Arbitrum RPC endpoints: free public URLs and private API-key providers by latency
HTTP round-trip latency for eth_getBlockByNumber against every free, no-key public Arbitrum RPC endpoint (probed every 60 seconds) and, under the Access selector (Private), against the API-key endpoints of Alchemy, Chainstack, GetBlock and QuickNode (every 120 seconds), from 3 regions. The two cohorts are ranked separately, never against each other.
TL;DR. As of , dRPC has the lowest median latency of the 6 free public Arbitrum RPC endpoints measured, 65 ms (p50, 24h, 3 regions). Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/arbitrum-rpc. Chain ID 42161. 6 public endpoints, no key: arbitrum.drpc.org, arbitrum-one-rpc.publicnode.com, gateway.tenderly.co, arb1.arbitrum.io, arb-pokt.nodies.app, arbitrum.meowrpc.com. Full URLs with their 24h median are listed below; Alchemy, Chainstack, GetBlock, QuickNode (private, API key) are ranked apart under the Private tab.
Companion page
Comparing free RPC endpoints across every chain we measure? Open the cross-chain RPC matrix →
Arbitrum is the second-largest cohort in the cluster: 6 no-key providers including the Arbitrum Foundation's own `arb1.arbitrum.io/rpc`, and one of the few chains where Lava and MeowRPC still compete on a free tier. Foundation endpoints are documented best-effort, and our data shows what that means in practice: a median of 131 ms with a p99 of 198 ms over the last 24 hours. Every provider answers the identical `eth_getBlockByNumber` probe every 60 seconds from us-east, eu-west and Singapore.
Methodology
Arbitrum: 6 free public RPC endpoints answering `eth_getBlockByNumber` every 60 seconds from us-east, eu-west and Singapore, ranked by 24h median. dRPC leads at 65 ms; the chain-official endpoint measures 131 ms. The same page carries the private cohort (API key), Alchemy, Chainstack, GetBlock and QuickNode on their keyed Arbitrum endpoints every 120 seconds: switch the Access selector; GetBlock leads it at 8 ms. We measure the round-trip latency of a single, identical RPC call (`eth_getBlockByNumber`) against every no-key public Arbitrum endpoint that sustains continuous probing, 6 providers, every 60 seconds, from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. The harness also classifies every response (ok / http_err / jsonrpc_err / stale / timeout) and audits archive depth every 5 minutes, so the leaderboard rewards sustained, honest availability rather than a fast error message. The cross-chain view lives on the parent rpc-capabilities benchmark; this page is the Arbitrum-scoped answer with per-region breakdowns as a first-class dimension.
Results: 6 free public Arbitrum RPC endpoints ranked by p50 latency (24h, 3 regions)
| № | Providers | p50 | p90 | p99 | Success |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | dRPC | 65 ms | 107 ms | 198 ms | 98.54% |
| 2 | PublicNode | 70 ms | 83 ms | 465 ms | 99.91% |
| 3 | Tenderly | 102 ms | 108 ms | 116 ms | 100.00% |
| 4 | Arbitrum | 131 ms | 142 ms | 198 ms | 100.00% |
| 5 | Nodies | 140 ms | 152 ms | 250 ms | 100.00% |
| 6 | MeowRPC | 198 ms | 269 ms | 348 ms | 99.77% |
Public Arbitrum RPC endpoints measured
Chain ID 42161, currency ETH. The 6 no-key endpoints answering our probes today, with their current 24h median. Paste one into a wallet or a client as is: no signup, no key. Alchemy, Chainstack, GetBlock and QuickNode, private endpoints that need an API key, are ranked separately under the Private tab; keyed URLs are never listed.
dRPChttps://arbitrum.drpc.org65 ms98.5%
PublicNodehttps://arbitrum-one-rpc.publicnode.com70 ms99.9%
Tenderlyhttps://gateway.tenderly.co/public/arbitrum102 ms100.0%
Arbitrumhttps://arb1.arbitrum.io/rpc131 ms100.0%
Nodieshttps://arb-pokt.nodies.app140 ms100.0%
MeowRPChttps://arbitrum.meowrpc.com198 ms99.8%
Median round-trip and success rate over the last 24 hours across the probe regions; the ranked table above carries p90, p99 and the per-region split.
Not listed on Arbitrum
- Ankr: public endpoint requires an API key
- NodeReal: requires an API key
- 1RPC: delisted for reliability: under 13 % success at one probe per minute (since 2026-07-09)
- gateway.fm: 29 requests per IP budget, too small for continuous probing
- LlamaRPC: Cloudflare 521 from the probe regions
- BlockPI: Cloudflare 521 from the probe regions
- OmniaTech: Cloudflare 521 from the probe regions
- Alchemy demo: rate-limited public demo endpoint; Alchemy's keyed endpoint is in the private cohort on this page
Frequently asked
Which Arbitrum RPCs work without an API key?
The 6 providers on this page are listed with their URLs in the endpoints table above. Every (provider, chain) pair was live-verified no-key before inclusion, and anything that key-gates, region-blocks or rate-limits below our 60-second cadence is excluded rather than listed with an asterisk.
Should I use the official Arbitrum Foundation RPC in production?
The Foundation documents `arb1.arbitrum.io/rpc` as best-effort and rate-limited, intended for development. Our continuous measurement confirms the profile: a p50 of 131 ms against 65 ms for the leader, with a p99 of 198 ms. Read the p99 column against the leader's before choosing it as a primary for a read-heavy path.
Which Arbitrum RPC provider is fastest with an API key?
Per the live data: GetBlock at 8 ms (eth_getBlockByNumber p50 over 24h, averaged across us-east, eu-west and Singapore); Alchemy measures 31 ms, Chainstack 79 ms and QuickNode 28 ms; GetBlock measures 8 ms. On the free cohort dRPC leads at 65 ms, measured on the same call from the same three regions; the two cohorts are never ranked in one table (shared gateways at 60 s against metered endpoints at 120 s). Switch the Access selector to Private for the region tabs and the p99 column; plan tiers are disclosed in the methodology.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/rpc-capabilities