{"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":60.3333,"leader":{"name":"OnFinality","slug":"onfinality","value":60.3333},"rankings":[{"name":"OnFinality","slug":"onfinality","ms":{"p50":60.3333,"p90":451.667,"p99":2135.33,"mean":202.566},"successRate":100,"sampleSize":4312.6},{"name":"Parity","slug":"polkadot-official","ms":{"p50":211.667,"p90":353.667,"p99":1067.79,"mean":283.346},"successRate":100,"sampleSize":4313.6},{"name":"PublicNode","slug":"publicnode","ms":{"p50":220.667,"p90":326.867,"p99":661.667,"mean":232.627},"successRate":100,"sampleSize":4315.6}],"sparkline":[237.614,351.589,464.257,492.583,397.815,325.81,260.793,218.889,131.517,99.0167,122.454,178.244,217.278,254.832,250.557,209.533,202.944,174.592,184.471,170.929,151.468,117.175,67.9486,97.9306,119.904,139.156,116.279,211.133,306.471,319.556,197.127,86.7611,128.749,181.318,316.801,352.329,433.139,357.3,357.246,287.608,312.339,280.776,295.287,280.722,291.778,214.356,140.783,61.9708,59.7861,61.2139,89.0639,185.197,222.163,227.754,209.099,234.351,236.735,239.013,213.624,176.074,115.386,91.0208,89.6056,68.6514,52.7917,55.8514,96.1306,130.175,131.076,127.563,156.7,180.642,251.916],"sampleSize":12941.800000000001,"asOf":"2026-08-08T12:34:02.817Z","headline":"OnFinality leads rpc latency at 60 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency.","quote":"OnFinality leads rpc latency at 60 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 2026-08-08. 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 2026-08-08}\n}","apa":"OpenChainBench. (2026). Fastest free Polkadot RPC, live no-key endpoint latency. Retrieved August 8, 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  - 2026-08-08\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"}