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 seven providers worth a look, matched to what you are building.
The alternatives at a glance
| Provider | Best for | Streaming | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| AllenHark | Trading bots, snipers, MEV | Yellowstone gRPC, $5/day or $99/mo; ShredStream from $10/day | Pricing |
| QuickNode | Multi-chain dApps | Yellowstone gRPC, included from the Scale plan, an add-on below it | QuickNode docs |
| Triton One | gRPC-heavy infrastructure teams | Dragon's Mouth, from the team that maintains Yellowstone gRPC | Triton docs |
| Chainstack | Enterprise, multi-chain | Yellowstone gRPC Geyser add-on | Chainstack docs |
| Shyft | Indexed data and analytics apps | Multi-region Yellowstone gRPC network | Shyft docs |
| InstantNodes | Plan-based Solana RPC | gRPC Geyser as an add-on or in the top plan | InstantNodes wiki |
| ERPC | Bare-metal Solana RPC | Geyser gRPC, shared and dedicated | ERPC site |
When Helius is still the right answer
If you build a consumer dApp, a wallet or an NFT product, Helius's DAS API, Enhanced Transactions and webhooks 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. Your servers are in Europe and you want the endpoint next to them. Or your edge depends on seeing transactions before they are in a block, which is a shreds problem, not an RPC one.
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, an add-on marketplace and many chains, so teams consolidating billing across ecosystems often land there. Its Yellowstone gRPC is included from the Scale plan up.
Chainstack competes on enterprise terms and multi-chain coverage, with Yellowstone gRPC as a paid add-on.
For streaming-heavy workloads: Triton One
Triton One maintains Yellowstone gRPC, the Geyser interface most providers, AllenHark included, expose. If you want the maintainers' own service with a contract behind it, Triton is the choice. For what to check before you pick any gRPC provider, see the Solana gRPC guide.
For indexed data: Shyft
Shyft's pitch is "don't run an indexer": indexed token, NFT and DeFi data behind REST APIs, alongside a multi-region gRPC network. Teams replacing Helius DAS and their own indexing often start there.
Plan-based and bare-metal nodes: InstantNodes and ERPC
Both sell Solana capacity without a large product surface around it. InstantNodes prices by plan, with gRPC as an add-on; ERPC runs bare-metal RPC and Geyser gRPC. Both are credible 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 with a contract.
- Analytics or indexed-data app: Shyft.
- Enterprise procurement: Chainstack or Triton.
- Just a node of your own: InstantNodes or ERPC.
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 pricing that is hard to predict at high volume, a need for a flat monthly streaming subscription, servers in Europe that want an endpoint in Frankfurt or Amsterdam, or a strategy that needs shreds rather than RPC. 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 a contract with the maintainers of Yellowstone.
What is the best Helius alternative for dApps and wallets?
QuickNode is the closest like-for-like replacement for a general dApp: many chains, self-serve plans and add-ons. Chainstack suits teams that need enterprise contracts. If your app leans on indexed data such as token holders or NFT metadata, Shyft's indexed APIs can replace your own indexer.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Helius LaserStream?
LaserStream is Helius's gRPC streaming product. 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, many providers use an x-token). Helius-only APIs such as DAS, Enhanced Transactions and webhooks don't move; keep a Helius plan for those and move the rest.
Running a trading workload?
Yellowstone gRPC in Frankfurt or Amsterdam from $5 a day, paid on-chain.