Best Polygon RPC Providers (2026): Pricing, Free Tiers and Limits Compared
Polygon PoS is cheap to transact on and surprisingly easy to get wrong on the RPC side. Its nodes tend to keep very little state, so historical reads that work on Ethereum fail on Polygon unless you pay for archive access, and its high transaction count makes per-request pricing add up quickly.
This compares seven providers with prices checked on their pricing pages on October 3, 2026. We run one of them (SwiftNodes); its limits below are measured, including the unflattering ones.
Polygon on an RPC endpoint, measured
- Block time: 1.5 s (1,000-block average)
- Finality:
finalizedtrails the head by about 2 blocks, roughly 3 seconds eth_getLogs: 50,000-block cap per call on our route, about 21 hours of chain time- Default state window: only 64 blocks (about 96 seconds) on our default route; anything older needs archive routing
- Tracing:
debug_traceCallandtrace_*did not answer on our Polygon route in the weekly probe
The providers at a glance
| Provider | Billing unit | Free tier | Entry paid plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| SwiftNodes | Flat rate by requests per second | 2 req/s, 250K requests/month | $49/mo, 50 req/s, unlimited volume |
| Dwellir | 1 credit per response | 100K responses/day, 20/s | $49/mo, 25M responses |
| Chainstack | 1 RU per call, 2 for archive | 3M RU/month, 25 RPS | $49/mo, 20M RU |
| dRPC | Compute units / requests | 210M CU/month, public nodes | Pay as you go, $6 per 1M requests |
| QuickNode | API credits (20 per call on Polygon) | 10M-credit trial | $49/mo, 80M credits |
| Alchemy | Compute units (27 CU average) | 30M CU/month, 25 req/s | Pay as you go, $0.525 per 1M CU |
| Infura | Credits (eth_call 80, eth_getLogs 255) | 3M credits/day | $50/mo, 15M credits/day |
What 100M requests a month cost
Assumptions: eth_call-class reads at each provider's published per-call weight.
| Provider | 100M requests/month |
|---|---|
| SwiftNodes | $49 to $89 (Starter if peaks stay under 50 req/s, Growth at 150 req/s) |
| Dwellir | $299 (Growth, 150M responses) |
| Chainstack | ~$449 (Pro + 20M RU); archive calls count double |
| dRPC | ~$600 |
| QuickNode | $999 (Business, 2B credits) |
| Alchemy | ~$1,418 |
| Infura | Enterprise (the $225 Team plan covers about 28M eth_calls a month) |
The Polygon-specific point is archive by default. Because ordinary nodes keep so little state, workloads that read even a few minutes into the past are archive workloads on Polygon. On providers that bill archive calls differently (Chainstack at 2 RU, some plans gating archive to higher tiers), price that in from the start.
Picking by workload
DeFi dashboards and portfolio trackers. These read balances and positions at past blocks constantly. Make sure archive access is on the plan you're pricing, not just "available".
Indexers. Polygon's 50,000-block log cap on our route is generous, and its 3-second finality means you can index at finalized with almost no lag. Steady volume favours flat rate or per-response billing.
Tracing. If you need call traces on Polygon, confirm the provider serves them on its Polygon nodes; they did not answer on our route.
Low-volume apps and mints. Metered free tiers go far; dRPC's free public nodes allow 100 req/s.
The free public endpoints
We test public Polygon endpoints weekly. In the latest run 15 of 36 HTTP endpoints answered correctly; polygon-bor-rpc.publicnode.com answered in 20 ms from Europe with 10,000-block log ranges but 128 blocks of state. The full list is on our public Polygon RPC page.
Prices change often; these were taken from each provider's pricing page on October 3, 2026: Alchemy, QuickNode (credits), Chainstack, Infura, dRPC, Dwellir. For Polygon RPC usage in depth, see Polygon RPC: The Gateway L2.
SwiftNodes serves Polygon over HTTPS and WebSocket with archive routing on paid plans, at one flat monthly price. Endpoints and measured method support are on the Polygon RPC page, and SwiftNodes has a free tier to try it.
John Sullivan covers RPC infrastructure, node operations, and multi-chain development at SwiftNodes — what it actually takes to keep endpoints fast, fresh, and reliable across EVM and non-EVM networks.
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