OpenChainBench

Base vs Optimism

Split decision: Base leads on Fastest L2 block time, live across Robinhood, Arbitrum, Base and 7 more (1.93 s vs 1.94 s) and Fastest free public RPC for Ethereum, BNB, Polygon and 23 more chains (257 ms vs 332 ms); Optimism leads on Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency (17.9 min vs 20.0 min) and Fastest Chainlink CCIP source chain by end-to-end delivery latency (18.8 min vs 24.0 min).

Read methodology Last measured Window: rolling 24h7 shared benchmarks
Base logo
Base

Coinbase-operated optimistic rollup on the OP Stack. 2-second sequencer block time, shared bridge with Optimism via the OP Superchain, fastest-growing L2 by TVL since 2024.

Optimism logo
Optimism

Optimistic rollup and the canonical OP Stack reference implementation. 2-second sequencer block time, 7-day fraud-proof window, anchored to Ethereum L1 via batch submissions to the Optimism Portal.

Side by side measurements

Fastest free public RPC for Ethereum, BNB, Polygon and 23 more chains (plus Solana and Polkadot)

RPCs

Base

Leads

257 ms

p99
895 ms
rank
#7
samples
4,331

Optimism

Trails

332 ms

p99
392 ms
rank
#11
samples
4,323

Latency is conditional on success: the harness times only calls returning a valid fresh block, so a mostly-failing endpoint can post a fast p50. Rows below 50 percent success are degraded; unresponsive probes pin below the table. The All chains aggregate favours single-chain foundation endpoints (Base, Binance, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche officials) since they rank on one chain only; use a chain tab for honest comparison. Dead endpoints (cloudflare-eth POST returns -32603) are excluded.

Most reliable free public RPC, correctness incidents across 7 EVM chains

RPCs

Base

Trails

1

rank
#1
samples
76provisional

Optimism

No data in window

A zero row means no incident was caught in the window, not a proof of correctness. Most providers post zero most days; this bench exists for the days they do not, and for the errors: a blocked eth_getLogs or a balance read gated behind a paid key at 40 blocks of depth counts as an incident because it is one from the caller's seat.

Rolling 24h · Reliability incidentsRaw JSON

Frequently asked questions

Base vs Optimism: which one is better?

Base and Optimism are compared on 7 shared OpenChainBench benchmarks. Base leads on Fastest L2 block time, live across Robinhood, Arbitrum, Base and 7 more. Optimism leads on Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency. See the live table on this page for every metric.

Which is faster, Base or Optimism?

On the Fastest L2 block time, live across Robinhood, Arbitrum, Base and 7 more benchmark, Base leads at 1.93 s versus Optimism at 1.94 s. Live measurement is updated continuously by the OpenChainBench harness.

Which is faster, Base or Optimism?

On the Fastest Wormhole VAA finalization by source chain, live latency benchmark, Optimism leads at 17.9 min (provisional) versus Base at 20.0 min (provisional). Live measurement is updated continuously by the OpenChainBench harness.

How is the Base vs Optimism comparison measured?

Every benchmark on this page uses the same open methodology, published at https://openchainbench.com/methodology. Data is CC-BY-4.0. Measurement harnesses are MIT-licensed.

Related comparisons

How this pair was selected

Auto-generated pairs require: both providers in the same benchmark for seven consecutive days, at least 1000 samples per provider, observable third-party search demand, and a public /products/[slug] page on OCB. Editorially curated pairs (like this one) may publish early when search demand is high and data is accruing — panels with fewer than 100 samples are shown as provisional. The full pair ledger is versioned in the public repo.

Live data refreshes via ISR within 60 seconds of a new run. Sources are the same Prometheus queries surfaced on the parent benchmark pages.