Ankr is a blockchain infrastructure company that runs RPC nodes across dozens of networks and sells access to them through a credit-based API, so developers can read chain data and send transactions without hosting their own servers. It’s one of several providers solving the same problem — NOWNodes, Chainstack, and QuickNode among them — and the right pick depends less on brand recognition than on how your traffic actually looks. This guide walks through what Ankr does, why teams reach for a provider like it, and where its credit-based model works well and where it doesn’t.
What Is Ankr, Exactly?
Ankr is a Web3 infrastructure provider founded in 2017 that operates a distributed network of RPC nodes spanning more than 30 regions worldwide. A remote procedure call (RPC) is a way of asking a server to run a function and hand back the result, and it’s the mechanism every blockchain client — Geth, Erigon, Solana’s Agave — uses to expose its data, per ethereum.org’s JSON-RPC documentation.
What sets Ankr apart structurally is its positioning as a decentralized physical infrastructure network, or DePIN — rather than running nodes purely on centralized cloud servers, part of its capacity comes from independent node operators. On top of raw RPC access, Ankr layers an Advanced API with pre-indexed methods and SDKs for JavaScript, Python, and React, aimed at teams that don’t want to build their own indexing layer from scratch.
Chandler Song, Ankr’s co-founder and CEO, frames the company’s purpose plainly: “Ankr’s job is to empower the developers who are building these new use cases with every tool and blockchain connection they need to create them,” he told TechBullion. That framing — infrastructure as an enabler rather than the product itself — is the same logic behind every RPC provider on the market, Ankr included.
Ankr also runs ANKR, a utility token used across its staking and node-operator ecosystem, which puts it in a different category from providers that sell infrastructure access purely as a SaaS product. That token layer isn’t required to use the RPC API — a credit card and an API key are enough to get started — but it does mean part of Ankr’s roadmap is shaped by tokenomics decisions that a purely centralized competitor doesn’t have to weigh.
Why Do Developers Need a Provider Like Ankr?
Running your own node is a genuine operational commitment, not a weekend project. A synced Ethereum full node currently needs roughly 650–700 GB of disk and grows by several gigabytes a week, and it has to be patched through every protocol upgrade the network ships.
A provider absorbs that work. You get an authenticated endpoint, the provider keeps the client software current and the hardware scaled, and your team writes application logic instead of maintaining servers — the same trade-off covered in more depth in what RPC nodes and endpoints actually do. Here’s why that distinction matters in practice: a trading bot doesn’t need to know how a validator handles state pruning. It needs a balance check to come back correctly, on every request, without a queue behind it.
Not every node behind a provider does the same job, either. A full node validates and relays current state, an archive node keeps the complete history since genesis, and a validator stakes collateral to help produce blocks — distinctions covered in more detail in the different types of blockchain nodes. Ankr’s RPC layer sits on top of that infrastructure, regardless of which node type is answering a given call.
Who Actually Uses Ankr?
Ankr’s mix of free tiers and pay-as-you-go credits attracts a fairly wide range of builders, from hobby projects to production trading systems.
- Wallets and dApps — reading balances and contract state, then broadcasting signed transactions through a standard JSON-RPC endpoint.
- DeFi protocols and dashboards — querying contract state across the 80-plus chains Ankr’s premium tier covers, useful for products that track positions on more than one network.
- Node operators and stakers — Ankr’s own liquid-staking and App Chain tooling sits alongside its RPC business, which pulls in teams already using its staking products.
- Cost-sensitive prototypes — the Freemium tier’s 200 million monthly API credits make it a workable free option for testing before committing to a paid plan.
A production exchange handling real deposit volume is a different case. It needs predictable throughput more than a generous free allowance, and that’s where Ankr’s credit system starts to matter more than its chain count.
How Does Ankr’s Credit-Based Pricing Work?
Ankr doesn’t bill by the flat request. It bills by API credit, a weight assigned to each RPC method based on the network and call type — a model similar in spirit to Alchemy’s compute units, though the specific weights differ.
A standard EVM call such as eth_getBalance costs 200 credits, a Solana RPC call costs 500 credits, and a Beacon Chain or Advanced API call costs 700 credits, according to Ankr’s own service-plans documentation. Premium access runs $0.10 per million credits on a pay-as-you-go basis, which works out to roughly $0.00002 per basic EVM call — cheap in isolation, but a workload leaning on heavier methods burns through an allowance faster than the sticker price suggests.
Current Ankr Pricing Tiers
| Plan | Price | Chain coverage | Debug/Trace & WebSocket |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public | Free | 30+ | No |
| Freemium | Free (200M credits/month) | 45+ | No |
| Premium | From $10 PAYG, or $500–$3,000/month | 80+ | Yes |
| Enterprise | Custom | 80+ | Yes |
Archive data is included on every tier, which is more generous than providers that gate historical state behind a paid plan. Debug and Trace methods, along with WebSocket access, are Premium-only — a real limitation for anyone doing contract-execution analysis on a free plan.
