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Alchemy

Alchemy is a multi-chain provider with a Solana RPC offering billed in compute units (CU). The free tier is 30M CU a month at 25 requests/second; beyond that it is pay-as-you-go at $0.45 per million CU.

What is the Alchemy Solana RPC URL?

https://solana-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/<API_KEY>

Devnet:

https://solana-devnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/<API_KEY>

The key is the last path segment. Note the solana- host prefix — an Alchemy app created for a different chain will not answer Solana JSON-RPC.

How do I get an Alchemy Solana API key?

  1. Sign up at alchemy.com.
  2. Create a new app and select Solana as the chain and Mainnet as the network.
  3. Copy the HTTPS endpoint from the app's dashboard — the key is embedded in it.

One key can be scoped to several networks, so confirm Solana Mainnet is enabled on the app you are copying from.

Is there a free Alchemy tier?

Yes.

Plan Price Included Throughput
Free $0 30M CU/month 25 req/s
Pay as You Go $0.45/1M CU (first 300M), then $0.40/1M CU Usage-based From 300 req/s
Enterprise Custom Custom From 1,000 req/s

Verified 2026-09-05 against alchemy.com/pricing.

30M CU is about 3M standard reads at 10 CU each, or 750k getBlock calls at 40 CU. That is a genuinely usable development and CI allowance — the largest free tier of the providers listed here.

Solana compute units per method

Method CU
getAccountInfo, getBalance 10
getSlot, sendTransaction, getProgramAccounts 20
getBlock, getTransaction, getSignaturesForAddress 40

At $0.45/M CU that is $4.50 per million standard reads and $18.00 per million history reads. Verified 2026-09-05 against Alchemy's compute unit costs reference. The provider pricing reference compares them against the other providers.

Configure Alchemy in RPC Plane

[[providers]]
name = "alchemy"
url  = "https://solana-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/${ALCHEMY_API_KEY}"

export ALCHEMY_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
rpc-plane run

Staying inside the free tier's rate limit

The free plan's 25 req/s is well under what a busy service will offer it. Cap it with max_rps so RPC Plane sheds to another provider before Alchemy starts returning 429s:

[[providers]]
name    = "alchemy"
url     = "https://solana-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/${ALCHEMY_API_KEY}"
max_rps = 25   # Free plan

What RPC Plane does not proxy

RPC Plane speaks HTTP JSON-RPC only. Alchemy's gRPC and WebSocket subscription products are not proxied — point those clients at Alchemy directly and use RPC Plane for the request/response path.

When to use Alchemy

  • Development and CI. The 30M CU free tier covers most non-production usage outright.
  • As a failover leg. Pair it behind Helius or QuickNode with failover_ordered so it only takes traffic when a primary is unavailable. See routing strategies.
  • Mind the 4× history premium. getBlock and getTransaction cost 40 CU against 10 for a standard read. If your workload is history-heavy, compare against QuickNode, which charges no history premium.