Top 5 Quicknode alternatives in 2026

Teams look for Quicknode alternatives for practical reasons: credits priced per chain (20 credits per call on Ethereum, with trace and debug at 2x), a one-month trial in place of a standing free plan, and dedicated clusters that start at the Enterprise tier. Quicknode is a capable platform. This guide compares it with Chainstack, Dwellir, OnFinality, dRPC, and Alchemy, 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 Quicknode and Alchemy beat us. Moving off Quicknode? Start with our Quicknode 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 Quicknode alternatives

Quicknode does a lot well. It keeps archive data on every plan including the trial, lists 75+ chains, bundles Streams and Webhooks, and its security page states SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001. Teams most often compare options for these reasons.

• Per-chain credit multipliers. Every method costs the chain’s base credit price: 10 credits on Bitcoin, 20 on Ethereum and most EVM chains, 30 on Solana, 40 on TON and Sui, and 50 on NEAR. Most trace and debug methods carry a 2x chain multiplier, while specialized calls such as txpool_content, trace_replayTransaction and trace_replayBlockTransactions are 4x, so Build’s 80M credits cover 4M standard Ethereum calls, about 2M typical trace calls, 1M trace_replay calls or about 2.67M Solana calls.
• A trial, not a standing free plan. The entry tier is one month free with 10M credits, 15 requests per second, no card and no overage credits. During the trial eth_getLogs is limited to 5 blocks per call, against 10,000 on paid plans for Ethereum (it varies by chain).
• Annual versus monthly price display. The pricing page leads with the annual rate: Build is $34 a month billed annually and $49 billed monthly, Accelerate $212 against $249, and Scale $424 against $499. Build’s “$0.43 per million credits” label is the annual figure, about $0.61 at monthly billing.
• Add-ons, tier gates and support. Solana gRPC is a paid add-on on Build and Accelerate, Dedicated Clusters are listed only on Enterprise, and support is ticket-based with a 24-hour target on Build.

Quicknode 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
Quicknode (for reference)	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
Chainstack	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
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, 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
dRPC	Flat, $6 per 1M requests	Yes, 210M CU a month (about 10.5M requests at 20 CU each), public nodes only	No self-serve dedicated plan on the pricing page; custom deployments via NodeCraft, NodeCore is open-source self-hosted	Same price for full and archive, debug and trace on Growth	130+ chains
Alchemy	Method-weighted CU, $0.525 per 1M CU	Yes, 30M CU a month, 15 RPS	Dedicated Clusters, quoted by sales	Archive billed as compute, debug and trace on Pay As You Go and Enterprise, not Free	Token, NFT and Portfolio APIs, 100+ chains, SOC 2 Type II

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
Quicknode (for reference)	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
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, 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
Alchemy	60 CU	Pay As You Go, $0.525 per 1M CU, no allowance	$31.50

Sources: Quicknode API credits and pricing pages, Chainstack request units, Dwellir, OnFinality, dRPC and Alchemy pricing and method-cost docs. Block-range caps on eth_getLogs differ: 5 blocks on the Quicknode trial and 10,000 on paid plans, none on Dwellir Free, 500 on Dwellir Developer and 10,000 on Growth, 100 on the Chainstack Developer plan and 10,000 on Chainstack Growth and above, and 10 on Alchemy Free (unlimited on Alchemy Pay As You Go for Ethereum). 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 response time divided by success rate cubed, averaged across regions, so lower is better.

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.

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.

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). Quicknode is within 1 ms of Chainstack in DE (19 ms against 18 ms) but posts 81 ms in the US and 128 ms in JP, against 31 and 18 ms.

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, tail latency. Quicknode (193 ms) and Alchemy (222 ms) have a lower P99 than Chainstack (270 ms), and Alchemy has the lowest P50 (32 ms) and DE P95 (75 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 (Ethereum, BNB Chain, Hyperliquid) ranked the same four providers, with Chainstack first on all three. Quicknode’s score moved from 0.178 to 0.097 on Ethereum (third to second), from 0.122 to 0.136 on BNB Chain (second to third) and from 0.066 to 0.065 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. No report covers Dwellir or OnFinality, and we do not imply a benchmark exists for them.

Top 5 Quicknode 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.

