How to use the Solana Geyser plugin to stream data with Yellowstone gRPC

Yellowstone gRPC Geyser plugin has been the go-to for high-performance Solana streaming with typed schemas, validator memory access, and sub-50 ms latency. We’ve now made it 10× more affordable with plans starting at $49/month, and this guide shows you how to get started.

Every Solana project depends on timing. Whether it’s a trading bot or a wallet tracker, you need a way to see changes the moment they land on-chain. Polling RPC calls gets the job done, but it wastes compute, adds latency, and forces you to reprocess the same state over and over.

That’s why most developers move to streaming.

Streaming Solana with the Yellowstone gRPC Geyser plugin

Built on the Geyser plugin, Yellowstone gRPC streams events straight from validator memory. That means you don’t have to parse raw strings yourself as typed messages land faster (often in under 50 ms) with filters applied before the data ever reaches your app.

This makes Yellowstone gRPC the natural fit for workloads where reliability matters, like:

• Trading and mint bots that can’t afford to miss a swap.
• Wallet alert services built around account changes.
• Dashboards and mini indexers pushing filtered data into a DB or queue.

For a long time, cost was the barrier that kept builders from choosing Yellowstone gRPC first. That’s why at Chainstack, we introduced an entry plan for smaller teams, starting at $49/month. It gives you production-grade streaming without overbuying or patching around missed events.

Yellowstone gRPC stream types and when to use them

Once you’re on gRPC, the main choice is which stream to tap into. Each one has a different use case:

• accounts — follow wallets or PDAs. Balance changes, token updates, program state.
• transactions — full tx detail. Good for swap trackers, trading bots, program calls.
• transaction_status — lighter than transactions. Just tells you if it confirmed or failed.
• slots — react to slot boundaries. Useful for pacing or time-based logic.
• blocks — full block content. Use it for ordering, timestamps, analytics.
• blocks_meta — block headers and leader info only. Nice for lightweight analytics.
• entries — raw validator feed. Mostly for research or digging deep.

Each connection lets you run up to five filters of the same type. Keep them focused, and if you need more, spin up another stream.

How to use Solana gRPC Geyser plugin

You technically can run Yellowstone gRPC yourself. But most builders will tell you it’s the hardest part of the stack: managing hardware, snapshots, upgrades, storage, networking, and recovery on a validator. That’s a lot of overhead for one plugin.

The other option is managed access. Providers will give you Geyser as an add-on, but most start around $500–$1,000/month. That’s fine if you’re a big team, but for testing a bot, wiring up wallet alerts, or keeping a dashboard live, it’s paying for streams you’ll never use.

That’s why we rolled out a new entry tier on Chainstack — only $49/month for production-grade Yellowstone gRPC. It’s up to 10× more affordable than other options available on the market, and if you need more later, you can scale without changing your stack. Here’s how the plans line up:

• $49 → 1 stream, up to 50 accounts. Good for testing bots, alerts, dashboards.
• $149 → 5 streams. Enough to split staging and prod.
• $449 → 25 streams. Full fan-out for heavier workloads.

The plugin is available from the Growth plan and up. You’ll find it directly in the console marketplace, and setup takes just a couple of clicks.

How to enable Yellowstone gRPC on Chainstack

1. Log in to your Chainstack account (or create one if you don’t have one yet).
2. Create a new project, or pick an existing one.
3. Deploy a Solana Global Node.
4. Open the node once it’s live.
5. Go to Add-ons → Yellowstone gRPC Geyser Plugin → Install.

Solana Geyser example for real-time token tracking

Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough showing how to use Yellowstone gRPC to stream token activity in real time,  in this case tracking swaps on Raydium and mints on Bonk.fun.

If you want the full breakdown with code, filters, and setup, check out our detailed guide on real-time Solana analytics for Raydium and Bonk.fun tokens with the Geyser plugin.

Wrap up

Yellowstone gRPC has become the standard for reliable Solana streaming, with typed events, sub-50 ms latency, and data straight from validator memory. It’s built for production, but now it’s also priced so smaller teams can use it from the start.

If you just want to test a bot, track mints, or wire up alerts, you can begin with our new Yellowstone gRPC Geyser plugin plan, starting at only $49/month. And when the workload grows, scaling to more streams is simple without changing your stack.

If you want to mess around with it, we’ve put together a bunch of examples and repos you can pull from:

• Solana Geyser Python tutorial
• Pump.fun and Bonk.fun sniping bot with Geyser
• Listening to pump.fun token mints using Geyser
• Listening to programs with Yellowstone gRPC (Node.js)
• Yellowstone repo
• Rust example
• Go example

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