Best Ethereum RPC Providers (2026): Pricing, Free Tiers and Limits Compared

Ethereum is the chain where RPC choice costs the most money. Requests are heavier (archive reads, traces, wide log scans), traffic is steadier, and the same 100 million requests a month ranges from $49 to about $1,400 depending on how a provider meters them.

This compares seven providers on the numbers that decide the bill, with prices checked on each provider's pricing page on October 3, 2026. We run one of them (SwiftNodes), so the limits we give for it are measured, including the ones that count against us.

Ethereum on an RPC endpoint, measured

• Block time: 12.1 s (1,000-block average)
• Finality: finalized trails the head by about 81 blocks, roughly 16 minutes
• eth_getLogs: 50,000-block cap per call on our route, about a week of chain time
• Default state window: about 1,000,000 blocks (roughly 140 days); older reads need archive routing
• Method support on our route: trace_* (including trace_filter), debug_traceCall, eth_getProof, eth_getBlockReceipts, txpool_status all answered in the weekly probe

The providers at a glance

What 100M requests a month cost

Assumptions: eth_call-class reads, Alchemy's published 27 CU average, QuickNode's 20 credits per call, Infura's 80 credits per eth_call.

The Ethereum-specific caveat is request weight. Traces, eth_getLogs and archive reads are where metered plans diverge most: Infura charges 255 credits for eth_getLogs against 80 for eth_call, Chainstack doubles archive calls, and compute-unit providers weight heavy methods several times higher than a balance read. Flat-rate and per-response billing don't change with the method, which is why they win on trace- and log-heavy Ethereum workloads.

Picking by workload

Indexers and analytics. Log scans and receipts at steady volume. Look at the eth_getLogs range (50,000 blocks on our route, 10,000 on Dwellir's Growth and Scale plans) and at per-method weight. Flat rate or 1-credit-per-response is cheapest.

Historical and forensic work. Archive state and traces back to genesis. Confirm the provider's archive coverage and how it bills archive calls before committing; on SwiftNodes archive routing is included on paid plans.

Sending transactions. If front-running matters, look for a private-mempool option. SwiftNodes routes eth_sendRawTransaction through MEV Blocker with ?protect=1 on Ethereum; QuickNode, Alchemy and dRPC sell their own protection products.

Low-volume apps. Alchemy's 30M CU free tier (about 1.1 million average calls a month) or dRPC's free public nodes go a long way before you pay anything.

The free public endpoints

We test public Ethereum endpoints weekly from Europe. In the latest run 35 of 55 HTTP endpoints answered correctly; state depth and log limits vary widely, from 128 blocks of state on some to a million on others. The measured list is on our public Ethereum RPC page. Fine for development; not for production traffic.

Prices change often; these were taken from each provider's pricing page on October 3, 2026: Alchemy, QuickNode (credits), Chainstack, Infura, dRPC, Dwellir. The same comparison for Base, including Coinbase's own node service, is in Best Base RPC Providers.

SwiftNodes serves Ethereum over HTTPS and WebSocket with tracing and archive routing on paid plans, at one flat monthly price. Endpoints and measured method support are on the Ethereum RPC page, and SwiftNodes has a free tier to try it.