{"slug":"polkadot-rpc","title":"Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency","subtitle":"HTTP round-trip latency for chain_getHeader against every free, no-key public Polkadot relay-chain endpoint, audited every 60 seconds from 3 regions.","category":"RPCs","metric":"RPC latency","unit":"ms","status":"live","higherIsBetter":false,"filters":null,"value":51,"leader":{"name":"OnFinality","slug":"onfinality","value":51},"rankings":[{"name":"OnFinality","slug":"onfinality","ms":{"p50":51,"p90":182.267,"p99":1953.33,"mean":155.242},"successRate":100,"sampleSize":1225.84},{"name":"Parity","slug":"polkadot-official","ms":{"p50":186.333,"p90":322.667,"p99":696.333,"mean":245.627},"successRate":100,"sampleSize":1226.84},{"name":"PublicNode","slug":"publicnode","ms":{"p50":254.333,"p90":591.1,"p99":739.667,"mean":324.866},"successRate":100,"sampleSize":1231.84}],"sparkline":[60.5809,56.1825,60.7301,58.9153,66.4931,91.3903,134.572,163.564,146.321,123.04,137.111,202.028,232.449,205.368,173.967,172.143,171.116,163.96,172.186,214.492,238.465],"sampleSize":3684.5199999999995,"asOf":"2026-07-16T00:07:57.373Z","headline":"OnFinality leads rpc latency at 51 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency.","quote":"OnFinality leads rpc latency at 51 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency. Source: OpenChainBench (https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/polkadot-rpc).","cite":{"plain":"OpenChainBench. \"Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency\". Retrieved 2026-07-16. https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/polkadot-rpc","bibtex":"@misc{ocb_polkadot_rpc,\n  author = {OpenChainBench},\n  title  = {Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency},\n  year   = {2026},\n  url    = {https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/polkadot-rpc},\n  note   = {Retrieved 2026-07-16}\n}","apa":"OpenChainBench. (2026). Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency. Retrieved July 16, 2026, from https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/polkadot-rpc","ris":"TY  - GEN\r\nAU  - OpenChainBench\r\nTI  - Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency\r\nPY  - 2026\r\nUR  - https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/polkadot-rpc\r\nY2  - 2026-07-16\r\nER  - \r\n"},"pageUrl":"https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/polkadot-rpc","ogImage":"https://openchainbench.com/api/og/polkadot-rpc","source":"https://github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/rpc-capabilities","methodology":["Cadence: every 60 seconds per provider, from each of 3 probe regions (us-east Virginia, eu-west Amsterdam, sgp Singapore). Headline p50/p90/p99 aggregate across all 3 regions via Prometheus `avg(quantile_over_time(...))`; per-region breakdowns are first-class on this page via the region tabs.","Payload: `{\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"id\":<rotating>,\"method\":\"chain_getHeader\",\"params\":[]}`. Plain HTTP POST, identical for every endpoint, no API key in any request. Non-cacheable by design: the latest-header fetch with a rotating id defeats edge caches that would answer a bare head query without touching a node.","Latency: client-side round-trip delta in milliseconds, exposed as both a gauge and a histogram (buckets 50 ms → 10 s), so percentiles are computed via Prometheus `quantile_over_time` over the last 24 hours.","Call-result classification: `ok` (HTTP 200 + non-empty result with a parsable hex block number), `http_err`, `jsonrpc_err` (HTTP 200 carrying an error body), `stale` (more than 40 relay blocks behind the cross-provider tip, roughly 4 minutes at Polkadot's ~6 s block time), `timeout`. Latency without reliability is a misleading ranking signal.","No archive-depth loop on this chain. Polkadot's state model is accessed via `state_getStorage` keyed by a Blake2-hashed storage key rather than the EVM `eth_getBalance(address, height)` pattern, so the archive probe used on the EVM cluster is not applied here.","No cross-provider hash quorum on this chain. `chain_getHeader` returns the parent-block hash rather than the current-block hash (the current hash is derived by Blake2 over the SCALE-encoded header). Bench 083's height-hash quorum check is therefore skipped for Polkadot; the same reliability signal is still captured via `ok` / `stale` classification against the rolling cross-provider tip.","This page is part of the per-chain RPC cluster derived from the cross-chain [rpc-capabilities](https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/rpc-capabilities) benchmark; the identical harness, cadence and exclusion rules apply on every chain.","Chain scope: every query on this page is pinned to `chain=\"polkadot\"`. Provider coverage at launch: 3 no-key endpoints (Parity official, OnFinality public gateway, PublicNode). Excluded by the launch audit: 1RPC filters `chain_getHeader` as \"Not Allowed\" on its privacy relay; Dwellir returned 503 during the audit sweep; Ankr paid Polkadot tier only; Chainstack key-gated; RadiumBlock requires a referral header; Grove and Thirdweb return invalid-chain or key-gated."],"license":"CC-BY-4.0"}