Bitcoin RPC endpoints: free public URLs by 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 has the lowest median latency of the 3 free public Bitcoin RPC endpoints measured, 75 ms (p50, 24h, 3 regions). Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/bitcoin-rpc. 3 public endpoints, no key: bitcoin-rpc.publicnode.com, bitcoin.drpc.org, public-btc.nownodes.io. Full URLs with their 24h median are listed below.
Companion page
Comparing free RPC endpoints across every chain we measure? Open the cross-chain RPC matrix →
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
Bitcoin: 3 free public RPC endpoints answering `getblockcount` every 60 seconds from us-east, eu-west and Singapore, ranked by 24h median. PublicNode leads at 75 ms. 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.
Results: 3 free public Bitcoin RPC endpoints ranked by p50 latency (24h, 3 regions)
| № | Providers | p50 | p90 | p99 | Success |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PublicNode | 75 ms | 93 ms | 226 ms | 100.00% |
| 2 | dRPC | 128 ms | 178 ms | 257 ms | 99.86% |
| 3 | NOWNodes | 291 ms | 348 ms | 705 ms | 100.00% |
Public Bitcoin RPC endpoints measured
The 3 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. Private providers (API key) are never listed with a URL.
PublicNodehttps://bitcoin-rpc.publicnode.com75 ms100.0%
dRPChttps://bitcoin.drpc.org128 ms99.9%
NOWNodeshttps://public-btc.nownodes.io291 ms100.0%
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.
Frequently asked
Which free Bitcoin RPC is fastest?
Per the live data above: PublicNode at 75 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?
3 endpoints are probed on this chain; each is listed with its URL, 24h median and success rate in the endpoints table on this page, and the list changes as providers come and go.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/rpc-capabilities