Top 5 Ankr alternatives in 2026: prepaid credits vs monthly plans, free tiers and archive

Teams comparing Ankr with other providers usually check these points: a prepaid pay-as-you-go balance from a $10 deposit (monthly Deals start at $500), free endpoints guaranteed about 1,800 requests a minute over HTTPS only, WebSocket, trace and debug on Premium only, a contractual SLA only under Enterprise, and dedicated nodes only through sales. Ankr is a capable platform with real strengths. 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, which do not cover Ankr. Moving off Ankr? Start with our Ankr to Chainstack switch page or jump to the migration steps.

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

Why teams look for Ankr alternatives

Ankr’s Freemium tier gives a free account 200M credits a month, its docs still list a Public plan with no sign-in, though its What’s New page says chains including Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche and Solana are moving to Freemium, which needs a free sign-in, and its Advanced API serves indexed multi-chain data, which are real strengths. These are the points to compare.

• A prepaid credit balance, not a plan. Premium bills API credits at $0.10 per 1M from a prepaid balance (minimum deposit $10, no automatic top-up, account suspended below a -$5 balance) or as a Deal subscription of $500 to $3,000 a month with 20% extra credits. On EVM chains every method costs 200 credits ($0.00002), so eth_blockNumber and eth_getLogs cost the same, while Solana is 500 credits and Beacon chains and the Advanced API are 700. WebSocket notifications are billed separately, and a valid request that reaches a worker is charged whether or not it succeeds, while unparseable requests and 429 rate-limit responses are not charged. At that rate 20M full EVM calls cost $400 on pay as you go, against $49 for 20M RU on Chainstack Growth.

• Free endpoints with fixed limits. Freemium (free sign-in) and Public endpoints share the Public rate limits: about 1,800 requests per minute across all endpoints guaranteed (30 a second, more depending on load), HTTPS only, batches of 10 (100 on Freemium), an eth_getLogs block range of 1,000 (3,000 on Freemium) and no trace or debug. Ankr’s What’s New page lists Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, Base and Arbitrum among the chains moving from Public to Freemium, which needs a free sign-in. Freemium’s 200M credits cover about 1M EVM calls a month.

• Features gated to Premium. WebSocket, trace and debug, and IP, domain and contract whitelists are Premium features. Its Chains List entry for Ethereum also lists the filter methods (eth_newFilter, eth_getFilterChanges and others) and debug methods other than five tracing calls as unsupported on Premium, with Enterprise as the route to lift them.

• SLA and dedicated nodes are Enterprise terms. Ankr’s trust page says its infrastructure operator (Asphere, W3 Technologies) holds a SOC 2 Type II attestation audited by A-LIGN, report under NDA (available on request through support or an account manager), and lists ISO 27001 as in progress. The contractual 99.9% uptime SLA with a 10% service credit is an Enterprise term (Public is best effort, self-serve Premium has no individual SLA contract, and 99.99% is negotiable for qualifying Enterprise deployments), and dedicated regional nodes are scoped with sales.

• A note on benchmarks. Chainstack’s RPC benchmark reports rank four providers and do not include Ankr (we checked all six editions), so this guide has no latency figures for it.

Ankr alternatives compared: prepaid pricing, free tier, and archive (2026)

