If you have any experience as a developer, you know that using the right tools makes a world of difference. However, usually, with every new tech, proper tools need some time to catch up. For example, early blockchain builders had to deal with the limitations of RPC nodes. However, in the last couple of years, a myriad of platforms are making Web3 development a whole lot simpler. One such option is QuickNode (formerly QuikNode). However, there are some limitations to QuickNode – meaning you ought to know about the QuickNode alternative out there. This article lets you get acquainted with the current Web3 tech stack – to choose the best Web3 backend platform for your needs. Thus, you’ll get to save a ton of development time and have your MVP ready as fast as possible.

First and foremost, we’ll go over why QuickNode alternatives matter – and why a lot of developers are asking the same question. Then, we will also explain what QuickNode is, to ensure that we are all caught up with the basics. We’ll also go over some top QuickNode options, to ensure you get access to a workflow that suits your needs. This is where you will learn more details about the four top QuickNode alternatives. Of course, to get the most out of this article, you then need to use the information provided herein. That is, you need to decide which platform you want to use and start developing killer dapps (decentralized applications). By doing so, you can become a blockchain developer in no-time! Specifically, you’ll be able to focus your time and resources on creating the best possible Web3 UI.      

QuickNode Alternatives – Why Do They Matter?

Creativity and uniqueness matter; however, in today’s fast-paced world speed is also essential. As such, when creating dapps, you want to be able to create a minimum viable product (MVP) fast. This is a must if you want to stand out in this increasingly competitive space. If you take too long to put something out there, it becomes very likely that someone will beat you. And, we probably don’t have to remind you of the significance of being first to market. It’s a lot easier to simply be first than to be a latecomer and try to gain adoption. Thus, you always want to make sure to present investors and users with your MVP as fast as possible. 

Luckily, using QuickNode alternatives can help you out with that. As mentioned above, these are the tools that can help you move quickly and market fast. Moreover, this is also the way you can focus on a top-notch Web3 frontend. The latter will ensure that the users fall in love with your product. Platforms such as QuickNode or QuickNode alternatives provide you with the necessary building blocks. In most instances, they focus on a lot more than just running reliable blockchain nodes (blockchain node providers). The latter usually comes in a form of comprehensive support to cater for your entire blockchain-development journey. And, with proper support, you can remain competitive.

Why Use QuickNode or QuickNode Alternatives?

Basically, all blockchain developers need to ask themselves “do I really need to run and maintain self-hosted nodes?”. Of course, there are certain projects, where running your own nodes makes more sense. However, most projects are way better off using a reliable node provider. 

Moreover, since most startups deal with limited budgets, it makes a lot of sense to look at expenses. Self-hosted nodes can be quite expensive – typically it can cost nearly $5,000 of engineering time monthly to run your own node. Furthermore, the total average annual cost is estimated to be over $85,000. Moreover, according to the Alchemy website, monthly AWS costs can be between $2,000 to $5,000. Aside from the expense, running your own nodes requires a lot of time and brings a high level of complexity involved. 

With that said, there are few projects that can afford to spend their team’s engineering resources in such ways. In addition, it tends to take months to build a reliable and robust infrastructure. On top, there’s usually a huge risk of failure that you need to account for. Some examples include bugs and regressions, corrupted internal databases, inconsistent peering, and a high probability of broken “stable releases”. Plus, issues like memory leaks, CPU spikes, and disk errors are also quite frequent.

Hence, it’s quite clear that Web3 development can be a lot less stressful, less costly, and much faster when you trust the experts to cover the backend infrastructure. By relying on one of the top QuickNode alternatives, such as Moralis, you’ll have an entire backend team on your side.

What is QuickNode?

QuickNode is a reputable node provider. In many ways, it is quite similar to Infura – it provides reliable node support. According to the official QuickNode website, this platform believes the future of the internet is private, trustless, and censorship-resistant. Furthermore, its mission is to help blockchain ecosystems scale, by providing accessible core infrastructure. QuickNode makes it simple to power your blockchain applications and scale up as you grow. Hence, you can utilize their elastic APIs, analytics, and other powerful tools, through a simple control panel.

