Best Base RPC Providers 2026: Cost and Rate Limits Compared

Base is Coinbase's Layer 2, built on the OP Stack. It settles to Ethereum and produces a block every two seconds, with Flashblocks streaming 200 ms sub-block preconfirmations on top. For an RPC provider, that means high read volume, frequent eth_getLogs polling and, for trading and wallet apps, WebSocket subscriptions.

This comparison covers six providers selling managed Base RPC: Dwellir, Chainstack, dRPC, Infura, QuickNode and Alchemy. Prices are a list-price snapshot from 2026-10-07, normalized to dollars per million calls on one request mix, alongside archive, WSS, debug, trace and rate limits.

What to Look for in a Base RPC Provider

For a full checklist, see 8 Essential Factors to Consider When Choosing a Base RPC Provider. The points that move the decision most on Base:

Cost per call, not per unit. Credit and compute-unit providers weight eth_getLogs at 3 to 4 times eth_call. Base apps poll logs heavily, so a headline per-unit rate understates the bill. The RPC providers without compute units guide explains the billing models.

Archive and trace. Indexers, explorers and accounting tools need historical state and debug_traceTransaction. Check whether archive costs extra units and whether debug and trace are on your plan tier.

WebSocket and Flashblocks. Trading and wallet interfaces subscribe to newHeads and logs, and some use Flashblocks streams for pending state. Confirm WSS is on the plan and test the lag from your region.

Rate limits. Bots and backfills hit RPS caps before they hit monthly volume. Compare sustained RPS and burst rules, not only included calls.

Compliance. Regulated teams may need SOC 2 or ISO 27001 reports from the provider.

The numbers: price, credits, free tier, archive, WSS and RPS

Entry-plan cost per million Base calls on the house mix (defined below), the unit each provider bills in, and the highest rate limit you can buy without a sales call. Archive and WSS refer to Base mainnet on standard shared plans. Sorted by cost.

Dwellir's Free plan excludes eth_getLogs; paid plans allow a 500-block range on Developer and 10,000 blocks on Growth and Scale. All six providers publish Base Sepolia endpoints alongside mainnet.

The chart below shows eth_call alone, the most common Base method. On eth_call only, Infura's Developer plan costs $8.89 per million and Alchemy $13.65; on the full mix, eth_getLogs at 255 credits and 60 CU raises both.

Top pick by use case

Short answers, from list prices and published limits checked on 2026-10-07. The numbers table, the pricing comparison and the methodology show the working.

• Lowest cost per request: Dwellir, $1.96 per million calls on the $49 Developer plan. One credit per response for every method, and the Base endpoint is an archive node on every plan.
• Managed infrastructure with SOC 2 and archive: Chainstack, $2.45 per million on Growth, with archive, debug and trace on Base and SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001.
• Highest self-serve rate limit: Dwellir Scale, 5,000 responses per second with bursts to 10,000, at $999 a month. dRPC advertises 5,000 RPS at $6.00 per million.
• Pay as you go with no commitment: dRPC, a flat $6.00 per million calls on every method, archive and trace included.
• Flashblocks (200 ms preconfirmations): Dwellir, QuickNode and Alchemy all publish Flashblocks endpoints. Plan for Base's Denim upgrade, which replaces them (see Flashblocks and Denim).
• MetaMask alignment and ConsenSys procurement: Infura, $10.83 per million on Developer.
• Enhanced APIs, webhooks and gas sponsorship: Alchemy, at $13.60 per million, if your team will use Notify and Gas Manager.

How to Compare Base Pricing Across Unit Systems

Each provider quotes its headline rate in a different unit. To compare them, convert each to dollars per million calls for the methods a Base app actually makes, using the weight each provider assigns to the method.

Per-request billing. One response is one unit, whatever the method. Dwellir bills this way, and Chainstack does too on recent state (1 request unit per call, 2 for reads 127 or more blocks behind the tip and for every debug or trace call). Dwellir's Developer plan works out to $1.96 per 1M calls included, with overage at $5.00 per 1M ($2-5 across plans). Chainstack Growth is $2.45 per 1M included, $15 per 1M overage.

Compute units and credits. The provider charges per million units and gives each method a weight, so the cost of a call depends on the method.

