemy peer with streaming and data products: Quicknode.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is the cheapest Alchemy alternative?

It depends on the method you call most. For eth_getLogs, a million calls cost $1.96 on Dwellir and $2.45 on Chainstack inside the plan allowance, against $31.50 on Alchemy’s Pay As You Go rate, and overage rates differ. Model your own mix with the cost calculator.

Q: Is there a free alternative to Alchemy’s free plan?

Yes. Chainstack’s Developer plan offers 3M RU and 25 RPS, Dwellir offers 100,000 daily responses, OnFinality offers 400,000 response units a day, and dRPC offers 210M CU (about 10.5M requests) on public nodes. Quicknode offers a one-month trial instead of a standing free plan.

Q: How do I migrate from Alchemy to Chainstack?

Inventory your Alchemy URLs and methods, deploy a node per network, swap the endpoint, test heavy methods such as eth_getLogs and trace, and compare cost before cutting over. The migration runbook lets a coding agent handle the assessment and plan.

Q: Which provider is fastest according to benchmarks?

In the Chainstack October 2026 reports, Chainstack has the best score on Ethereum, BNB Chain and Hyperliquid, while Alchemy leads US P95 on Ethereum (80 ms). Chainstack runs the benchmark and is ranked in it, each window is a single 7 days, and Dwellir and OnFinality are not covered.

Q: Which alternatives publish SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001?

Chainstack publishes SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and Quicknode’s security page states SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001. Alchemy lists a SOC 2 Type II report on its trust center. We found no SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 for Dwellir, OnFinality or dRPC, and no ISO 27001 for Alchemy, on their pages, so request reports from each vendor.

Q: Can I get dedicated nodes without a sales call?

Chainstack lists Dedicated Nodes from the Pro plan, billed on top for compute from $0.50 an hour (an Ethereum mainnet full node lists from about $1,640 a month), and OnFinality lists pay-as-you-go dedicated nodes on every plan. Alchemy, Quicknode and Dwellir quote dedicated infrastructure after contact.

Additional resources

• How to get an Ethereum RPC endpoint in 2026
• Debug and trace APIs — Chainstack Docs
• Ethereum available methods — Chainstack Docs
• Alchemy vs Quicknode end-to-end comparison