Fastest free Ethereum RPC, live no-key endpoint latency
HTTP round-trip latency for eth_getBlockByNumber against every free, no-key public Ethereum RPC endpoint, audited every 60 seconds from 3 regions.
TL;DR. As of , PublicNode leads rpc latency at 101 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest free Ethereum RPC, live no-key endpoint latency. Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/ethereum-rpc.
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Comparing free RPC endpoints across every chain we measure? Open the cross-chain RPC matrix →
Ethereum carries one of the largest free-RPC cohorts we measure: 6 no-key public-read providers answering the same `eth_getBlockByNumber` probe every 60 seconds from three regions. This bench is scoped to public, read-optimised gateways only; MEV-protection RPCs (Flashbots, MEV Blocker, Blink, bloXroute) share the JSON-RPC surface but serve a fundamentally different SLA (send-tx privacy, not read speed) and live in their own cluster on [mev-protect-rpc](/benchmarks/mev-protect-rpc). Cloudflare-eth has been removed from this bench after persistent JSON-RPC error -32603, and Merkle is excluded outright after recurring Cloudflare lockouts that froze our probes for 20 minutes after a single request. If you paste a free RPC URL into an Ethereum dapp's read path, this page is the live answer to which one deserves it.
Methodology
Per-chain member of the public-read RPC latency cluster. We measure the round-trip latency of a single, identical RPC call (`eth_getBlockByNumber`) against every no-key public-read Ethereum endpoint that sustains continuous probing, 6 providers, every 60 seconds, from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. MEV-protection endpoints (private-mempool, anti-sandwich, PBS relays) are measured on the same probe but scored separately on [mev-protect-rpc](/benchmarks/mev-protect-rpc) because their SLA optimises for send-tx privacy rather than read latency, and mixing them here would flatter or penalise them on the wrong axis. 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 Ethereum-scoped answer with per-region breakdowns as a first-class dimension.
Frequently asked
What is the fastest free Ethereum RPC right now?
PublicNode currently leads at 101 ms (`eth_getBlockByNumber` p50 over the last 24h), measured against 6 no-key public-read providers probed every 60 seconds from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. The leaderboard re-sorts continuously against fresh Prometheus samples, so the answer on this page is the answer right now, not a quarterly snapshot. Use the region tabs to see the leader from the origin closest to your deployment. If you need MEV-protection endpoints instead of raw read speed, see [mev-protect-rpc](/benchmarks/mev-protect-rpc).
Which Ethereum RPCs work without an API key?
The 6 public-read providers on this page: PublicNode, dRPC, Tenderly, Nodies, Lava, MeowRPC. 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 probe cadence is excluded rather than listed with an asterisk. Cloudflare was removed after persistent JSON-RPC error -32603. MEV-protection RPCs (Flashbots, MEV Blocker, Blink, bloXroute) also expose no-key JSON-RPC but serve a different SLA and live on [mev-protect-rpc](/benchmarks/mev-protect-rpc).
Does the fastest Ethereum RPC change by region?
Frequently. The headline number averages three probe origins (us-east, eu-west, Singapore), but per-region leaders regularly diverge, a gateway that wins from Virginia can lose from Singapore by multiples. The region tabs at the top of the page re-scope every number on the page to a single origin; pick the one closest to where your requests actually originate.
How is Ethereum RPC latency measured here?
One identical JSON-RPC POST (`eth_getBlockByNumber`) every 60 seconds against each provider from each of 3 regions, with the same plain HTTP client. Wall-clock round-trip is recorded at millisecond precision; p50/p90/p99 are computed via Prometheus `quantile_over_time` over 24 hours. Responses are classified (`ok` / `http_err` / `jsonrpc_err` / `stale` / `timeout`) so an endpoint stuck on an old head or returning errors behind HTTP 200 is never ranked as fastest. The harness is open source and every number on this page is a public Prometheus query you can run yourself.
Why was Cloudflare's Ethereum RPC removed?
Cloudflare's public Ethereum gateway returned persistent JSON-RPC error -32603 on our probes. The endpoint responds with HTTP 200 but the body carries an error body rather than a usable result, which means it no longer qualifies as a functional free RPC. We classify a call as `ok` only when the HTTP status is 200 AND the body carries a usable `result` field.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/rpc-capabilities