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

Rank	Provider	Best for	Pricing model	Free tier	Dedicated nodes	Archive & trace	Standout
—	Ankr (for reference)	—	Prepaid credits at $0.10 per 1M, 200 credits ($0.00002) per EVM call for every method; Deal subscriptions $500 to $3,000 a month with 20% extra credits	Yes, Freemium with a free sign-in: 200M credits a month (about 1M EVM calls) and about 1,800 requests a minute guaranteed, HTTPS only; no-sign-in Public endpoints remain on chains Ankr has not moved to Freemium	Dedicated regional nodes on Enterprise, through sales	Archive on every plan; trace and debug on Premium	70+ chains (its docs list 80+ on Premium and 45+ on Freemium), Advanced API for indexed multi-chain data, SOC 2 Type II held by its infrastructure operator, ISO 27001 in progress
1	Chainstack	A fixed monthly plan with 3M free RU, flat archive and trace billing, and Dedicated Nodes	Flat request units, 1 RU full, 2 RU archive, debug and trace	Yes, Developer plan, 3M RU, 25 RPS, no card	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
2	Dwellir	One credit per response on plans from $49 a month, with bare-metal capacity	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)	Archive endpoints listed; trace and debug from the $49 Developer plan	150+ networks
3	OnFinality	Free daily response units plus dedicated nodes and indexing for long-tail networks	Response units, 1 for most methods, 3 for eth_getLogs on Ethereum	Yes, 400,000 response units daily	Dedicated nodes, pay-as-you-go	Archive on every plan, Trace API from Growth	Substrate coverage, indexer hosting
4	dRPC	Pay-as-you-go at a flat per-request price, without prepaid balances	Pay as you go, flat $6 per 1M requests (20 CU each at $0.30 per 1M CU)	Yes, 210M CU per 30 days (about 10.5M requests), public nodes only, about 100 RPS per IP	No self-serve dedicated plan on the pricing page; NodeCore is open-source self-hosted	Same price for full and archive, debug and trace on Growth	130+ chains, open-source NodeCore, frontrunning protection
5	Quicknode	RPC with Streams and Webhooks from one vendor, billed in per-chain credits	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 listed from Build (method docs say the trial includes them with limited usage)	75+ chains, Streams, Webhooks, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 on its security page

Official pricing pages: Ankr, Chainstack, Dwellir, OnFinality, dRPC, Quicknode.

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, where a plan has one.

Provider	Unit weight for eth_getLogs	Entry paid plan	Cost per 1M calls
Ankr (for reference)	Flat, 200 credits per EVM call	Premium pay as you go, $0.10 per 1M credits, $10 minimum deposit, no allowance (Deal: $500 for 6B credits, 20% extra)	$20.00 at any volume ($16.67 on Deal; paying a top-up in ANKR adds 20% extra credits)
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 ($2.00 on annual billing; archive $4.90 and $4.00), $15 at overage ($30 archive)
Dwellir	1 credit, 500-block range per call	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, no allowance	$6.00 at any volume
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

Within this one method on one chain, Dwellir has the lowest figure in the table both inside the allowance ($1.96) and at overage ($5.00). dRPC’s $6.00 is below OnFinality ($7.35) and Quicknode ($12.25 monthly) inside their allowances, and Ankr’s flat $20.00 is above every other figure except Chainstack’s archive overage ($30.00). Credits are not a shared unit: Ankr’s 200 credits and Quicknode’s 20 credits per Ethereum call are each priced by their own provider, and the table does not price Ankr’s higher per-endpoint rate limits.

Sources: Ankr service plans and pricing docs (last updated October 13, 2026), Chainstack request units, and the Dwellir, OnFinality, dRPC and Quicknode pricing and method-cost docs. Block-range caps on eth_getLogs differ: Ankr 1,000 on Public, 3,000 on Freemium and 10,000 on Premium, Chainstack 100 on Developer and 10,000 on Growth and above, Dwellir none on Free, 500 on Developer and 10,000 on Growth, dRPC’s free plan 10,000 log entries, and Quicknode 5 on the trial and 10,000 on paid plans; Ankr caps responses at 200,000 logs on every plan. To model your own mix, use the interactive cost calculator.

Performance proof: Chainstack RPC benchmark reports

Chainstack publishes RPC benchmark reports for Ethereum, BNB Chain and Hyperliquid (September and October 2026 editions so far) 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, per region, the mean of each method’s p95 response time divided by the success rate cubed, then averaged across regions, so lower is better.

Ankr is not in any of the six reports, and neither are Dwellir and OnFinality, so there are no figures for them here and we do not imply a benchmark exists. Alchemy is in the reports and in the images below but is not one of the five alternatives in this article.

The tables below are images of the October 2026 editions, all published October 8, 2026, each linking to its report: Ethereum, BNB Chain and Hyperliquid.

