The goal of our analysis is to determine the best public endpoint on Optimism mainnet for each continent as well as the best overall, globally. According to our infrastructure directory for Optimism, there are at least 17 public endpoints for the mainnet on January 19, 2024 (list).
We are using our own (rpc) Performance Inspector which is a public web application. RPC providers change/expand their infrastructure and locations all the time which is why it might be useful for you to repeat test steps at your convenience here.
Please note that this performance comparison is not benchmarking. It would not make sense to use flood, chainbench (by Chainstack), k6 or another stress test / benchmarking tool for at least these reasons:
- The endpoints are being used by the public and suffocating them with requests might degrade the experience for other unsuspecting users;
- In most cases, the providers limit inbound traffic to public endpoints based on IP address and we would probably hit http429 errors very quickly.
Our Methodology
- We believe in WAGMI to mean the entire world which is why we send simultaneous RPC requests from 27 locations on 6 continents. Our “probes” are in AWS and not “in” your laptop browser.
- For this analysis we configured the inspector to use the eth_blockNumber method and you can choose to use eth_getBalance instead.
- Another setting for our runs was the limit to “not more than 1 request per region per second” whereas the alternative is to let each probe run as fast as it gets the previous response.
- You can create an account with other providers like Infura, Alchemy, QuickNode and use their private endpoints to perform a similar analysis. We omitted providers without public endpoints but you can include them. We don’t record endpoints and our results contain just the domain names of the URLs which were included in the runs.
- Since there were 17 providers and our inspector form accepts two at a time, we did 9 runs and combined their results for complete rankings. Although each run is for 2 providers, their computations are independent as each utilizes a separate instance of our RPC probe. See this Google Sheet or view “raw” individual results on the bottom of the page.
- Each pair of providers was run for 30 seconds and should have been measured for 30 requests from each region for a total of 810 measures. Requests are dispatched sequentially, one at a time. Latency duration is the sum of timings of milliseconds from the moment the request is sent until a success response gets back to us. Btw, we do a warmup request in each region which is omitted from the results.
- Additional info is in the FAQ on the bottom of the RPC Performance Inspector control form.
Eliminated Endpoints
- POKT Network endpoint errored out twice in a row from Frankfurt and Singapore.
- OnFinality is the only provider to have triggered http429 and did so from each of the 27 regions.
- DRPC had almost 4% of errors like
“Error (500) on request no.1: {"error":{"message":"Unable to perform request","code":19}}”. You can read the error responses in the results pages (we capture up to 4 errors from each location for debugging purposes).
The Top 14 Public Endpoints on Optimism Mainnet
Overall / Global Ranking
(27 AWS regions on January 19, 2024)
| No | Provider | Avg (ms) | Failed | 429 | Success | Duration (ms) |
| 1 | Nodies | 73.19 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 59,283 |
| 2 | thirdweb | 78.76 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 63,795 |
| 3 | Tenderly | 89.54 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 72,524 |
| 4 | Ankr | 100.56 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 81,452 |
| 5 | BlockPI Network | 113.75 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 92,140 |
| 6 | Blast API | 135.13 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 109,457 |
| 7 | Gateway.fm | 136.06 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 110,212 |
| 8 | LlamaNodes | 143.95 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 116,598 |
| 9 | 1RPC | 156.62 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 126,859 |
| 10 | Allnodes | 157.29 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 127,406 |
| 11 | Optimism Foundation | 189.49 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 153,487 |
| 12 | BlockEden.xyz | 354.51 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 287,150 |
| 13 | Etherspot | 413.58 | 0 | 0 | 810 | 334,998 |
| 14 | OMNIA Protocol | 533.02 | 1 | 0 | 809 | 431,216 |
Slow or Fast?
Why is some endpoint slower or faster than another? In short, we don’t know from the “outside” because we don’t have access to the host information such as the server/cluster cores, memory, networking etc. In our experience these are the most important factors:
- the physical distance between the RPC server and the consumer;
- quantity of users/requests that are being served at the moment;
- size of the hardware.
In other words, no amount of CPU cores or memory can overcome the physics of networking transmission and the maximum theoretical speed of signals. Moreover a small server sitting “idle” could deliver responses more quickly than a huge cluster at a popular infra provider during a huge NFT mint.
Since distance is such a hard factor, it is very important that providers run nodes near population centers on each or most continents so that they can serve both “types” RPC consumers:
- globally distributed end-users like wallets;
- analytics apps like Dune etc. which generally ingest data into their servers located in one or a few data centers.
Our recommendation is to interpret the results in the following way: if you were to add your usage to these public endpoints and send requests similar to requests that we sent from nearby locations, then you too could expect to experience a similar performance. With a caveat that external factors might have changes since we typed this sentence and providers could have made changes to their infrastructure or other users could have changed their consumption patterns. So make sure to check yourself again.