Moreover, QuickNode supports a series of blockchains (a total of fourteen at the time of writing), giving devs a lot of options. As such, they can build on Solana, BNB Chain, Bitcoin, Optimism, Gnosis, Celo, Polygon, Fantom, Terra, and a few others. On the other hand, QuickNode doesn’t offer a free plan. Though, users can test this hosted blockchain infrastructure as a service provides for seven days.

QuickNode Alternatives – Top Options

Infura, Alchemy, The Graph, and Moralis are some of the top QuickNode alternatives. Each of these platforms has its pros and cons. Hence, you need to determine which one will best suit your project’s requirements. However, if you are looking for the ultimate Web3 development platform, Moralis is the one to focus on. As such, we will first cover this Firebase for crypto in detail.

QuickNode Alternatives – Moralis

First, you need to know that Moralis is a lot more than just a node provider. It gives devs access to a single workflow for building dapps. The company has been experiencing massive growth ever since its beginning. Developers from all across the world appreciate the powerhouse that this tool brings to the table. Moreover, as the screenshot below indicates, it took the top spot in traffic and engagement: 

There are thousands of projects already using Moralis for their Web3 infrastructure needs. The Moralis’ SDK offers a very comprehensive set of features and includes the most extensive Web3 API. 

Moralis – Much More than a Node Provider

Moralis is far more than a simple node provider. For one, Moralis enables users to add or create new dapp features using short snippets of code. Actually, it is Moralis’ goal to cover even the most complex Web3 aspects with a single line of code. This is where the Moralis documentation and Moralis’ GitHub pages come in. Using these resources, you get to cover your dapps’ backend needs by copy-pasting short snippets of code. In addition, Moralis’ in-house experts also created several impressive boilerplates that enable you to have fully functional dapps up and running in minutes. For web dapps, you can use the ultimate Web3 boilerplate. And, the Ethereum mobile boilerplate for the mobile dapps.   

You should also keep in mind that Moralis is all about cross-platform and cross-chain interoperability. As such, you can utilize the Moralis’ SDK with different platforms and different programming languages. Hence, if you know your way around JavaScript and Unity (C#), you can start building dapps instantly. The Web3 basics and entry-level Solidity knowledge help, but are not at all required as you can pick that up on the fly. This also makes Moralis the go-to platform for legacy developers to make a seamless transition from Web2 to Web3. In addition, cross-chain interoperability gives you a neat way to use the same code to target multiple chains. Moreover, this also future-proofs your work as your dapps are never stuck to any particular chain. 

A Standout Among QuickNode Alternatives

Here’s a list of Moralis’ main features:

• The platform’s “Sync” feature enables you to sync and index smart contract events. This is the most straightforward way to index the blockchain. 
• Complete integration of Web3 authentication using MetaMask, WalletConnect, or other Web3 wallets. If you don’t want to authenticate with MetaMask, Moralis also enables you to implement Web3 authentication via email and Web3 social login. These two Web3 login methods are a great way to boost Web3 user onboarding. 
• A Web3 API, including Moralis NFT API. 
• Moralis also lets you work with other APIs via https://moralis.io/plugins/  (e.g. Moralis’ OpenSea plugin).
• Socket connections to your project’s frontend.
• Enabling you to get Web3 events with SMS messages plus email push notifications (for user alerts).
• A powerful database to store off-chain data and chronicle on-chain events and also.
• Moralis’ IPFS integration enables you to store data in a decentralized manner.

Nonetheless, we also encourage you to check out this video that neatly covers the gist of Moralis:

QuickNode Alternatives – Infura

Infura is another reputable node provider that’s been around the block longer than QuickNode. Moreover, Infura is a ConsenSys’ company. Hence, it focuses on the Ethereum blockchain. Thus, with Infura you get to connect to Ethereum effortlessly. This means that you do not deal with this notoriously difficult and normally slow-to-sync process yourself. Furthermore, Infura provides several advantages – high speed, scalability, and storage. Just like Moralis, Infura also offers an IPFS API.