Ankr vs. Other RPC Providers
Ankr is one option among several that solve the same core problem with different pricing philosophies. The table below lines up the trade-offs rather than naming a single winner.
| Provider | Pricing model | Network coverage | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ankr | Per-method API credits | 80+ chains (Premium) | Teams already using Ankr’s staking/App Chain tools |
| NOWNodes | Flat request quota per plan | 120+ networks | Multi-chain products, predictable-cost teams |
| Chainstack | Request-based, tiered by RPS | 25+ chains | Enterprise and regulated deployments |
| QuickNode | Credit-based, method-weighted | 70+ chains | High-volume trading and analytics apps |
NOWNodes’ shared plans use a flat request-quota model instead of variable per-method weighting — the pricing page lists a free Start plan with 100,000 requests, scaling to paid tiers with a fixed monthly request block. For a team whose main frustration with Ankr is not knowing what a heavy-call month will cost, that’s a structurally different answer, and it covers a wider non-EVM range — Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Monero sit alongside Ethereum and Solana under one NOWNodes API key.
Neither pricing model is objectively better. Credit weighting rewards apps making mostly cheap calls; flat quotas reward apps with a steady, predictable request mix. The right fit depends on which calls actually dominate your traffic, which is worth measuring before committing to either — a comparison worth running alongside a broader look at Ethereum RPC providers if Ethereum is the chain carrying most of your load.
Switching Providers: How Much Work Is It?
Because JSON-RPC is a standardized protocol, moving off Ankr is rarely a rewrite. An app built against eth_getBalance and eth_sendRawTransaction through Ankr’s endpoint can generally point at a NOWNodes or Chainstack endpoint instead with a URL and API-key change.
Method-specific quirks are the part that actually needs review before migrating: rate limits, which advanced methods exist only on one platform, and how each provider handles WebSocket reconnects. Running a staging environment against a second provider for a week is usually enough to see whether latency and cost line up better than the current setup, without touching production traffic.
This is also why testing costs so little upfront. Most providers, NOWNodes included, offer a free or low-cost tier specifically so a team can point staging traffic at a second endpoint and compare real numbers before signing anything.
Limitations Worth Knowing Before You Commit
The credit model is the first thing to plan around. A getLogs-heavy indexing job or an analytics backend scanning historical events can consume a Freemium allowance far faster than a lighter wallet-style workload, so the advertised 200 million monthly credits is a starting point for estimation, not a guarantee of runway.
Feature gating is the second. Debug, Trace, and WebSocket access all sit behind the Premium tier, which means a free-tier developer testing contract execution paths will hit a wall before production even starts. Teams that need those methods from day one should budget for Premium rather than assuming the free plan covers everything.
Coverage depth is the third consideration. Ankr’s 80-plus chains on Premium is broad, but it’s worth checking whether a specific network gets full archive support or just standard RPC — several multi-chain providers, NOWNodes among them, publish per-network interface details rather than a single blanket coverage number.
None of this makes Ankr a bad choice — it makes it a provider optimized for a particular shape of workload. The mismatch only shows up when your traffic doesn’t fit that shape.
Conclusion
Ankr is a reasonable choice for teams already inside its ecosystem — staking, App Chains, or its Advanced API — and for prototypes that fit comfortably inside the Freemium tier’s 200 million monthly credits. Its per-method credit pricing charges for what a call actually costs to run, which is fair in principle and harder to forecast in practice once a workload leans on heavier methods.
For a backend that needs predictable monthly costs, deeper non-EVM coverage, or Debug/Trace access without jumping straight to a $500-plus Premium plan, a flat request-quota provider such as NOWNodes can be the steadier option — particularly once Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or other non-EVM networks enter the picture. Since switching between standards-compliant RPC providers is largely a configuration change, benchmarking both against your real traffic costs little more than the time it takes to run.
FAQ
Is Ankr free to use?
Ankr’s Freemium tier includes 200 million API credits a month across 45-plus chains at no cost, which covers prototyping and light production traffic. Heavier or high-throughput workloads move to the Premium pay-as-you-go or Deal plans.
What blockchains does Ankr support?
Ankr’s Premium tier currently lists 80-plus chains, with 45-plus available on the free Freemium plan and 30-plus on the fully public tier. Coverage changes over time, so check Ankr’s current network list before building against a specific chain.
Does Ankr offer archive data on its free plan?
Yes. Archive data is included on the Public, Freemium, and Premium tiers alike — it’s Debug/Trace methods and WebSocket access that are restricted to Premium, not historical state itself.
How is Ankr different from NOWNodes?
Ankr bills per RPC method using a credit system that weights calls by network and complexity, while NOWNodes uses a flat request-quota model and covers a broader mix of EVM and non-EVM networks — including Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Monero — under a single API key.
Can I use Ankr and another RPC provider at the same time?
Yes, and running a second provider as failover is common practice for production apps. An outage or rate-limit spike on one endpoint then doesn’t take the whole application down with it.
