Reducing time to market is crucial to Web3 developers. Thus, you need to find the best Web3 development platform that works for you. As a blockchain developer, you need to select a good node provider and Web3 platform that helps you build, manage and scale, all in one package. As such, Alchemy’s platform comes to mind. However, you should also consider Alchemy alternatives as you navigate your choices. Here, we enumerate the top Alchemy alternatives and blockchain development platforms and discuss their pros and cons.
While working on Web3, you may find difficulties along the way. For example, you’ll probably discover that it’s inefficient to take the cumbersome path of running your own RPC node. It’s time-consuming, complicated, and it takes up a lot of storage space on your computer. In addition, you may have difficulties syncing Ethereum, adding further delays to your project.
Thankfully, there are alternatives available that can solve this problem. Herein, we’ll be discussing the popular blockchain node provider and Web3 development platform, Alchemy. However, we will also consider blockchain node providers and Alchemy alternatives such as Moralis, Infura, Quicknode, and The Graph. These options are gaining steam quickly as blockchain developers search for the best options. Furthermore, such Alchemy alternatives provide comprehensive features that rival or even exceed those of Alchemy, as you will understand from our list.
Instead of running a blockchain node from scratch, it’s becoming the norm for developers to rely on such universal providers for services that support, speed up, and scale their projects with minimal effort. If you are building decentralized applications (dApps), looking to develop your own NFT marketplace, create a DAO, decentralized exchange, GameFi, or P2E (play-to-earn) project on Web3, this article is for you.
Alchemy Alternatives – Why Do They Matter?
Today, building on Web3 is all about launching a project quickly and having your dApps stand out in an increasingly competitive space. It’s crucial to realize the importance of launching a dApp quickly. If not, someone will beat you at being first to market, potentially costing you the opportunity of being the front runner. Furthermore, your competitors will have created their MVPs, reaching investors and users early.
The best way to stand out in the Web3 realm is to move quickly, market fast, and attract users through an excellent and attractive frontend. To do so, you’ll need to use the proper tools to supercharge your build. Therefore, you need to use platforms such as Alchemy or Alchemy alternatives to ensure that you have all the necessary building blocks to run reliable blockchain nodes. However, such platforms need to offer more than just node services. They need to add comprehensive support to your entire journey, ensuring that you are always one step ahead.
What is Alchemy?
Alchemy is a well-known node provider in the blockchain space. In 2019, it was launched with much fanfare as it promised to “secretly fix blockchain’s node nightmare”. As such, reputable crypto and blockchain companies began to outsource projects to them, including, at the time, leaders such as CryptoKitties, Augur, 0x, and Kyber Network.
While they started mainly as a node infrastructure provider, replacing the slow architecture with a more agile and flexible one, they launched a full suite of developer tools in 2020. Alchemy now promises a more comprehensive experience for blockchain developers. Furthermore, some of their key marketing points include an instant testnet, high consumer satisfaction scores, enhanced APIs, and a 25% faster development time on average with 99.9% reliability.
According to its website, Alchemy Supernode is “the most widely used blockchain API for Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Flow and Crypto.org.” Moreover, it promises less debugging time and more building time with its Alchemy Build product. This helps those who want to develop Ethereum dApps.
Furthermore, Alchemy features its new NFT-related products as a prominent use case. The hot NFT market has driven many developers to learn how to create NFTs and delve deeper into how to create an NFT marketplace. Moreover, blockchain developers are also starting to understand the potential of what the ERC-1155 and ERC-721 token standards can do for digital art, property, and much more.
In addition, Web3 developers are barely scratching the surface of what you can do with an NFT API. As such, we encourage you to read more about NFT API alternatives.
Alchemy is primarily known for being Ethereum-focused; however, they do support other blockchains. As Alchemy heavily focuses on Ethereum’s mainnet and testnet, alternatives such as Moralis are natively cross-chain and ideal for when you want to build cross-chain dApps seamlessly.