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

Ethereum scores: Chainstack 0.079 (P95 78 ms), Quicknode 0.097 (92 ms), Alchemy 0.114 (103 ms), dRPC 0.670 (641 ms). Availability is 99.98% for the first three and 99.96% for dRPC. dRPC’s P99 is 1,950 ms and its US and SG P95 are 875 and 895 ms (Chainstack: 143 and 42 ms); the report puts its score at 8.5 times Chainstack’s.

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

BNB Chain scores: Chainstack 0.087 (P95 76 ms), Alchemy 0.135 (126 ms), Quicknode 0.136 (135 ms), dRPC 0.200 (207 ms). The report treats second place as a tie, and dRPC’s P50 (39 ms) is below Quicknode’s (50 ms).

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

Hyperliquid scores: Chainstack 0.019 (P95 22 ms), Alchemy 0.036 (40 ms), Quicknode 0.065 (76 ms), dRPC 0.124 (129 ms). dRPC’s availability is 100.00%, the same as Alchemy.

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

• Ethereum, DE and US traffic. Quicknode has the lowest DE P95 (40 ms against Chainstack’s 47 ms) and Alchemy the lowest US P95 (80 ms), with Quicknode second at 98 ms against 143 ms for Chainstack.
• BNB Chain, median and tail. Alchemy has the lowest P50 (32 ms) and DE P95 (75 ms) and records 100.00% availability, and Quicknode (193 ms) and Alchemy (222 ms) have a lower P99 than Chainstack (270 ms).
• 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, published September 24 to 28 (Ethereum, BNB Chain, Hyperliquid), ranked the same four providers, with Chainstack first on all three. Between the editions dRPC’s score moved from 0.541 to 0.670 on Ethereum, 0.419 to 0.200 on BNB Chain and 0.074 to 0.124 on Hyperliquid. Each edition is one 7-day snapshot, so read the two sets as two points in time and not a trend. The October reports state their limits: one 7-day window, the entry paid plan only, synthetic probes from three cloud regions, and no measurement of throughput under load, correctness or cost (the September editions describe each provider’s standard shared endpoint). Chainstack chose the formula and operates the probes, so another formula could reorder close pairs, and the reports describe measured results, not their causes. If your users sit outside DE, the US, SG or JP, run your own probes from your regions.

Top 5 Ankr alternatives and what each is best for

1. Chainstack

Best for: A fixed monthly plan with 3M free RU, flat archive and trace billing, and Dedicated Nodes.

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 requests on Global Nodes, with no per-method multipliers. 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.

Like Ankr on EVM chains, Chainstack uses a flat meter with no per-method weights (1 RU full, 2 RU archive, debug and trace), but it sells fixed monthly plans with included volume where Ankr sells a prepaid balance, and WebSocket comes on every plan, including Developer. 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. MEV protection is on by default at deployment, free on every plan on Global Nodes, and can be turned off from the node’s Add-ons tab (Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain). On Arbitrum, Base, Arc and Robinhood Chain, which have no public mempool, the 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 on the free plan; paid plans get email support with a response target under 24 hours (24×5), and the Professional ($100 a month) and Premium ($1,000 a month) tiers add under 6 hour and under 1 hour targets.

Limitations: The free plan includes 3M RU a month (extra usage is optional and billed at $20 per 1M RU, otherwise services stop at the quota), has no archive or debug and trace although Ankr lists archive data on its Public and Freemium plans, and limits eth_getLogs to 100 blocks, and Dedicated Nodes require the Pro plan or higher. Growth overage ($15 per 1M RU) is below Ankr’s flat $20.00 per 1M EVM calls but above dRPC’s flat $6, so very high volume is better on a custom Pay As You Go plan (from $2.5 per 1M RU, arranged with sales for high monthly spend) or an Unlimited Node add-on (from $149 a month at 25 RPS). Growth lists 250 RPS and Pro 400, where Ankr Premium lists up to about 1.5k requests per second per endpoint and dRPC 5,000 on Growth. Chainstack lists 70+ chains, in line with Ankr’s 70+ and fewer than Dwellir (150+), OnFinality (130+) and dRPC (130+) by their own counts, and its Hyperliquid availability in the October report (99.74%) is the lowest of the four ranked providers.

