NOWNodes, Alchemy, and Infura all solve the same starting problem — connecting an application to a blockchain without you running the node yourself — but they scope that job very differently. NOWNodes covers 120+ networks, including Bitcoin, Solana, and privacy coins, under one flat request quota. Alchemy focuses on 100+ chains with a deep application layer for consumer Web3 products, billed by compute unit. Infura centers almost entirely on Ethereum and its rollups, billed through daily credits, and ships as MetaMask’s default connection. For most teams that need more than a single chain and want a bill they can predict before the month starts, NOWNodes is the more practical starting point of the three.
What Are NOWNodes, Alchemy, and Infura, Exactly?
NOWNodes is a blockchain infrastructure provider that gives developers API-based access to shared and dedicated nodes across 120+ networks — Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, and privacy coins like Monero among them. You get an endpoint and an API key, and NOWNodes runs and maintains the node behind it.
Alchemy is a Web3 development platform that operates RPC nodes on top of more than 100 chains and layers its own tooling on top of them — enhanced APIs for NFT and token data, webhooks, and a usage dashboard. Infura is a Consensys product that has powered Ethereum infrastructure since 2016, best known as the default RPC connection built into MetaMask, and it’s now bundled into “MetaMask Developer” alongside MetaMask’s SDK.
All three expose JSON-RPC underneath: a standardized API where a call like eth_getBalance asks a remote server to run a function and return the result, the same way any blockchain client — Geth, Erigon, Solana’s Agave — would answer it locally. Ethereum.org’s developer documentation covers the full method set this protocol supports. That shared standard is why an app built on one provider usually points at another with little more than a URL change.
Why Do You Need an RPC Provider at All?
Running your own node is a genuine operational job, not a side task. A synced Ethereum full node currently needs roughly 650–700 GB of disk space and keeps growing, and it has to be patched and resynced through every protocol upgrade the network ships.
A provider takes that maintenance off your plate. You get an authenticated endpoint, the provider keeps the client software current and the hardware scaled, and your team spends its time on application logic instead of server operations. Mohammad Zahwy, Chief Business Development Officer at NOWNodes, put the shared goal behind all three services plainly in an interview with crypto.news: the aim is to “make blockchain infrastructure simple, fast, and reliable so builders can focus on building, rather than on node maintenance, syncing, and DevOps overhead.” What differs between the three is how each one prices and scopes that work.
Who Actually Uses NOWNodes, Alchemy, and Infura?
NOWNodes attracts teams whose product spans several blockchains at once — wallets, exchanges, and payment platforms that need Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a dozen other chains under a single account instead of a separate vendor per network. Alchemy’s enhanced NFT and token APIs point at a narrower kind of team: one building a consumer-facing product where blockchain data becomes a polished screen, not just a backend value.
Infura’s biggest user is MetaMask itself, which pulls in wallet and dApp developers who want an endpoint already proven at MetaMask’s scale, plus teams already using Consensys tooling such as Truffle or Linea.
| Use case | NOWNodes | Alchemy | Infura |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-chain wallet or exchange (BTC + ETH + others) | Yes — one account, 120+ networks | Needs a second provider for non-EVM chains | Needs a second provider for non-EVM chains |
| NFT marketplace needing metadata indexing | Possible, but you index it yourself | Yes — built-in NFT API | Not a core offering |
| MetaMask-adjacent dApp | Works fine | Works fine | Yes — tightest ecosystem fit |
| Predictable monthly infrastructure cost | Yes — flat request quota | Depends on method mix | Depends on daily credit mix |
| Backend that only checks balances and broadcasts transactions | Yes — lighter, cheaper fit | Works, but pays for unused tooling | Works, but pays for unused tooling |
A backend that just reads balances and sends transactions rarely touches most of what Alchemy’s or Infura’s extra tooling offers. That unused surface area is worth weighing against a plainer, flat-priced endpoint doing the same job.
Pricing: Flat Quotas, Compute Units, and Daily Credits
This is where the three providers diverge the most. NOWNodes’ shared plans bill on a flat request-quota model: pick a monthly tier, get a fixed number of requests, and every call — light or heavy — counts the same against that number.