As far as the efforts to cover the whole globe, we have also split results for 6 continents.
Best Optimism Mainnet Public Endpoints for North America
(5 AWS regions on January 19, 2024)
| No | Provider | Avg (ms) | Failed | 429 | Success | Duration (ms) |
| 1 | Tenderly | 20.20 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 3,030 |
| 2 | LlamaNodes | 40.53 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 6,080 |
| 3 | thirdweb | 48.91 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 7,337 |
| 4 | Nodies | 57.22 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 8,583 |
| 5 | BlockPI Network | 63.69 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 9,554 |
| 6 | Blast API | 65.81 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 9,872 |
| 7 | Allnodes | 88.53 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 13,279 |
| 8 | Ankr | 97.55 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 14,632 |
| 9 | 1RPC | 103.33 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 15,500 |
| 10 | Gateway.fm | 130.45 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 19,567 |
| 11 | Optimism Foundation | 151.27 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 22,691 |
| 12 | OMNIA Protocol | 152.27 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 22,841 |
| 13 | BlockEden.xyz | 238.89 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 35,834 |
| 14 | Etherspot | 427.49 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 64,123 |
Best Optimism Mainnet Public Endpoints for South America
(1 AWS region on January 19, 2024)
| No | Provider | Avg (ms) | Failed | 429 | Success | Duration (ms) |
| 1 | thirdweb | 96.50 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 2,895 |
| 2 | Ankr | 113.67 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 3,410 |
| 3 | Tenderly | 121.53 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 3,646 |
| 4 | Nodies | 129.73 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 3,892 |
| 5 | LlamaNodes | 137.30 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 4,119 |
| 6 | Allnodes | 143.20 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 4,296 |
| 7 | Blast API | 144.13 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 4,324 |
| 8 | BlockPI Network | 201.00 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 6,030 |
| 9 | Gateway.fm | 201.20 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 6,036 |
| 10 | 1RPC | 227.37 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 6,821 |
| 11 | OMNIA Protocol | 243.87 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 7,316 |
| 12 | Optimism Foundation | 251.27 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 7,538 |
| 13 | BlockEden.xyz | 412.17 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 12,365 |
| 14 | Etherspot | 604.53 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 18,136 |
Best Optimism Mainnet Public Endpoints for Europe
(8 AWS regions on January 19, 2024)
| No | Provider | Avg (ms) | Failed | 429 | Success | Duration (ms) |
| 1 | Tenderly | 21.18 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 5,082 |
| 2 | Gateway.fm | 28.24 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 6,778 |
| 3 | Nodies | 40.98 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 9,834 |
| 4 | Optimism Foundation | 42.68 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 10,244 |
| 5 | thirdweb | 52.53 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 12,607 |
| 6 | Allnodes | 55.67 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 13,360 |
| 7 | BlockPI Network | 74.32 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 17,837 |
| 8 | Blast API | 75.05 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 18,013 |
| 9 | Ankr | 89.86 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 21,566 |
| 10 | LlamaNodes | 112.77 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 27,065 |
| 11 | 1RPC | 141.66 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 33,998 |
| 12 | Etherspot | 155.23 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 37,255 |
| 13 | BlockEden.xyz | 354.38 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 85,050 |
| 14 | OMNIA Protocol | 920.92 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 221,020 |
Best Optimism Mainnet Public Endpoints for the Middle East and Africa
(3 AWS regions on January 19, 2024)
| No | Provider | Avg (ms) | Failed | 429 | Success | Duration (ms) |
| 1 | Gateway.fm | 126.77 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 11,409 |
| 2 | thirdweb | 129.90 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 11,691 |
| 3 | Nodies | 143.44 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 12,910 |
| 4 | Tenderly | 147.41 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 13,267 |
| 5 | Optimism Foundation | 162.78 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 14,650 |
| 6 | Ankr | 168.80 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 15,192 |
| 7 | Blast API | 174.76 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 15,728 |
| 8 | Allnodes | 175.23 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 15,771 |
| 9 | BlockPI Network | 177.48 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 15,973 |
| 10 | LlamaNodes | 215.51 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 19,396 |
