# RPC endpoint

Also written RPC node, RPC provider, RPC URL.

*https://cryptomarkets.tools/glossary/rpc-endpoint · next to On-chain Analytics Platforms*

**Definition:** The URL at which a blockchain node answers remote procedure calls — on Ethereum and most chains modelled on it, JSON-RPC requests such as a balance, a block, a receipt or a contract call. It returns raw chain state, one question at a time, as the node that serves it holds that state. It is plumbing: it answers about accounts and blocks, not about markets.

Three pages in this catalogue use the phrase to say what is *not* in it: node providers are out
of scope, because an RPC endpoint is plumbing. This page is the reason spelled out, and the list of
things a reader expects from one that it will not do.

## How it works

A node is a computer running a chain's client software and holding a copy of the chain. The
endpoint is the address at which it takes questions. On Ethereum those questions are JSON-RPC:
ethereum.org describes JSON-RPC as "a stateless, light-weight remote procedure call (RPC)
protocol", and says every Ethereum client implements the same specification "so there is a uniform
set of methods that applications can rely on regardless of the specific node or client
implementation." The methods are narrow by design — the balance of one address, one block, one
transaction receipt, the logs matching a filter, the result of calling a contract function.

Three things decide what a given endpoint can answer, and none of them is visible in the URL.

**Which state the node kept.** A full Ethereum node, per ethereum.org, "only caches the past few
states, e.g., the state associated with the last 128 blocks." An archive node keeps "every
historical state created after each block", at a cost of roughly 3 to 12 TB of disk depending on
the client. Asking a full node for an address's balance a year ago fails, or forces a re-execution
of past transactions, however polished the provider's dashboard.

**Which block it answers from.** Ethereum requests take a block parameter — `latest`, `safe`,
`finalized` or a number. Solana requests take a commitment level, `processed`, `confirmed` or
`finalized`, and Solana's documentation says the default "is typically `finalized`". Two calls to
two endpoints a second apart can disagree because they read different points in the chain, and
neither is wrong.

**Who runs it, and on what terms.** Solana publishes free endpoints for mainnet, devnet and testnet
with a cap of 100 requests per 10 seconds per IP, 40 for any single method, and states that they
"are not intended for production applications." Hosted providers meter by method weight rather
than by call: Alchemy's published table prices `eth_blockNumber` at 10 compute units and
`eth_getLogs` at 60, so the methods that do data work drain a quota fastest.

## Why it matters here

**It is not a data product, and the catalogue does not list it as one.** The
[on-chain analytics](https://cryptomarkets.tools/categories/onchain-analytics) page and the
[market data APIs](https://cryptomarkets.tools/categories/market-data-apis) page both exclude node providers by name. An
endpoint answers about accounts, blocks and transactions. It has no method for a
token's holder list or a protocol's quarterly revenue, and a pool's trades come back as raw logs,
because those questions span every transaction touching a contract and need each one decoded. The [Solana collection](https://cryptomarkets.tools/collections/solana)
makes the same point for that chain; [what an Ethereum RPC endpoint cannot
answer](https://cryptomarkets.tools/guides/what-an-ethereum-rpc-cannot-answer) walks through the Ethereum gaps method by
method, including the staking data that sits behind a second client altogether.

**Indexed products sit on top of endpoints, and some say so.** [growthepie](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/growthepie)
states that it indexes most of its numbers itself via RPCs. That is what "multi-chain" costs a
vendor: not one endpoint with a chain parameter, but a pipeline per chain.
[Dune](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/dune), [Allium](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/allium) and [Bitquery](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bitquery) sell the result of
that work — decoded tables — and the price of any of them is mostly the price of not writing the
loop yourself.

**A research tool that says "RPC" wants you to bring one.** [NautilusTrader](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/nautilus-trader)
ships direct WebSocket RPC clients for Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum and BSC. The node, its
quota and its archive depth are yours to provide, and a free endpoint that only keeps recent state
will quietly end a backfill at the edge of what it holds.

**"RPC" on an exchange card is a different word.** JSON-RPC is only a message format, and the
specification is explicit that it is "transport agnostic". [Paradigm](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/paradigm) runs its
API as REST plus JSON-RPC over WebSocket; [CoinAPI](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinapi) lists JSON-RPC among six
protocols; [Kaiko](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/kaiko) streams over gRPC. None of those is a blockchain node. A card
saying "JSON-RPC" describes how requests are framed, and says nothing about on-chain data. Read
the noun after "RPC" before assuming which one a vendor means.

**Rate limits are the second trap.** A node provider's quota is counted in method-weighted units,
an exchange's in request weight or orders per second, and the two numbers are not comparable. The
[rate limit](https://cryptomarkets.tools/glossary/rate-limit) entry covers the exchange side.

## Where you will meet this

- [Dune](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/dune.md)
- [Allium](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/allium.md)
- [Bitquery](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bitquery.md)
- [growthepie](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/growthepie.md)
- [NautilusTrader](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/nautilus-trader.md)

## Sources

1. [JSON-RPC API](https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/apis/json-rpc/) — ethereum.org, 2026-06-28
2. [Archive nodes](https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/archive-nodes/) — ethereum.org, 2026-04-03
3. [JSON-RPC 2.0 Specification](https://www.jsonrpc.org/specification) — JSON-RPC Working Group, 2013-01-04. Version 2.0 is still the latest the working group has published.
4. [Solana clusters and public RPC endpoints](https://solana.com/docs/references/clusters) — Solana Foundation, read 2026-09-27
5. [Solana RPC methods — commitment levels](https://solana.com/docs/rpc) — Solana Foundation, read 2026-09-27
6. [Compute unit costs](https://www.alchemy.com/docs/reference/compute-unit-costs) — Alchemy, read 2026-09-27

*Last updated 2026-09-27. A reference page, corrected in place — not a dated post.*