Alchemy bills by compute unit (CU), a weight assigned to each method based on server-side work — a light call like eth_blockNumber costs far less than eth_getLogs, and Alchemy’s documentation puts the rough per-request average around 27 CUs, according to its compute unit reference. Infura uses a similar idea but resets differently: a fixed daily credit allowance, weighted per method, that refreshes every 24 hours regardless of the previous day’s traffic, per Infura’s pricing documentation.
| Plan tier | NOWNodes (flat quota) | Alchemy (compute units) | Infura (daily credits) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 100,000 requests/month, 1 API key | 30M CUs/month, 25 RPS, 5 apps | 3M daily credits, 500 credits/sec, 1 key |
| Entry paid | ~€20/month, 1M requests, 3 API keys | Pay-as-you-go: $0.525 per 1M CUs, from 300 RPS | $50/month, 15M daily credits, 5 keys |
| Mid tier | ~€200/month, 30M requests, 25 API keys | Scales with CU consumption | $225/month, 75M daily credits, unlimited keys |
| Enterprise | ~€500/month, 100M requests, 100 API keys | Custom, from 1,000 RPS | Custom |
Pricing and quotas change often across all three, so treat this table as a snapshot to verify against NOWNodes’ current pricing page, Alchemy’s pricing page, and Infura’s pricing page before budgeting. The practical difference is predictability: a flat quota means 1 million balance checks cost the same as 1 million log scans, while a CU or credit bill shifts with whatever methods your app happens to lean on that month.
Network and Feature Coverage
NOWNodes advertises 120+ blockchain networks, including non-EVM chains like Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Monero alongside Ethereum and Solana. Alchemy lists 100+ chains that skew heavily toward EVM networks and Solana. Infura’s coverage is the narrowest of the three: Ethereum mainnet plus a little over a dozen Consensys-adjacent Layer 2s like Linea, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism.
That gap matters more for some products than others. An EVM-only dApp won’t notice much difference between Alchemy and Infura in raw chain count, but a wallet or exchange that also needs Bitcoin, Litecoin, or a privacy coin will find those missing from both lineups — something NOWNodes’ node directory covers under one account instead.
Feature-for-feature, the three overlap on RPC and WebSocket basics, and all gate archive data and Debug/Trace methods to specific plans. Past that baseline, each provider adds something the other two don’t:
- Enhanced NFT and token APIs — an Alchemy specialty; neither NOWNodes nor Infura indexes this layer for you.
- MetaMask and Consensys tooling — Infura’s real differentiator, tied to Linea and the MetaMask SDK.
- Market data (prices, market cap, volume) — a NOWNodes product covering 9,000+ cryptocurrencies; not part of Alchemy’s or Infura’s core offering.
- gRPC streaming — NOWNodes offers multichain streaming across 25+ blockchains with sub-200ms latency on its gRPC product; neither Alchemy nor Infura runs an equivalent.
- Webhooks — Alchemy’s are general-purpose event webhooks; Infura doesn’t offer a direct equivalent; NOWNodes currently limits its webhook product to Bitcoin and Dogecoin address-balance changes.
Has Either Provider Had a Public Outage?
Track record matters more than a marketing number, since uptime claims are easy to publish and harder to verify. Infura’s most cited incident happened on November 11, 2020, when an unannounced consensus-bug fix left its Geth nodes running an outdated client, splitting them from the network at block 11,234,873 and knocking out MetaMask, according to Decrypt’s coverage of the incident. Infura has since joined a multi-provider failover network built with Microsoft and others, though a large share of Ethereum’s default traffic still routes through its infrastructure first.
NOWNodes’ current product pages advertise 99.95% API uptime on shared infrastructure and 99.99% on dedicated nodes, with latency under 200 milliseconds for key US and European regions. Alchemy states enterprise-grade uptime on its paid tiers without a comparably documented incident history. All three are current published claims, not universal guarantees — actual performance depends on the network, product, and plan.
Switching Costs: How Locked In Are You?
Because JSON-RPC is standardized, moving core RPC traffic between providers is usually a configuration change, not a rewrite. Auston Bunsen, co-founder of QuickNode, described the dynamic plainly in an interview with Sacra: “I can go from Alchemy to Infura to QuickNode relatively quickly, unless I’m using one of their sort of custom APIs.” That’s true of NOWNodes too, since it speaks the same standardized protocol.