Fit by workload:

• Archive-heavy analytics and indexers: Excellent, since debug and trace calls cost a flat 2 RU on a plan with a fixed monthly price.
• Teams that need compliance paperwork or isolated nodes: Strong, with SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 published and Dedicated Nodes from the Pro plan.
• Hyperliquid and BNB Chain trading infrastructure: Strong on the benchmark scores above, with the BNB Chain P99 and Hyperliquid availability (99.74%) caveats.

2. Dwellir

Best for: One credit per response on plans from $49 a month, with bare-metal capacity.

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. Extra responses are billed at $5, $3 and $2 per 1M on Developer, Growth and Scale. The eth_getLogs block range is not available on Free, 500 blocks on Developer and 10,000 on Growth and Scale, and ranges wider than the cap must be split into several requests, each billed as one response. Flat-fee unmetered nodes start at $119 a month (25 to 1,000 RPS). 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, and a final quote that 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, the $49 Developer plan limits log queries to 500 blocks, 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 by Dwellir’s own count (its pricing page names about 110).

3. OnFinality

Best for: Free daily response units plus dedicated nodes and indexing for long-tail networks.

OnFinality is a multi-chain node service that its homepage says covers 130+ networks, with RPC APIs, dedicated nodes, indexing services, and staking and validators. 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.

Archive access is listed on every plan, the Trace API starts at Growth, and dedicated nodes are pay-as-you-go on every plan. 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.
• Log queries on a $49 budget: Moderate, since eth_getLogs counts 3 response units, or $7.35 per million calls inside the Growth allowance.

4. dRPC

Best for: Pay-as-you-go at a flat per-request price, without prepaid balances.

dRPC is a pay-as-you-go RPC provider that lists 130+ chains across 232 networks on its pricing page and charges 20 CU per request on almost every method (a few trivial ones such as eth_chainId cost 0) at $0.30 per 1M CU, which makes Growth $6 per 1M requests. Its free plan includes 210M CU per 30 days (about 10.5M requests) on public nodes, and Growth lists 5,000 requests per second and a 99.99% uptime figure.

Like Ankr on EVM chains, dRPC prices nearly every method the same, and its pricing page says requests have no monthly limits, overage fees or expiration, so the price per request on pay as you go stays flat as volume grows ($6 per 1M against Ankr’s $20.00 pay as you go, or $16.67 on its Deal, for EVM calls). Growth also lists debug and trace API and frontrunning protection, and Enterprise starts at 300M requests a month with an SLA. dRPC publishes NodeCore, an open-source self-hosted RPC load balancer.

Limitations: The free plan runs on public nodes only, with, per its docs, usually about 100 requests per second per IP (down to about 40 under high regional demand), 3-item batches and filter methods disabled by default. There is no plan with included monthly volume, the pricing page lists no self-serve dedicated plan, and we found no published SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 on its pages. In the October benchmark dRPC ranks fourth of four on all three chains (0.670, 0.200 and 0.124), although its BNB Chain P50 (39 ms) is below Quicknode’s (50 ms) and its Hyperliquid availability is 100.00%.

Fit by workload:

• High request volume at one flat price: Strong, at $6.00 per million eth_getLogs calls with no per-method weights and no allowance to size.
• Prototypes on public nodes: Good, with about 10.5M free requests if the per-IP limits fit.
• Teams that want to run their own routing layer: Works through the open-source NodeCore, though there is no self-serve dedicated plan.

5. Quicknode

Best for: RPC with Streams and Webhooks from one vendor, billed in per-chain credits.

Quicknode is a multi-chain provider listing 75+ chains that bundles Streams and Webhooks with its node product and sells credits whose weight is set per chain. 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.

On Ethereum and most EVM chains every method is 20 credits, most trace and debug methods carry a 2x multiplier, and specialized calls such as txpool_content and trace_replayTransaction are 4x. Archive data is on every plan, trace and debug are listed from Build, and Dedicated Clusters are listed only on Enterprise. Quicknode’s security page states SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001, and its pricing page lists the reports on request under Enterprise.

