Helius alternatives for Solana RPC and gRPC
Helius is the best-known Solana RPC. When its pricing, streaming or regions don't fit your workload, these are the six providers worth a look, matched to what you are building.
The alternatives at a glance
| Provider | Best for | Streaming | How you pay | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AllenHark | Trading bots, snipers, MEV | Yellowstone gRPC, $5/day or $99/mo; ShredStream from $10/day | Prepaid flat prices, paid on-chain in USDC, USDT or SOL | Pricing |
| QuickNode | Multi-chain dApps | Yellowstone gRPC, included from the Scale plan, a paid add-on on Build and Accelerate | Monthly plans metered in API credits; a one-month free trial | QuickNode docs, pricing |
| Triton One | gRPC-heavy infrastructure teams | Dragon's Mouth, from the team that maintains Yellowstone gRPC; shred streaming | Pay as you go by bandwidth and calls, from a prepaid deposit; dedicated nodes; no free tier listed | Triton docs, pricing |
| Chainstack | Enterprise, multi-chain | Yellowstone gRPC Geyser, a paid add-on from the Growth plan; mainnet only | Monthly plans metered in request units; a free Developer plan | Chainstack docs, pricing |
| Shyft | Indexed data and analytics apps | Region-specific gRPC network, in the Build, Grow and Accelerate plans | Flat monthly plans limited by requests per second; a free plan without gRPC | Shyft docs, pricing |
| ERPC | Bare-metal Solana RPC | Geyser gRPC, shared or on dedicated bare metal | Monthly or annual plans, priced in euros | ERPC gRPC plans |
When Helius is still the right answer
If you build a consumer dApp, a wallet or an NFT product, Helius's DAS API, webhooks and Wallet API are hard to replace, and its free plan is a quick way to ship a prototype. If that is your workload and the pricing works at your volume, you may only want a second provider for redundancy.
The switch usually starts when one of four things happens. Your volume makes credit-metered pricing hard to predict. You want a flat monthly price for a stream. You want the endpoint and the server your bot runs on from the same place. Or your edge depends on seeing transactions before they are in a block, which is a shreds problem, not an RPC one; Helius sells shreds as well, priced per IP.
For trading bots, snipers and MEV: AllenHark
AllenHark is not a general dApp platform. It is the infrastructure behind Solana trading: see the chain early, land transactions, and run your bot on servers near the validators. What you get instead of Helius:
- Yellowstone gRPC in Frankfurt or Amsterdam, $5 a day or $99 a month. Access is by IP allowlist.
- RPC: JSON-RPC and WebSocket for $49 a month, billed by the month, not by the call.
- ShredStream: shreds or reconstructed entries over gRPC or UDP, while the block is still being built, from $10 a day.
- AllenHark Relay and Slipstream: two ways to land transactions. Slipstream routes through any sender over QUIC, gRPC, WebSocket or HTTP, with 100 free tokens a day.
- Servers: bare metal in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Chicago, and cloud VPS in Frankfurt, so the bot runs next to its data.
The trade-off: no DAS API and no NFT tooling. If your bot is your product, that doesn't matter; if you are building a marketplace, it does.
For dApps and multi-chain teams: QuickNode and Chainstack
QuickNode is the most direct like-for-like replacement: self-serve plans, add-ons and more than 75 blockchains, so teams consolidating billing across ecosystems often land there. Its Yellowstone gRPC is included from the Scale plan up and is a paid add-on on Build and Accelerate (pricing).
Chainstack competes on enterprise terms and multi-chain coverage: more than 70 blockchains, an Enterprise plan, dedicated nodes from the Pro plan and a free Developer plan (pricing). Yellowstone gRPC is a paid add-on from the Growth plan, on mainnet only.
For streaming-heavy workloads: Triton One
Triton One maintains Yellowstone gRPC, the Geyser interface most providers, AllenHark included, expose, and sells it as Dragon's Mouth. If you want the maintainers' own service, Triton signs you up self-serve and bills pay as you go, by bandwidth and, for request-based services, by call, from a prepaid deposit; it also sells dedicated nodes and shred streaming. For what to check before you pick any gRPC provider, see the Solana gRPC guide.