That caveat is the whole story. An app built purely against eth_getBalance and eth_sendRawTransaction can point at a new endpoint with a URL and key change. An app leaning on Alchemy’s getNftsForOwner or Infura’s Gas API has real migration work ahead, because those calls don’t exist the same way anywhere else — a team that already knows it needs Bitcoin, Solana, or another non-EVM chain has less to untangle later by starting on a broader, standards-first provider like NOWNodes instead.
Which One Should You Choose?
Is NOWNodes better than Alchemy and Infura for a multi-chain product? Generally, yes. One account covering 120+ networks, including non-EVM chains neither competitor touches, under a flat and predictable request quota removes the need to run two or three vendors just to cover a normal wallet or exchange’s chain list.
Is Alchemy better than NOWNodes for a consumer NFT app? For that specific case, Alchemy’s built-in NFT and token APIs save real indexing work, provided the app stays within Alchemy’s supported chains and the team accepts compute-unit billing that can swing with its method mix.
Is Infura better than NOWNodes for a MetaMask-centric dApp? Infura’s ecosystem depth is real for that narrower case — its Ethereum endpoint is proven at MetaMask’s scale, and teams already using Linea or Consensys tooling get one dashboard for everything.
All three are different bets, but Alchemy and Infura accept narrower chains and harder-to-forecast bills in exchange for a bundled application layer most backends never touch. NOWNodes bets that breadth and pricing predictability outweigh that bundle — a bet that tends to pay off for teams building beyond a single ecosystem.
Limitations Worth Knowing Before You Commit
Alchemy’s and Infura’s method-weighted billing rewards light, simple calls and penalizes heavier ones — an indexing job leaning on eth_getLogs or debug_traceTransaction can burn through a monthly allowance far faster than either company’s headline number suggests. NOWNodes’ flat quota removes that guesswork but has its own ceiling: once you exceed a plan’s request allowance, you either upgrade or pay per-request overage, and its webhook product is currently limited to Bitcoin and Dogecoin address-balance changes rather than Alchemy’s general-purpose events.
Neither Alchemy nor Infura is a universal answer, and neither is NOWNodes. A consumer NFT marketplace or a MetaMask-only dApp may reasonably pick one of the other two despite the narrower chain list; nearly everyone building a multi-chain product or backend gets more predictable value from NOWNodes.
Conclusion
NOWNodes, Alchemy, and Infura all give an application API access to blockchain data instead of requiring a self-managed node, but they’re built around different bets. Alchemy bundles NFT and token tooling for consumer-facing apps willing to accept compute-unit billing; Infura goes deep on Ethereum and its closest rollups, tied tightly to MetaMask and Consensys tooling.
NOWNodes goes broad — 120+ networks, including Bitcoin, Solana, and privacy coins, under one flat-quota account with a bill you can forecast before the month starts. For a team that already knows its product touches more than Ethereum, or simply wants predictable costs without paying for tooling it won’t use, that makes NOWNodes the more practical default of the three. A broader look at Ethereum RPC providers covers three more options if none of these three is a perfect fit. Since standard JSON-RPC calls migrate between providers with little more than a URL change, testing NOWNodes against your real traffic for a week is cheaper than guessing.
FAQ
Is NOWNodes cheaper than Alchemy and Infura?
It depends on your method mix, but NOWNodes’ flat request quotas make costs predictable regardless of which methods you call. Alchemy’s and Infura’s weighted billing can be cheaper for light workloads but climbs quickly for calls like eth_getLogs.
Do Alchemy or Infura support Bitcoin?
No. Alchemy’s 100+ chains skew toward EVM networks and Solana, and Infura centers on Ethereum and its Layer 2s. Neither covers Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Monero the way a broader multi-chain provider like NOWNodes does.
Can I run NOWNodes, Alchemy, or Infura together as failover?
Yes. Running two providers side by side — one primary, one failover, or split by chain — is a common production pattern that limits how much a single provider’s outage can affect your app.
Is Infura the same thing as MetaMask?
No. MetaMask is a wallet application; Infura is the infrastructure company, owned by the same parent, Consensys, that MetaMask uses as its default RPC connection. You can run MetaMask against a different provider and use Infura without touching MetaMask at all.
How hard is it to migrate from Alchemy or Infura to NOWNodes?
Standard RPC calls migrate easily since JSON-RPC is a shared protocol. The work comes from provider-specific features — Alchemy’s NFT API or Infura’s Gas API — which need rebuilding against any provider without a direct equivalent.