Why Use Alchemy or Alchemy Alternatives?
For blockchain developers, the main question is, do you run and maintain self-hosted nodes, or do you rely on a node provider?
The answer becomes easy, especially when you consider the expense, time, and level of complexity involved. First, self-hosted nodes typically cost $4,800 of engineering time. Furthermore, on average, the total annual cost is $86,000, and $2,000 to $5,000 per month in AWS costs, according to the Alchemy website.
Self-run node infrastructure also takes up a lot of your team’s engineering resources. Moreover, it takes months to make this infrastructure reliable and robust. Even then, there is a huge risk of failure. For instance, node issues may occur every few days or so. As such, you may encounter problems such as corrupted internal databases, bugs and regressions, a high probability of broken “stable releases”, and inconsistent peering. What’s more, there are disk issues, memory leaks, and CPU spikes to worry about, according to Alchemy’s site.
The only way to a “pain-free” blockchain, dApp, and Web3 development, is to trust the experts. It’s far more convenient to leave the heavy lifting to platforms and Alchemy alternatives such as Moralis.
Alchemy Alternatives – What are the Options?
When searching for a Web3 development platform, it helps to know what else is out there. While Alchemy is one of the biggest projects tackling Web3 development, Alchemy alternatives provide comprehensive services to rival Alchemy. What’s more, each has crucial differentiating points that may provide distinct advantages for developers when creating their Web3 projects or dApps.
- Moralis
Moralis is one of the strongest contenders in the Web3 development platform race. Witnessing massive growth and adoption in the developer community, it is catching up on Alchemy and other node providers for the top spot in Web3 development and node provider options.
The Biggest Web3 Development Platform
What makes Moralis different? In terms of traffic, Moralis is currently the largest Web3 development platform, with thousands of projects using it as their Web3 infrastructure provider. Also, it has the widest feature set and the highest ease of use among blockchain API platforms. As such, it is selected as one of the top Alchemy alternatives.
While Alchemy makes a great first step for developers, today’s competitive and growing Web3 space includes platforms with a more comprehensive set of features, which Moralis provides. Currently, Moralis leads Web3 development platforms in traffic and engagement. As of December 2021, statistics from SimilarWeb reveal that Moralis received over one and a half million (+1,500,000) unique visitors. This compares to other Alchemy alternatives such as Infura and The Graph, with roughly 600,000 unique visitors each. Furthermore, Alchemy has registered less than 340,000 unique visitors within the same period.
Notable Features of Moralis
Moralis has many exciting features that distinguish it from other Alchemy alternatives. Furthermore, Moralis allows users to add or create powerful Web3 features with nothing but a single line of code. As such, it has a comprehensive 360-degree approach to Web3 development. What’s more, its cross-chain infrastructure is unmatched.
A Standout Among Alchemy Alternatives
Aside from being a node provider and one of the Alchemy alternatives, Moralis offers the following:
- Seamless “Sync” feature, allowing you to sync and index smart contract events without a hitch.
- Fully integrated Web3 authentication using MetaMask or other Web3 wallets.
- Capabilities to work with other APIs, such as the Moralis OpenSea plugin.
- Socket connections to your project’s frontend.
- Letting you get Web3 events with SMS messages plus email push notifications (for user alerts).
- A powerful complete database to save your data and chronicle on-chain events.
- Built cross-chain from the ground up, so it offers a much better experience when you build cross-chain dApps.
- And much more!
These are just some of the many features that Moralis offers. On top of these features, Moralis has impressive products developed to help you every step of the way.
The Moralis Web3 SDK
Moralis’ Web3 SDK is packed with features. After signing up with Moralis, you only need to create a new server to access Moralis’ full functionality. What’s more, with single lines of code, you can do all sorts of queries, including getting user information on transactions and token balances.
The Web3 SDK also boasts of one of the industry’s most well-organized and navigation-friendly documentation. That way, the learning curve is pretty short, and you’ll be able to use the Moralis Web3 SDK during your project’s development easily.