• Alchemy charges $0.525 per 1M CU. On Base that is $13.65 per 1M eth_call, $31.50 per 1M eth_getLogs, $21.00 per 1M eth_sendRawTransaction, $10.50 per 1M eth_getTransactionReceipt or eth_getBalance, and $21.00 per 1M debug_traceTransaction.
• Infura weights eth_call, receipts, eth_blockNumber, eth_getBalance and eth_sendRawTransaction at 80 credits, eth_getLogs at 255, trace_transaction at 300 and debug_traceTransaction at 1,000. Its quota is daily, not monthly.
• QuickNode assigns a flat 20 credits to every Base call, which is $10.00 per 1M calls at Business's overage rate and $12.40 at Build's. Debug and trace calls carry a 2x multiplier, $20.00 per 1M at the Business overage rate.
• dRPC assigns 20 CU to every method, a flat $6.00 per 1M calls, trace and archive included.

Method by method, in dollars per 1M calls at each plan's included rate:

Dwellir and Chainstack overage runs $2-5 and $15 per 1M respectively, and Chainstack doubles the unit for reads 127 or more blocks behind the tip and for debug and trace calls.

The monthly totals later in this post use a mostly-reads mix: 40% eth_call, 25% receipts, 15% eth_blockNumber, 10% eth_getLogs over small ranges, 5% eth_getBalance and 5% eth_sendRawTransaction, all on recent blocks. On that mix a Base call averages 25.9 CU on Alchemy (eth_blockNumber is 10 CU), so 1M calls cost $13.60 and the free 30M CU covers about 1.16M calls. On Infura a call averages about 97.5 credits, so Developer's 15M daily credits cover about 153,800 calls a day, or 4.6M a month. On QuickNode every call is 20 credits, so Build's 80M credits cover 4M calls and Business's 2B credits cover 100M calls at $999.

1. Dwellir

Dwellir serves Base on 1:1 pricing: one RPC response is one API credit, with no compute units, including on debug and trace methods. The endpoint is https://api-base-mainnet-archive.n.dwellir.com/<your-api-key>, an archive node on every plan, with WSS on the same host and the Flashblocks subscriptions newFlashblocks and pendingLogs. The Base network page and Base docs cover setup.

Key features:

• Archive on every plan, at one credit per call
• debug_* and trace_* on the shared Base endpoint
• WebSocket on the same endpoint, including Flashblocks streams
• Unlimited Node for flat, unmetered billing on the same URL and key
• 150+ networks, European infrastructure, autoscaling
• Crypto payment on every paid plan

Pricing:

A dedicated Base archive node cluster lists at $3,366 per month, with no request counting.

Considerations: The Free plan excludes eth_getLogs, and Developer caps log queries at a 500-block range (10,000 on Growth and Scale), so log backfills need Growth or smaller windows. Dwellir has no enhanced NFT, token or webhook APIs of the kind Alchemy and QuickNode sell. On flat-rate pricing, GetBlock's single-chain Limitless full node (not ranked here) works out to $1.28 per 1M calls when run at its 150 or 300 RPS cap, below the Unlimited Node's $1.83-1.85.

On metered traffic the flat unit is the advantage: eth_getLogs costs 60 CU on Alchemy and 255 credits on Infura, and one credit here, archive included. Scale's 5,000 RPS sustained matches dRPC and is 10 times QuickNode Business at 500 RPS.

Best for: Base apps with heavy log, archive or trace traffic that want one price per call, and teams running several chains under one key.

2. Chainstack

Chainstack runs Base mainnet and Sepolia as Global Nodes and dedicated nodes, full and archive, with Debug and Trace APIs. It bills request units with no method weights, which puts it closest to Dwellir on unit design. Its Base page covers shared and dedicated endpoints.

Key features:

• Archive on Base (Global and Dedicated nodes)
• Debug and Trace APIs on Base
• WebSocket on all plans
• Unlimited Node add-on from $149/month at 25 RPS
• Dedicated nodes for isolated workloads
• SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001; 70+ chains

Pricing:

Annual billing lowers Growth to $40, Pro to $166, Business to $416 and Enterprise to $825 per month.

A request under 127 blocks behind the tip costs 1 RU; 127 or more blocks behind costs 2 RU as an archive read, and debug and trace calls cost 2 RU regardless of block age.

Chainstack combines archive, trace, SOC 2 and 1:1 recent-block pricing on one shared endpoint. The costs sit in overage ($10-20 per 1M below Enterprise) and in old-state reads at 2 RU. The Unlimited Node add-on needs Growth or higher: 25 RPS at $149 plus the $49 Growth base is $198, or $3.05 per 1M calls at full use, so it does not beat Growth's included rate. Dwellir's 25 RPS Unlimited Node is $119.

