Fastest free Bitcoin RPC, live no-key endpoint latency
HTTP round-trip latency for block-height queries against every available public Bitcoin endpoint, audited every 60 seconds from 3 regions.
TL;DR. As of , PublicNode posts the lowest rpc latency at 77 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest free Bitcoin RPC, live no-key endpoint latency. Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/bitcoin-rpc.
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Bitcoin is the original proof-of-work UTXO blockchain, targeting one block every ten minutes under SHA-256. It exposes the canonical Bitcoin Core JSON-RPC interface; the lightest height method is getblockcount, which returns the current chain tip as a plain integer. A handful of providers serve this endpoint with no API key: PublicNode, dRPC and NOWNodes (public no-key endpoint, rate-limited to 5 requests per second). Every provider was live-verified with consecutive getblockcount probes at launch, all returning the same tip.
Methodology
Per-chain member of the RPC latency cluster, extended to Bitcoin. We probe every public no-key endpoint with a single getblockcount call every 60 seconds from three regions (us-east, eu-west, Singapore) and record wall-clock round-trip latency. Only ok responses (HTTP 200 with a usable block height, not stale) contribute to the distribution; p50/p90/p99 are computed via Prometheus quantile_over_time over a rolling 24-hour window.
Frequently asked
Which free Bitcoin RPC is fastest?
Per the live data above: PublicNode at 77 ms (getblockcount p50, 24h) across the no-key providers measured here.
How is Bitcoin RPC latency measured?
A single getblockcount call every 60 seconds from three regions (us-east, eu-west, Singapore), recording the wall-clock round trip. Only successful, non-stale responses count.
Do these endpoints need an API key?
No. All three (PublicNode, dRPC, NOWNodes) serve Bitcoin Core JSON-RPC with no key. NOWNodes' public endpoint is rate-limited to 5 requests per second.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/rpc-capabilities