BNB Chain 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 BNB Chain 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 , Binance has the lowest median latency of the 3 free public BNB Chain RPC endpoints measured above the 50 % success floor (4 listed), 33 ms (p50, 24h, 3 regions). Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/bnb-rpc. Chain ID 56. 4 public endpoints, no key: bsc-dataseed1.binance.org, bsc-rpc.publicnode.com, public-bsc.nownodes.io, bsc.drpc.org. 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 →
BNB Chain is the incumbent's chain: Binance's `bsc-dataseed1.binance.org` has been the copy-paste default since 2020, and it measures 33 ms on the cross-region median today (see the region tabs for the origin split). The catch is that it serves exactly one chain, while PublicNode, dRPC and Nodies bring multi-chain coverage with increasingly competitive latency from EU origins. 4 providers, identical probes, three regions.
Methodology
BNB Chain: 4 free public RPC endpoints answering `eth_getBlockByNumber` every 60 seconds from us-east, eu-west and Singapore, ranked by 24h median. Binance leads at 33 ms. The same page carries the private cohort (API key), Alchemy, Chainstack, GetBlock and QuickNode on their keyed BNB Chain endpoints every 120 seconds: switch the Access selector; GetBlock leads it at 9 ms. We measure the round-trip latency of a single, identical RPC call (`eth_getBlockByNumber`) against every no-key public BNB Chain endpoint that sustains continuous probing, 4 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 BNB Chain-scoped answer with per-region breakdowns as a first-class dimension.
Results: 4 free public BNB Chain RPC endpoints measured, 3 ranked by p50 latency (24h, 3 regions)
| № | Providers | p50 | p90 | p99 | Success | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Binance | 33 ms | 59 ms | 169 ms | 100.00% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | PublicNode | 72 ms | 115 ms | 2.09 s | 95.72% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | NOWNodes | 151 ms | 206 ms | 361 ms | 100.00% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Measured, not ranked: sample below the ranking floor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| not ranked | dRPC | 61 ms | 77 ms | 151 ms | 30.03% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Public BNB Chain RPC endpoints measured
Chain ID 56, currency BNB. The 4 no-key endpoints answering our probes today, with their current 24h median; 1 of them sits below the 50 % success floor and is listed last. 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.
Binancehttps://bsc-dataseed1.binance.org33 ms100.0%
PublicNodehttps://bsc-rpc.publicnode.com72 ms95.7%
NOWNodeshttps://public-bsc.nownodes.io151 ms100.0%
dRPChttps://bsc.drpc.org61 ms30.0% ▾
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.
Not listed on BNB Chain
- 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 BNB Chain RPCs work without an API key?
The 4 providers on this page are listed with their URLs in the endpoints table above. Blink (formerly Merkle) was delisted in July 2026 because its gateway does not serve `eth_getBlockByNumber` (JSON-RPC -32601), the anti-cache probe used across the cluster, so its latency cannot be compared on equal terms. 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.
Is bsc-dataseed still the best RPC for BNB Chain?
It depends entirely on where your requests originate. Its cross-region median is 33 ms against 33 ms for the leader; the per-region tabs show how far the two ends of that range sit apart. Check the region tabs above, the cross-region average is meaningless for an endpoint with this much geographic variance.
Which BNB Chain RPC provider is fastest with an API key?
Per the live data: GetBlock at 9 ms (eth_getBlockByNumber p50 over 24h, averaged across us-east, eu-west and Singapore); Alchemy measures 33 ms, Chainstack 62 ms and QuickNode 26 ms; GetBlock measures 9 ms. On the free cohort Binance leads at 33 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