For indexed data: Shyft
Shyft sells data APIs next to its RPC: SuperIndexer for GraphQL queries over Solana data, DeFi APIs, human-readable transaction APIs and parsed webhooks it calls callbacks, alongside a region-specific gRPC network. Its current plans are flat monthly prices limited by requests per second, with gRPC from the Build plan (pricing). If you use Helius for parsed data, compare those APIs first.
Bare-metal nodes: ERPC
ERPC sells Solana capacity without a large product surface around it: Geyser gRPC, shared or on dedicated bare metal, on monthly or annual plans priced in euros, with nodes in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney. It is a credible choice when the requirement is simply a node of your own.
How to decide
- Consumer dApp, wallet or NFT product: stay on Helius, or QuickNode if you are multi-chain.
- Trading bot, sniper, arbitrage or MEV: AllenHark for gRPC, ShredStream, landing and servers with published prices, or Triton.
- Analytics or indexed-data app: Shyft.
- Enterprise procurement: Chainstack's Enterprise plan, or Triton's dedicated nodes.
- Just a node of your own: ERPC, or dedicated nodes from Triton, Chainstack, Shyft or Helius itself.
How we compared
Every fact about another provider on this page comes from that provider's own documentation or pricing page, read on 28 October 2026 and linked where we use it; what we couldn't confirm there, we left out. We don't print other providers' prices, because they change often: follow the pricing link in each row for today's numbers. InstantNodes, which earlier versions of this page listed, is no longer included: on 28 October 2026 its website redirected to an unrelated domain, so we could not check its plans on its own site.
For a head-to-head that includes Helius itself, read the Solana RPC providers comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Why do teams look for Helius alternatives?
Usually for one of four reasons: credit-metered plans that are hard to predict at high volume, a need for a flat monthly price on streaming, wanting the endpoint and the server it feeds from the same vendor, or a second provider for redundancy. None of that makes Helius a bad product; different workloads need different things.
What is the best Helius alternative for trading bots and MEV?
Look at how you read the chain, how you land transactions and where your bot runs. AllenHark covers all three: Yellowstone gRPC from $5 a day, ShredStream from $10 a day, the AllenHark Relay and Slipstream for landing, and servers in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Chicago. Triton One is the other one to evaluate, especially if you want the maintainers of Yellowstone gRPC, pay-as-you-go billing or dedicated nodes.
What is the best Helius alternative for dApps and wallets?
QuickNode is the closest like-for-like replacement for a general dApp: more than 75 blockchains, self-serve plans and add-ons. Chainstack suits teams that want an Enterprise plan across many chains. If your app leans on indexed data, Shyft's data APIs, such as SuperIndexer for GraphQL queries and its DeFi APIs, may replace your own indexer.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Helius LaserStream?
LaserStream is Helius's gRPC streaming product, wire-compatible with Yellowstone gRPC. If you mainly need account and transaction streams, a flat Yellowstone gRPC subscription is easier to budget: AllenHark's is $5 a day or $99 a month. If you need data before it is in a block, that is a shreds feed, not gRPC: see AllenHark ShredStream from $10 a day.
Can I use multiple providers at once?
Yes, and trading teams usually do: one provider for general reads and developer tooling, another for streaming and transaction landing. A sender-agnostic relay such as Slipstream keeps the landing side independent of any one RPC provider.
Does switching RPC providers require code changes?
For standard JSON-RPC, no: you change the endpoint URL. Yellowstone gRPC clients also move between providers, since they share the protocol; check authentication, which differs (AllenHark uses an IP allowlist, QuickNode and Shyft use an x-token). APIs specific to Helius, such as its webhooks and Wallet API, don't move as they are; DAS is an open specification, so check whether the new provider serves it. Keep a Helius plan for what doesn't move and move the rest.
Running a trading workload?
Yellowstone gRPC in Frankfurt or Amsterdam from $5 a day, paid on-chain.