At the same $49 entry price, Growth lists 20M RU and 250 RPS where Quicknode’s Build lists 80M credits (4M Ethereum calls) and 50 RPS. 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 is 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, Base, Arc and Robinhood Chain 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 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 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 above Quicknode’s Build overage on Ethereum ($12.40 per 1M calls at 20 credits and $0.62 per million credits), 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. Chainstack lists 70+ chains, fewer than the vendor-stated counts of Quicknode (75+), Alchemy (100+), dRPC and OnFinality (130+) and Dwellir (150+), 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, where Quicknode applies a 2x multiplier to most trace and debug methods on its 20-credit Ethereum base.
• 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. The eth_getLogs block range is not available on Free, 500 blocks on Developer and 10,000 on Growth and Scale, and wider scans are split into several billed responses. 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, 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) 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 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.
• Prototypes that need a larger free daily allowance: Good, at 400,000 response units a day.
• Log queries on a $49 budget: Moderate, since eth_getLogs counts 3 response units, or $7.35 per million calls inside the Growth allowance.

dRPC

dRPC is a pay-as-you-go RPC provider that prices 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, frontrunning protection, 5,000 requests per second and a 99.99% uptime figure. 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 100 requests per second, 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.

Fit by workload:

• Budget-first multi-chain apps: Excellent when you want one flat rate across 130+ chains and no credit 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.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a multi-chain platform listing 100+ chains that bundles Node API access with Token, Prices, Transfers, Portfolio and NFT APIs, Webhooks and Wallet APIs. Its pricing page lists a Free plan with 30M compute units (CU) a month and 15 requests per second, and Pay As You Go at $0.525 per 1M CU with 300 requests per second included.

Alchemy weights methods: eth_blockNumber is 10 CU, eth_call 26 CU, eth_getLogs 60 CU and debug_traceTransaction 40 CU. The free allowance is roughly 500,000 eth_getLogs calls, though Free limits each call to a 10-block range and has no Debug or Trace API. Throughput is metered in CU per second (300 CU/s on Free, 10,000 CU/s on Pay As You Go, where each debug call counts 1,000 throughput CU, about 10 debug calls a second), and support targets are 48 hours on Free and 24 hours on Pay As You Go. Alchemy’s trust center lists a SOC 2 Type II report (access on request), and we found no ISO 27001 certification.

Limitations: Alchemy does not remove method weighting, so it is not a cost fix for log-heavy or trace-heavy workloads: a million eth_getLogs calls cost $31.50 against $12.25 on Quicknode Build at monthly billing. Dedicated Clusters are priced on provisioned capacity and quoted through sales, and its Ethereum P99 (188 ms) is above Chainstack’s 117 ms and Quicknode’s 142 ms.

Fit by workload:

• A standing free plan with a bigger allowance than a trial: Strong, with 30M CU a month on the Free plan.
• Apps that want token, NFT and wallet data next to RPC: Excellent, as these APIs ship in the same platform.
• US-weighted Ethereum reads: Alchemy posted the lowest US P95 (80 ms) in the October benchmark, against 98 ms for Quicknode and 143 ms for Chainstack.

How to migrate from Quicknode 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 Quicknode switching page can estimate your savings from a usage export.

1. Assess endpoints and usage. List every Quicknode endpoint URL, its network, and the methods, subscriptions, Streams, Webhooks and add-on APIs (Token API, NFT API) 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 Quicknode 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 a billing period of usage, divide credits by each method’s weight to get calls, 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 with mainnet ETH history). 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 Quicknode is how your own method and chain mix is billed, because the same traffic costs very different amounts under a per-chain credit, a flat request unit and a CU weight. Run your real calls through each provider’s rules and test latency from your users’ regions.

• 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.
• Pay-as-you-go flat per-request pricing across many chains, with no monthly allowance to manage: dRPC.
• Dedicated infrastructure and compliance paperwork: Chainstack Dedicated Nodes with SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, or a Quicknode Enterprise contract.
• A standing free plan plus data APIs: Alchemy.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is the cheapest Quicknode 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 $12.25 on Quicknode Build at monthly billing (if the full allowance is used) and $31.50 at Alchemy’s marginal $0.525 per 1M CU after its 30M free CU, and overage rates differ. Model your own mix with the cost calculator.

Q: Is there a free alternative to Quicknode’s trial?

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

Q: How do I migrate from Quicknode to Chainstack?

Inventory your Quicknode URLs, methods and add-on APIs, 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) and a lower BNB Chain P99 (193 ms against 270 ms). Chainstack runs the benchmark and is ranked in it, 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 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001, and its pricing page lists the reports on request under Enterprise. Alchemy’s trust center lists a SOC 2 Type II report (access on request), and we found no ISO 27001 certificate there. We found no published SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 for Dwellir, OnFinality or dRPC, so request reports from each vendor.

Q: How many requests do Quicknode credits buy?

Divide the credits by the method’s weight: on Ethereum every standard method is 20 credits, so Build’s 80M credits cover 4M calls, with a 2x multiplier on trace and debug. Solana is 30 credits and TON and Sui 40, so the same allowance buys fewer calls there.

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
• Most cost-effective blockchain API: Chainstack vs Quicknode vs Alchemy