| 11 | Etherspot | 265.26 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 23,873 |
| 12 | 1RPC | 310.03 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 27,903 |
| 13 | BlockEden.xyz | 457.06 | 0 | 0 | 90 | 41,135 |
| 14 | OMNIA Protocol | 1087.47 | 1 | 0 | 89 | 96,785 |
Best Optimism Mainnet Public Endpoints for Asia
(8 AWS regions on January 19, 2024)
| No | Provider | Avg (ms) | Failed | 429 | Success | Duration (ms) |
| 1 | Nodies | 72.33 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 17,360 |
| 2 | Ankr | 89.95 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 21,587 |
| 3 | thirdweb | 96.34 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 23,122 |
| 4 | BlockPI Network | 128.39 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 30,813 |
| 5 | 1RPC | 132.19 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 31,726 |
| 6 | Tenderly | 154.53 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 37,088 |
| 7 | LlamaNodes | 198.45 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 47,628 |
| 8 | Gateway.fm | 201.06 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 48,254 |
| 9 | Blast API | 201.90 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 48,455 |
| 10 | Allnodes | 263.68 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 63,284 |
| 11 | OMNIA Protocol | 273.35 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 65,605 |
| 12 | Optimism Foundation | 327.80 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 78,673 |
| 13 | BlockEden.xyz | 377.95 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 90,707 |
| 14 | Etherspot | 680.87 | 0 | 0 | 240 | 163,408 |
Best Optimism Mainnet Public Endpoints for Australia
(2 AWS regions on January 19, 2024)
| No | Provider | Avg (ms) | Failed | 429 | Success | Duration (ms) |
| 1 | Ankr | 84.42 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 5,065 |
| 2 | thirdweb | 102.38 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 6,143 |
| 3 | Nodies | 111.73 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 6,704 |
| 4 | Tenderly | 173.52 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 10,411 |
| 5 | 1RPC | 181.85 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 10,911 |
| 6 | BlockPI Network | 198.88 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 11,933 |
| 7 | LlamaNodes | 205.17 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 12,310 |
| 8 | Blast API | 217.75 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 13,065 |
| 9 | Allnodes | 290.27 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 17,416 |
| 10 | OMNIA Protocol | 294.15 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 17,649 |
| 11 | Gateway.fm | 302.8 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 18,168 |
| 12 | Optimism Foundation | 328.18 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 19,691 |
| 13 | BlockEden.xyz | 367.65 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 22,059 |
| 14 | Etherspot | 470.05 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 28,203 |
Overall Winner on January 19, 2024
Congratulations Nodies as the best public endpoint on Optimism mainnet (all endpoints).
Big shoutouts to continental leaders: Tenderly, thirdweb, Tenderly, Gateway.fm, Nodies, and Ankr.
Complete data for specific locations are in this sheet so additional kudos go out to:
- LlamaNodes for their win in Ohio (note, they run directly from AWS Ohio);
- 1RPC for their results from Hyderabad.
Yes, we realize that the population in South America is ten times greater than Australia yet we measure from both Sydney and Melbourne as opposed to Sao Paulo alone. Our goals are to improve by expanding locations in South America and adding continental multipliers proportional to their populations.
Indeed, it might appear that providers which also use AWS might have a significant advantage but we don’t think it had much impact. The IP data shows the following clouds & CDNs:
- CLOUDFLARENET: Nodies, thirdweb, Ankr, Block PI Network, Blast API, Allnodes, BlockEden.xyz, Etherspot, OMNIA Protocol;
- GOOGLE-CLOUD-PLATFORM: Tenderly and Optimism Foundation;
- Cloudsigma Ag: Gateway.fm;
- MICROSOFT-CORP-MSN-AS-BLOCK: 1RPC;
- and only LlamaNodes is directly in AMAZON-02 with best result as No2 in North America; looks like they run from Ohio only, whereas we measure from 5 locations for that continent!
Raw Results
- 1RPC + Allnodes https://www.comparenodes.com/global-node-comparison/12777db2-cd7e-4fa1-b878-3c6298717ee3/
- Ankr + Blast API https://www.comparenodes.com/global-node-comparison/e5d5dcf0-f9b0-45a3-85e5-cce82a1cf1ec/
- BlockEden.xyz + BlockPI https://www.comparenodes.com/global-node-comparison/494205ea-c897-47e9-85c9-672db9f6816a/
- Etherspot https://www.comparenodes.com/global-node-comparison/39b7a503-d8eb-4317-a0b9-5d5204648ee8/
- Gateway.fm + LlamaNodes https://www.comparenodes.com/global-node-comparison/04569c0e-361f-4e5a-82c2-569d5d8ff074/
- Nodies + OMNIA Protocol https://www.comparenodes.com/global-node-comparison/d0e5079c-f85b-4c50-ab06-8e268fd00483/
- The Optimism Foundation https://www.comparenodes.com/global-node-comparison/cf5b7352-a3d6-4f33-9dc1-0d441356b848/
- thirdweb + Tenderly https://www.comparenodes.com/global-node-comparison/b4147f6d-828e-41c7-861b-9b521bbcf40f/