Alchemy Alternatives – Moralis’ Cross-Chain Interoperability
As mentioned, Moralis is the easiest platform to use when you’re planning on building cross-chain dApps or projects. This is because all chains are already synced by default. Hence, you can simply transition from one chain to another using Moralis’ seamless system and minimize any additional issues in the future. This is how Moralis “future-proofs” your dApp and Web3 development.
For more “big picture” insights into Moralis’ phenomenal SDK and how it goes beyond being a node provider into the ultimate Web3 development platform, watch this video:
2. Infura
Infura is another well-known node provider among the Alchemy alternatives in the industry. It is a ConsenSys company and is, by default, focused on Ethereum. Infura solves the problem of connecting to Ethereum, which is notoriously difficult and usually slow to sync. Moreover, Infura makes connecting to the Ethereum blockchain easier and provides advantages of speed, scalability, and storage. It also has an IPFS API, currently in beta.
Infura reduces the time it takes to sync an Ethereum node. With built-in scalability, blockchain developers don’t need to hire bigger teams or full-time reliability engineers to scale. In addition, Infura also helps with storage efficiency. Hence, it also reduces cost.
With its track record, it’s hard not to see why Infura is a top choice when it comes to Alchemy alternatives and building on Ethereum. However, in terms of cross-chain support, it lags behind the competition. Therefore, if you plan to integrate cross-chain support now or in the future, it’s best to consider other Infura alternatives. As mentioned, Moralis is natively cross-chain and bypasses this problem altogether.
3. QuickNode
QuickNode has a good reputation as a node provider and is considered an option when it comes to Alchemy alternatives. Like Infura, it provides reliable node support. Furthermore, it supports more blockchains than Infura. Supported chains include Solana, BSC, Bitcoin, Optimism, Gnosis, Celo, Polygon, Fantom, Terra, etc.
However, QuickNode currently does not offer free package options for users. This hosted blockchain infrastructure as a service provides a free seven-day trial but no free plan. It’s advisable to review QuickNode features to understand its advantages in speed and use in enterprise infrastructure.
4. The Graph
The Graph is another among the Alchemy alternatives, and is known as an indexing protocol for querying Ethereum and IPFS. With The Graph, you can build or publish open APIs. These open APIs are known as “subgraphs”.
You can think of The Graph as a tool for blockchain indexing. Blockchain indexing is notoriously difficult, even for experienced developers. However, you need to index the blockchain for the following reasons:
- Distributed and immutable data is a double-edged sword. Finality, chain rearrangement, and uncalled blocks make retrieving accurate querying results problematic.
- Such a massive amount of decentralized data resides in a scattered way throughout the network.
Therefore, you need a reliable way to filter or locate this data to be useful to your dApp or platform. Hence, Alchemy alternatives such as The Graph or Moralis help perform this function. Moreover, they avoid the complexities of learning how to index the blockchain from scratch.
The Graph’s subgraphs let you make data available for other developers. In addition, these subgraphs can be composed into a global graph that contains the network’s public information. The GraphQL programming language also allows you to query such data with a few keystrokes. To learn more about The Graph as an alternative for smart contract indexing, check out the Moralis blog.
Alchemy Alternatives – Summary
When looking for Alchemy alternatives, several reliable options help you build on Web3 and create dApps without the hassles of building infrastructure from scratch. However, among these Alchemy alternatives, Moralis stands out as having a comprehensive end-to-end solution to Web3 development.
Furthermore, Moralis combines all the advantages of other Alchemy alternatives – being a node provider, software development kit (SDK), and blockchain indexing tool all in one. Also, Moralis has the widest feature set with various APIs to ensure you have everything you need in your toolkit to build excellent dApps.
In addition, among all the Alchemy alternatives, it has the largest following and the highest number of site visits based on the latest data. Hence, this makes Moralis the most exciting Web3 development platform to date. Simply sign up for free on the Moralis site to understand the difference!