Best for: Teams that need archive and trace on a shared Base endpoint with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 documentation and per-request billing.

3. dRPC

dRPC routes Base traffic across independent node operators behind a load balancer and tags Base as archive. Its network documentation lists the endpoints.

Key features:

• Archive on Base
• WebSocket
• Debug and trace on Growth, at the same flat 20 CU
• Free tier on public nodes
• 130+ chains, crypto payment

Pricing:

dRPC's flat $6.00 per 1M calls covers every method, archive and trace included, with no monthly commitment. Because traffic is routed across third-party operators, the operator serving your Base requests is not disclosed, and latency depends on which operator answers.

Best for: Pay-as-you-go teams that want archive and trace at one flat rate, and teams that want a second provider for failover.

4. Infura

Infura is ConsenSys's RPC service and the default backend for MetaMask. Its Base network page lists HTTPS and WSS endpoints with archive data. Infura meters in credits against a daily quota.

Key features:

• Archive on all plans, at the same credit cost as recent calls
• Debug and trace from Developer
• WebSocket
• MetaMask and ConsenSys tooling
• 40+ networks

Pricing:

The pricing page sells extra capacity as a $200 add-on for 55M credits and does not make clear whether those credits are daily or monthly, so the overage cost per call is not settled.

The daily quota is the constraint to plan around: a traffic spike cannot draw on a quiet day's unused credits. eth_getLogs at 255 credits and debug_traceTransaction at 1,000 make log- and trace-heavy workloads expensive, $28.33 and $111.11 per 1M on Developer. Archive is billed like recent state, though Infura notes this "might change".

Best for: Teams already in the MetaMask and ConsenSys stack whose procurement prefers ConsenSys as a vendor.

5. QuickNode

QuickNode runs shared and dedicated Base endpoints. The Base API overview covers Flashblocks, Debug, Trace and OP-Node APIs, and the API credit table charges 20 credits per Base call.

Key features:

• Archive on Base
• Flashblocks endpoints
• Debug and Trace APIs on paid plans (not on the free trial)
• Streams and Webhooks
• SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001
• 75+ chains

Pricing:

Effective price is the plan cost spread over the Base calls its credits cover. Annual billing lowers each tier by about 30%, for example Build to $34 per month.

At 20 credits per call, the credit totals on the pricing page overstate Base request capacity by 20 times, and debug and trace calls cost 40. The free trial lasts one month and does not include Trace and Debug. At Business rates a Base call costs $10.00 per 1M, which buys archive, Flashblocks, Streams and a full compliance set.

Best for: Regulated teams that need archive, trace, Flashblocks and SOC reports from one vendor and can budget 20 credits per call.

6. Alchemy

Alchemy supports Base mainnet with archive, WebSocket, Flashblocks and the Debug and Trace APIs, alongside its NFT, Token and Notify APIs. Its Base chain page lists the supported features.

Key features:

• Archive on Base
• Debug API (15 of 16 methods) and Trace API (9 of 9) on Base mainnet, paid plans only
• Flashblocks support
• NFT, Token and Notify APIs, Gas Manager and webhooks
• 100+ blockchains

Pricing:

Extra pay-as-you-go throughput costs $160 per month per 5,000 CU/s block, up to a 30,000 CU/s self-serve cap. Reaching that cap, about 1,150 calls per second on the mix, adds $640 a month.

Alchemy's strength is the platform around the RPC: enhanced APIs and webhooks can replace indexing work your team would otherwise build. The trade-off is weighting. eth_getLogs costs 60 CU, or $31.50 per 1M log queries, and the mix lands at $13.60 per 1M calls at any monthly spend. The free 30M CU covers about 1.16M Base calls, without debug or trace.

Best for: Teams that will use Alchemy's enhanced APIs, Notify webhooks or Gas Manager on Base and can model their CU consumption.

Provider Comparison

Effective Price per Million Calls

One denominator for every provider: dollars per 1M Base calls under the house mix, at the entry paid plan and at the best self-serve rate, with overage alongside.

What That Costs at Volume

Plans step at fixed tiers, so monthly bills differ from the per-million rates. Same house mix, list prices.