Moreover, Infura shortens the time to sync an Ethereum node. It has built-in scalability, which allows blockchain developers not to worry about hiring full-time reliability engineers to scale. Furthermore, Infura also reduces costs thanks to its improved storage efficiency. All these advantages make Infura a top choice among QuickNode alternatives. That is for developers building on Ethereum and primarily interested in nodes providing services. However, Infura lacks major cross-chain support. Thus, in case you want more cross-chain freedom, other QuickNode alternatives might be for you. 

QuickNode Alternatives – Alchemy

Like all other thus-far-presented QuickNode alternatives, Alchemy is also a highly reputable node provider. It’s been around since 2019 when it also announced that it will “secretly fix blockchain’s node nightmare”. Thus, many well-known crypto and blockchain companies started to outsource projects to them. Moreover, Alchemy started mainly as a node infrastructure provider. As such, they primarily focused on updating the slow architecture. However, in 2020, they launched a full suite of developer tools. This expansion enabled Alchemy to provide a more comprehensive experience for blockchain developers. Moreover, by marketing an instant testnet, high consumer satisfaction scores, enhanced APIs, and a fast development time with high reliability, they attracted many devs. 

According to the Alchemy website, these are the core products and features of this QuickNode alternative:

• Supernode – This feature is labeled as “the most widely used blockchain API for Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Flow, and Crypto.org.” 
• Alchemy Build -This is the product Alchemy promotes for less debugging time and more building time. However, this tool is primarily for those who want to build Ethereum dapps. 
• NFT API – This is Alchemy’s new NFT-related product. Since NFTs (non-fungible tokens) continue to be all the rage, this addition makes a lot of sense. After all, devs are starting to grasp the impact that ERC-1155 and ERC-721 token standards have. However, as you already know, there are other NFT API alternatives available. 

Unlike Infura, Alchemy does support some other chains. However, its primary focus is still Ethereum. As such, if you want more comprehensive cross-chain support, Moralis or QuickNode are better options.

The Graph – An Indexing Protocol

For starters, we must point out that The Graph may not directly qualify as a QuickNode alternative. Its primary focus is blockchain indexing via querying Ethereum and IPFS. What’s great about The Graph is that it allows you to build or publish open APIs (“subgraphs”). 

With The Graph’s subgraphs, you get to make data available for other developers. Thus, you contribute to the adoption of blockchain technology. Furthermore, you can compose subgraphs into global graphs that contain the network’s public information. Moreover, to work with The Graph, you get to use the GraphQL programming language. All-in-all, The Graph is a powerful alternative for indexing smart contracts.

Since blockchain indexing is notoriously difficult, The Graph is a very useful tool. However, you learned previously that Moralis helps you cover that as well. As such, they both help you avoid the complexities of learning how to index the blockchain from scratch. 

QuickNode Alternatives – Top Web3 Development Options

At this point, you know that using the right tools can make a huge difference in your blockchain development career. A proper toolset can save you a huge amount of time and resources. And, even more importantly with the right Web3 development platform on your side, you get to deliver a lot faster. QuickNode is definitely one of these sorts of tools and so are other QuickNode alternatives presented herein. However, if you are looking for a complete cross-chain solution, Moralis is the way to build your MVP. Not only does it offer nodes, like Infura, Alchemy, and QuickNode, but it also enables you to index the blockchain, just like The Graph. 

With that said, we invite you to start building. Create your free Moralis account and tackle some of our example projects. You can find countless tutorials on the Moralis’ blog and the Moralis’ YouTube channel. These are also the outlets to use for your continuous free blockchain development education. Moreover, this is where you can learn about Unity Web3 programming. Last but not least, you should also consider taking a more professional approach to your Web3 education. This is where Moralis Academy opens the doors of opportunities. By completing several top-tier crypto courses, you get to become a Web3 developer with confidence.