Limitations: The free entry is a trial, not a standing plan, and during the trial eth_getLogs is limited to 5 blocks per call. A million 20-credit Ethereum calls cost $12.25 inside Build’s allowance on monthly billing, against $6.00 at dRPC’s flat price, and at Build’s $0.62 overage rate a 40-credit trace call is about $24.80 per million. 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 Ankr 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 Ankr switching page has an example cost comparison against Ankr Premium and a general pricing calculator (the calculator compares Chainstack with Quicknode and Alchemy).

1. Assess endpoints and usage. List every Ankr endpoint URL and key, its network, whether it is a Public, Freemium or Premium endpoint, the methods and WebSocket subscriptions you use, and any Advanced API calls (ankr_* methods), which are not standard node RPC methods and have no direct equivalent on a standard node endpoint.
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 Ankr 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, filter methods, historical eth_call, debug and trace calls and subscriptions, and check block-range caps and error handling.
5. Compare cost. Export a billing period of usage, divide Ankr credits by 200 to get EVM requests (500 for Solana, 700 for the Advanced API), and check the result against the pricing page, where requests 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? The Chainstack Sepolia faucet tops an address up to 0.5 ETH every 24 hours (it needs a Chainstack API key and an address holding at least 0.08 ETH on Ethereum mainnet, with a history of holding ETH).

🤖 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 Ankr is whether you want a prepaid per-call balance with free public endpoints or a plan with included volume, because the same traffic costs different amounts under each.

• Archive, trace and indexing workloads on a fixed monthly plan: Chainstack for flat 2 RU archive and trace billing, or Dwellir for one flat per-response credit.
• Dedicated infrastructure and compliance paperwork: Chainstack Dedicated Nodes with SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, or a Quicknode Enterprise contract.
• Substrate, Polkadot and long-tail networks: Dwellir or OnFinality.
• A flat per-request price with no monthly plan: dRPC.
• RPC plus data streams from one vendor: Quicknode.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is the cheapest Ankr alternative?

It depends on the method and your volume. For eth_getLogs, a million calls cost $2.45 on Chainstack, $1.96 on Dwellir and $7.35 on OnFinality inside the plan allowance, with dRPC at a flat $6.00 and Quicknode at $12.25 on monthly billing, against $20.00 on Ankr pay as you go. At overage the figures are $15 on Chainstack, $5.00 on Dwellir, $18 on OnFinality and $12.40 on Quicknode. Model your own mix with the cost calculator.

Q: Is there a free alternative to Ankr’s free tier?

Yes. Chainstack’s Developer plan offers 3M RU and 25 RPS, Dwellir 100,000 daily responses, OnFinality 400,000 response units a day and dRPC about 10.5M requests (210M CU) per 30 days on public nodes only. Quicknode offers a one-month trial instead.

Q: How do I migrate from Ankr to Chainstack?

Inventory your Ankr URLs, keys and methods, deploy a node per network, swap the endpoint, test heavy methods and compare cost before cutting over. The migration runbook lets a coding agent handle the assessment.

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 Quicknode has the lowest DE P95 on Ethereum (40 ms), Alchemy the lowest US P95 (80 ms), and Quicknode a lower BNB Chain P99 (193 ms against 270 ms). dRPC scores 0.670, 0.200 and 0.124, against 0.079, 0.087 and 0.019 for Chainstack. Chainstack runs the benchmark and is ranked in it; Ankr, 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. We found no published SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 for Dwellir, OnFinality or dRPC, so request reports from each vendor. Quicknode’s security page states SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001. Ankr’s trust page says its infrastructure operator holds a SOC 2 Type II attestation (report under NDA) and lists ISO 27001 as in progress.

Q: What limits does Ankr’s free tier have?

Public endpoints and Freemium share rate limits of about 1,800 requests per minute across all endpoints (more depending on load), over HTTPS only, with a 1,000-block eth_getLogs range on Public (3,000 on Freemium) and no trace or debug. Freemium adds 200M credits a month, about 1M EVM calls at 200 credits each.

Additional resources

• How to get an Ethereum RPC endpoint in 2026
• Chainstack RPC benchmark reports
• Debug and trace APIs — Chainstack Docs
• Ethereum available methods — Chainstack Docs
• Request units — Chainstack Docs
• Chainstack pricing