At 10M requests a month, Dwellir's $49 ties Chainstack. At 50M and 100M, Dwellir's metered plans are the lowest of the six. Infura needs Team at 10M because 10M calls a month is about 333,000 a day, or 32.5M credits, above Developer's 15M daily quota. Its 50M and 100M figures assume the $200 add-on adds 55M credits a day; if the add-on is monthly, Infura at those volumes is an Enterprise conversation. The Unlimited Node at 50M is $119 if average traffic stays under 25 RPS and $479 for the 100 RPS tier. GetBlock, not ranked here, sells a Base Limitless full node from $150 a month at 25 RPS to $1,000 at 300 RPS.

Methodology

How this list was ordered and how the numbers were produced, so you can reproduce or dispute them.

Ranking. This is an editorial ranking by Dwellir, the publisher of this post, and Dwellir is one of the providers in it. It weighs three things: the effective cost per million calls on the house mix, how predictable the bill is when your method mix, block age or volume changes, and what the plans include (free tier, archive, debug and trace, MEV protection or compliance). No single criterion sorts the list, so a provider can sit above a cheaper one. On Base the order happens to follow entry-plan cost on the mix. It is not a strict price sort at every volume: at 100M calls a month QuickNode's $999 sits below Infura's estimated $1,225, and on flat-rate products GetBlock's Limitless full node is lower per call than Dwellir's Unlimited Node at full use.

Cost per million is each plan's monthly price divided by the Base calls its included volume buys on the house mix, after the provider's own method weights are applied: 40% eth_call, 25% eth_getTransactionReceipt, 15% eth_blockNumber, 10% eth_getLogs over small ranges, 5% eth_getBalance and 5% eth_sendRawTransaction, all on recent blocks. Alchemy and dRPC have no fixed entry bundle, so their metered rate is used. Annual discounts and add-ons such as Streams or Gas Manager are excluded.

Unit weights come from each provider's published method-cost table: Alchemy compute unit costs, Infura credit costs, QuickNode's Base API credit table, Chainstack's request unit rules and dRPC's flat 20 CU. Log-heavy and trace-heavy Base workloads make the compute-unit and credit providers more expensive than the mix shows, not less.

RPS cap is the highest rate limit on a shared plan with a published price, converted to calls per second on the mix where the provider meters in units per second (Alchemy, Infura). Flat-rate products (Dwellir Unlimited Node, Chainstack Unlimited Node, QuickNode Flat Rate) are compared in which RPC provider has the highest RPS.

Archive, WSS, debug and trace mean the provider serves them on Base mainnet on standard shared plans, per its own Base documentation.

Not measured here: latency, error rates and Flashblocks lag. Those depend on your region and method mix. Benchmark the two or three providers this table narrows you to from your own infrastructure before committing.

Verification date: plan prices, unit weights and chain support were checked against each provider's pricing page and documentation on 2026-10-07. The modified date at the top of this post moves whenever a figure is rechecked.

Flashblocks and the Denim Upgrade

Base Flashblocks stream 200 ms sub-block preconfirmations ahead of the two-second canonical block. Dwellir, QuickNode and Alchemy publish Flashblocks endpoints; on Dwellir they are the newFlashblocks and pendingLogs WebSocket subscriptions on the standard Base endpoint. Measure the lag from your own region before relying on it.

Base's planned Denim upgrade moves to 200 ms canonical blocks and removes the Flashblocks subscriptions and pending-state reads. Apps replace newFlashblocks with newHeads and pendingLogs with logs. As of mid-September 2026, Base targeted October 2026 for Sepolia and Mainnet, with exact activation times undecided. The Base Denim migration guide covers the changes, and Flashblocks pending vs finality explains the confirmation model.

Performance Considerations for Base

Request success rate. Track the share of calls that return results against throttles and timeouts during traffic spikes, not just uptime.

Regional routing. Map your users and servers to each provider's regions. Chainstack and QuickNode let you choose regions for dedicated nodes; dRPC routes to whichever operator answers.

Failover. dRPC fails over between operators automatically. With a single-operator provider, keep a second provider configured and switch endpoints on errors.

Rate-limit behaviour. Dwellir plans burst to between two and five times the sustained RPS. Infura's quota is daily, so once a day's credits are spent, requests are throttled until the reset.

Recommendations by Use Case

Prototypes and early-stage projects: Dwellir Free or dRPC Free. Dwellir gives 100,000 responses a day at 20 RPS; dRPC's 210M CU covers about 10.5M calls a month on public nodes.

