NEAR RPC endpoints: free public URLs by latency
HTTP round-trip latency for block (finality=final) against every available public NEAR Protocol node, audited every 60 seconds from 3 regions.
TL;DR. As of , FastNEAR has the lowest median latency of the 3 free public NEAR RPC endpoints measured, 34 ms (p50, 24h, 3 regions). Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/near-rpc. 3 public endpoints, no key: free.rpc.fastnear.com, near.drpc.org, rpc.mainnet.near.org. 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 →
NEAR Protocol is a sharded Proof-of-Stake L1 blockchain using Nightshade sharding and Doomslug consensus, targeting roughly one block per second with near-instant practical finality. Public JSON-RPC endpoints are available without an API key from the NEAR Foundation, FastNEAR, Lava Network and dRPC. Every provider was live-verified with consecutive block/finality:final probes at launch.
Methodology
NEAR: 3 free public RPC endpoints answering `block` every 60 seconds from us-east, eu-west and Singapore, ranked by 24h median. FastNEAR leads at 34 ms. We measure the round-trip latency of a single JSON-RPC call (block with finality=final) against every available public NEAR node that sustains continuous probing: 3 providers live today, every 60 seconds, from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. The harness classifies every response (ok / http_err / jsonrpc_err / stale / timeout) with a NEAR-scaled staleness gap (300 blocks, around 5 min). The cross-chain view lives on the parent rpc-capabilities benchmark; this page is the NEAR-scoped answer with per-region breakdowns as a first-class dimension.
Results: 3 free public NEAR RPC endpoints ranked by p50 latency (24h, 3 regions)
| № | Providers | p50 | p90 | p99 | Success |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | FastNEAR | 34 ms | 67 ms | 115 ms | 100.00% |
| 2 | dRPC | 105 ms | 143 ms | 269 ms | 99.58% |
| 3 | NEAR Foundation | 3.03 s | 3.06 s | 3.10 s | 100.00% |
Public NEAR 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.
FastNEARhttps://free.rpc.fastnear.com34 ms100.0%
dRPChttps://near.drpc.org105 ms99.6%- NEAR Foundation
https://rpc.mainnet.near.org3.03 s100.0%
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 NEAR RPC endpoints work without an API key?
4 endpoints are probed on this chain: NEAR Foundation (rpc.mainnet.near.org), FastNEAR (free.rpc.fastnear.com), Lava (near.lava.build) and dRPC (near.drpc.org). Every listed endpoint was live-verified with a block/finality:final call returning a parsable height before inclusion.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/rpc-capabilities