OpenChainBench
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AnswerBacked by Fastest free Arbitrum RPC, live no-key endpoint latency

What is the fastest free Arbitrum RPC?

PublicNode is currently the fastest free Arbitrum RPC at 91 ms (eth_getBlockByNumber p50, 24h), measured by OpenChainBench every 60 seconds against 7 no-key providers from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. The ranking re-sorts continuously, and the per-region leader often differs from the global one.

Data as of , refreshed continuously.

Arbitrum is one of the most active Ethereum L2s and the chain where the "which free RPC should I paste into my .env?" question comes up constantly in developer channels. Most comparisons are one-off pings from a laptop in one region against whichever URLs happen to appear in a Stack Overflow answer. This page is the live answer. OpenChainBench probes every free, no-key public Arbitrum endpoint that sustains continuous measurement (PublicNode, dRPC, Tenderly, Nodies, Lava, MeowRPC and the Arbitrum Foundation's own endpoint) with an identical eth_getBlockByNumber call every 60 seconds from three regions, and classifies every response. The Foundation endpoint is a particularly useful reference: documented as best-effort and rate-limited, it shows what that label actually looks like in data: an acceptable median and a p99 that runs roughly ten times worse. Latency percentiles are computed from successful calls only, so a fast error never tops the table.

Live leaderboard, top 5

  1. PublicNode logo

    PublicNode

    #1 · RPC latency

    91msp99 429 ms
  2. Nodies logo

    Nodies

    #2 · RPC latency

    180msp99 311 ms
  3. Tenderly logo

    Tenderly

    #3 · RPC latency

    242msp99 301 ms
  4. Lava logo

    Lava

    #4 · RPC latency

    244msp99 1.87 s
  5. Arbitrum logo

    Arbitrum

    #5 · RPC latency

    253msp99 382 ms

Full live data: /benchmarks/arbitrum-rpc, refreshed every minute.

Methodology and data sources

One identical JSON-RPC POST (eth_getBlockByNumber with a rotating request id, non-cacheable by design) every 60 seconds against each provider from us-east, eu-west and Singapore, using the same plain HTTP client for every endpoint and no API key in any request. Wall-clock round-trip is recorded at millisecond precision; p50, p90 and p99 come from Prometheus quantile_over_time over 24 hours, averaged across the three origins for the headline. Responses are classified ok, http_err, jsonrpc_err, stale (more than 20 blocks behind the cross-provider tip) or timeout, and only ok calls enter the latency distribution. Archive depth is probed every 5 minutes with eth_getBalance at five historical depths up to 5M blocks.

What this number does not tell you

  • ·Latency is conditional on success. Failed calls never enter the percentile, so an endpoint failing most requests can still post a fast p50 from its rare successes; read every latency figure next to its success column.
  • ·Three probe origins only (Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore). Per-region leaders regularly diverge, and a gateway that wins from Virginia can lose from Singapore by multiples.
  • ·One method probed for the headline. eth_getBlockByNumber is representative of read latency but says nothing about eth_sendRawTransaction, WebSocket subscription latency or batched calls.
  • ·Free public endpoints share rate-limit budgets with the entire internet and carry no SLA. The bench probes at a polite 60-second cadence; a production app hammering the same endpoint at high concurrency will see throttling this page cannot predict.
  • ·Keyed free tiers (Alchemy, Infura, QuickNode and similar) are measured separately on the rpc-keyed-latency benchmark with the identical probe.

Frequently asked questions

Which Arbitrum RPC URL works without an API key?
Seven endpoints sustain continuous no-key probing on Arbitrum One and are ranked live above: PublicNode, dRPC, Tenderly, Nodies, Lava, MeowRPC and the Arbitrum Foundation's official endpoint. Every provider was live-verified no-key before inclusion; providers that key-gate, region-block or rate-limit below the probe cadence are excluded rather than listed with an asterisk.
Is the Arbitrum Foundation's RPC good for production?
Not for latency-sensitive paths. The Foundation documents arb1.arbitrum.io/rpc as best-effort and rate-limited, intended for development. Continuous measurement confirms the profile: an acceptable p50 but a p99 tail roughly ten times worse than the leading gateways. Use it as a fallback or for development, and pick a gateway with a tighter distribution for read-heavy production paths.
Does the fastest Arbitrum RPC depend on where my server runs?
Strongly. The headline number averages three probe origins, but per-region leaders regularly diverge. dRPC can win from Virginia and lose from Singapore, or vice versa. Use the region tabs on the benchmark page to scope the leaderboard to the origin closest to your deployment before deciding.
How is Arbitrum RPC latency measured here?
One identical JSON-RPC POST (eth_getBlockByNumber) every 60 seconds against each provider from each of 3 regions, with the same plain HTTP client. Wall-clock round-trip is recorded at millisecond precision; p50/p90/p99 are computed via Prometheus quantile_over_time over 24 hours. Responses are classified so an endpoint stuck on an old head or returning errors behind HTTP 200 is never ranked as fastest. The harness is open source.
Do free Arbitrum RPCs support archive queries?
A few, and the benchmark audits it every 5 minutes. Every provider gets an eth_getBalance probe at five historical depths up to 5M blocks. PublicNode and dRPC typically pass the deepest tier; the Foundation endpoint and others may be limited to recent state. Check the archive depth column on the benchmark page before committing to a provider for historical lookups.

Related questions

Same data as /benchmarks/arbitrum-rpc, refreshed every minute. Open methodology, open source.