Fastest free Zcash RPC, live no-key endpoint latency
HTTP round-trip latency for getblockcount against every available public Zcash endpoint, audited every 60 seconds from 3 regions.
TL;DR. As of , Tatum posts the lowest rpc latency at 181 ms (p50, 24h) on Fastest free Zcash RPC, live no-key endpoint latency. Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/zcash-rpc.
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Zcash is a proof-of-work privacy blockchain launched in October 2016; it uses the Equihash algorithm and produces one block every 75 seconds. Zcash exposes a Bitcoin-compatible JSON-RPC interface; the canonical height method is getblockcount. Public endpoints are available without an API key from Tatum (two gateways: one backed by the legacy zcashd node and one backed by the new Zebra node) and Blockchair (REST GET). zcashd reached end of life in July 2026; Zebra is now the reference Zcash full-node implementation maintained by the Zcash Foundation. Every provider was live-verified with consecutive block-height probes at launch.
Methodology
Per-chain member of the RPC latency cluster, extended to Zcash. We measure the round-trip latency of a block-height query against every available public Zcash endpoint that sustains continuous probing: 3 providers at launch, every 60 seconds, from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. Tatum is probed via JSON-RPC POST (getblockcount) on two gateways: a zcashd backend and a Zebra backend behind the same provider. Blockchair is probed via REST GET of its zcash stats endpoint. The harness classifies every response (ok; http_err; jsonrpc_err; stale; timeout) with a Zcash-scaled staleness gap (4 blocks, around 5 min at 75 s/block). The cross-chain view lives on the parent rpc-capabilities benchmark; this page is the Zcash-scoped answer with per-region breakdowns as a first-class dimension.
Frequently asked
What is the fastest free Zcash RPC right now?
Tatum currently leads at 181 ms (Zcash block count p50 over the last 24h), measured against 3 providers probed every 60 seconds from us-east, eu-west and Singapore. The leaderboard re-sorts continuously against fresh Prometheus samples.
Which Zcash RPC endpoints work without an API key?
3 endpoints sustain continuous keyless probing at launch: Tatum zcashd (zcash-mainnet.gateway.tatum.io; JSON-RPC), Tatum Zebra (zcash-mainnet-zebrad.gateway.tatum.io; JSON-RPC) and Blockchair (api.blockchair.com/zcash/stats; REST GET). Every listed endpoint was live-verified with a block-height probe returning a parsable result before inclusion.
What is the difference between Tatum zcashd and Tatum Zebra?
Both are Tatum gateways for Zcash mainnet. zcashd is the original C++ Zcash node that reached end of life in July 2026, while Zebra is the new Rust full-node implementation maintained by the Zcash Foundation. Tatum runs both backends and exposes them on separate gateway URLs. Comparing their latency shows whether the node implementation itself affects response time.
Does the fastest Zcash RPC change by region?
Often. Tatum infrastructure is distributed and latency varies by origin region; Blockchair has fixed infrastructure so rankings shift with geographic origin. The region tabs at the top of the page re-scope every number to a single origin.
How is Zcash RPC latency measured here, technically?
One block-height probe every 60 seconds against each provider from each of 3 regions. Wall-clock round-trip is recorded at millisecond precision; p50/p90/p99 are computed via Prometheus quantile_over_time over 24 hours. Tatum endpoints use JSON-RPC POST (getblockcount); Blockchair uses REST GET of its zcash stats endpoint. Best-effort measurements; p50 is the median, p90 the 90th percentile and p99 the 99th percentile of latency samples collected over the last 24 hours.
Why does Blockchair use a different API method than the Tatum providers?
Blockchair exposes a proprietary REST API rather than a Bitcoin-compatible JSON-RPC interface. Instead of getblockcount, we send a GET request to its zcash stats endpoint, which returns a JSON object with a data.best_block_height field. The measurement logic is identical: client-side round-trip in milliseconds, classified as ok when a parsable block height is returned.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/rpc-capabilities