Production dApps with moderate traffic: Dwellir Developer or Growth, or Chainstack Growth. Both bill one unit per recent-state call. Dwellir includes archive and trace at the same price; Chainstack adds SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

Trading bots and high-throughput backends: Dwellir Scale or dRPC. Both run 5,000 RPS self-serve. Dwellir Scale is $999 for 500M calls; dRPC is $6.00 per 1M with no commitment.

Regulated teams: Chainstack or QuickNode. Chainstack has SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 at $2.45 per 1M; QuickNode has SOC 1/2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 at $9.99-12.25 per 1M.

Enhanced APIs and MetaMask alignment: Alchemy or Infura. Alchemy's Notify, Token and NFT APIs and Gas Manager, or Infura's ConsenSys stack, at $10.83-13.60 per 1M calls.

Redundancy: a second provider. Most production Base teams run two providers. dRPC at $6.00 per 1M with no commitment is a common failover.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cheapest Base RPC provider?

On metered plans, Dwellir: $1.96 per million Base calls on the $49 Developer plan, where every method costs one credit. Chainstack is next at $2.45 and dRPC at $6.00. Infura, QuickNode and Alchemy cost $10.83 to $13.60 per million on the same request mix. For flat-rate traffic run near its RPS cap, GetBlock's single-chain Limitless full node works out lower, at $1.28 per million.

Do Base RPC providers support Flashblocks?

Dwellir, QuickNode and Alchemy publish Base Flashblocks endpoints for 200 ms preconfirmations. Base's planned Denim upgrade replaces the Flashblocks subscriptions (newFlashblocks, pendingLogs) with newHeads and logs on 200 ms canonical blocks; as of mid-September 2026 Base targeted October 2026 for activation.

Are there free Base RPC endpoints?

Yes. Dwellir's Free plan gives 100,000 responses a day at 20 RPS, Chainstack 3M request units a month, dRPC 210M compute units a month (about 10.5M calls), Alchemy 30M compute units (about 1.16M calls) and Infura 3M credits a day (about 30,800 calls). QuickNode offers a one-month trial with 10M credits.

How do compute units affect Base RPC pricing?

Compute-unit and credit providers weight each method differently, so the advertised per-unit rate is not the price per call. Alchemy charges 10 CU for eth_blockNumber, 26 for eth_call and 60 for eth_getLogs; on a standard Base request mix that averages 25.9 CU, or $13.60 per million calls at $0.525 per million CU. Infura averages about 97.5 credits per call on the same mix. Dwellir charges one credit for every method.

What does one million Base RPC requests actually cost?

Between $1.96 and $13.60 at entry-plan prices on a mix of 40% eth_call, 25% receipts, 15% eth_blockNumber, 10% eth_getLogs, 5% eth_getBalance and 5% eth_sendRawTransaction, checked on 2026-10-07. Dwellir is $1.96, Chainstack $2.45, dRPC $6.00, Infura $10.83, QuickNode $12.25 and Alchemy $13.60. See the effective price table.

Which Base RPC provider has the highest rate limit?

Dwellir's Scale plan allows 5,000 responses per second with bursts to 10,000 for $999 a month, and dRPC advertises 5,000 RPS on pay as you go. Chainstack runs 600 RPS on Business and unlimited on Enterprise ($990). QuickNode tops out at 500 RPS on Business. Alchemy includes 300 RPS on pay as you go and sells extra capacity up to about 1,150 calls per second for $640 a month more.

Do Base RPC providers offer archive nodes?

Yes. All six providers serve Base archive state. Dwellir's Base endpoint is an archive node on every plan at one credit per call. Chainstack bills reads 127 or more blocks behind the tip at 2 request units, and Infura charges archive calls the same credits as recent ones.

Related Resources

• Best Ethereum RPC Providers 2026 - Compare pricing and features across top Ethereum L1 infrastructure providers
• Best Polygon RPC Providers 2026 - Price per million, rate limits and archive access on Polygon PoS
• Top Optimism RPC Providers 2026 - Side-by-side comparison of another leading OP Stack Layer 2
• Which RPC Provider Has the Highest RPS? - Rate limits, burst rules and flat-rate RPS products compared
• RPC Providers Without Compute Units - Find providers with simple per-request pricing

Building on Base? Create a Dwellir account to test the free tier, compare plans, or contact the Dwellir team about a dedicated Base archive cluster.