Infrastructure And Node Services — small scale stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Node Hosting Platform / Managed RPC
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsAlchemy Free 300M CU/mo, Growth $49/mo 1.5B CU incl $0.15/1M CU over, Enterprise $699/mo 100B CU; Infura Free 100k req/day, Team $50/mo 500k req/day $0.10/1k req over; QuickNode Free 10M credits, Growth $49/mo 30M credits $0.20/1M over, Scale $299/mo 120M; Ankr Free 500M req/mo, Pro $15/mo 1B req/mo $0.10/1M over
Load Balancer for RPC Endpoints
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsNGINX OSS Free + $5-15/mo VM; Cloudflare LB Free 1 LB + health checks, Pro $5/mo per LB after + $0.50/M DNS queries + $5/M LB req; AWS ALB $0.0225/hr ~$16.43/mo + $0.008/LCU-hr + $0.008/GB; GCP LB $0.025/hr + $0.008-0.012/GB; F5 NGINX Plus $2,500/yr
Indexing Service / Subgraph Hosting
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsThe Graph Free 100k queries/mo, Pro $49/mo 1M queries $0.10/1k over, Enterprise $349/mo 15M queries $0.06/1k over; Goldsky Free 100k queries, Pro $49/mo 1M incl $0.08/1k over, Scale $299/mo 10M; Alchemy Subgraphs Free 100k, Growth $49/mo 1M queries; Satsuma Free 100k, Pro $49/mo 3M
Block Explorer Hosting
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsBlockscout OSS Free + $20-80/mo VM (2-4 vCPU/4-8GB) + $10-30/mo Postgres + $25/mo NVMe; Routescan/Otterscan OSS Free + infra; Etherscan Free 5 calls/sec, Pro $199/mo 20 calls/sec $0.01/call over, Business $349/mo; Blockscout Cloud Starter $200/mo 2 chains 1M req, Scale $600/mo
Monitoring & Alerting for Nodes
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsGrafana Cloud Free 10k metrics series, 50GB logs, 50GB traces, 3 users, Pro $8/user/mo + $8/1k series $0.50/GB logs over; Datadog Pro $15/host/mo ($23 on-demand) incl 150 metrics $0.05/custom metric, Enterprise $35/host; Prometheus OSS Free + VM; Uptime Kuma Free OSS + $5/mo VM
Secrets Management for Node Keys
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsVault OSS Free + $10/mo VM; HCP Vault $0.03/hr/cluster (~$22/mo) + $0.50/10k ops, Standard $0.08/hr; AWS Secrets Manager $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls; Infisical Cloud Free 1k secrets 1 env, Pro $29/mo 5k secrets + audit; Doppler Free 100 secrets $20/user/mo Pro
Backup & Snapshot Storage for Nodes
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsR2 Free 10GB storage, 10M Class A 10M Class B req zero egress, $0.015/GB-mo after + $4.50/M Class A $0.36/M Class B; S3 Standard $0.023/GB-mo + $0.09/GB egress $0.005/1k PUT; Glacier Deep $0.00099/GB-mo; B2 $0.006/GB-mo + $0.01/GB egress Free 10GB; 1TB Geth snapshot ~$15/mo R2 vs $23/mo S3 + $90 egress
Log Aggregation for Node Logs
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsGrafana Cloud Free 50GB logs/mo, $0.50/GB over retention 30d; Loki OSS Free + S3; Better Stack Free 1GB/day 3d retention, Startup $24/mo 7GB/day 7d $0.25/GB over; Datadog $0.10/GB ingested + $1.70/M events 15d retention $0.17/GB archival; Axiom Free 500MB/day, $25/mo 10GB
Archive Node Storage (High-IOPS NVMe)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsHetzner AX41-NVMe €45/mo (~$49) 2x512GB NVMe 64GB RAM, AX102 €95/mo 2x2TB; Contabo VPS M NVMe $26.50/mo 400GB 8 vCPU; AWS io2 2TB $0.125/GB-mo ~$250/mo + $0.065/prov IOPS-mo (10k IOPS $650/mo); GCP pd-extreme $0.17/GB-mo + IOPS; Archive Geth 2.5-5TB, Erigon 3-4TB, need 4TB NVMe min
WebSocket RPC & Real-time Streaming
Delivers and processes audio/video to users. Bandwidth-heavy, so plan the cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsAlchemy WSS Free 300M CU 1k concurrent connections, Growth $49/mo 1.5B CU 2.5k concurrent $0.15/1M CU over; QuickNode Free 10M credits 10 concurrent WSS, Growth $49/mo 30M credits 50 concurrent $0.20/1M over; Chainstack Free 3M req, Growth $29/mo 20M req; Self-hosted websocat + NGINX Free + $5/mo VM
Dedicated Bare Metal / Validator Hosting
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsHetzner EX101 €70/mo (~$76) 16c AMD 64GB 2x1TB NVMe, EX130 €105/mo 2x2TB; OVH Advance-3 €75/mo 8c 32GB; Equinix c3.medium.x86 $0.50/hr ~$365/mo, m3.large $1.25/hr; Latitude.sh c3.medium $1.20/hr ~$864/mo; BareOps Ethereum $150/mo 32GB 2TB validator-ready; Allnodes $20/mo validator-as-a-service
Rate Limiting & DDoS Protection for RPC
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free 5k-10k req/sec DDoS unmetered, WAF 10 rules, Pro $20/mo 25 rules, Business $200/mo; NGINX rate limiting Free OSS; AWS Shield Standard Free, Advanced $3,000/mo + $0.05/GB DDoS data; OVH Anti-DDoS incl Free with dedicated, up to 1.3Tbps mitigation
Database for Indexer (PostgreSQL)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsNeon Free 0.5GB storage, 10 CU-hrs + 3GB transfer, Launch $19/mo 10GB + 100CUhrs $0.14/CU-hr over; Supabase Free 500MB 2 projects, Pro $25/mo 8GB $0.125/GB over; RDS db.t3.micro $0.016/hr ~$12/mo + storage $0.115/GB-mo; Hetzner PG $13/mo 10GB; Self-hosted PG 16 on $20/mo VM Free OSS
Cache Layer for RPC Responses (Redis)
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Free 10k commands/day 256MB, Pay-as-you-go $0.20/100k cmds $0.25/GB-mo, Pro $10/mo 100k/day; Redis Cloud Free 30MB, $13/mo Essentials 1GB $0.30/GB over; AWS ElastiCache t4g.micro $0.017/hr ~$12.41/mo + $0.15/GB; Dragonfly OSS Free self-hosted high perf + $10/mo VM
Container Orchestration (Node Fleet)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsK3s OSS Free + $10-50/mo nodes; EKS $0.10/hr control plane ~$73/mo + EC2 workers $0.0464/vCPU-hr; GKE Autopilot $0.10/vCPU-hr + $0.05/GB-hr + $0.10/hr cluster fee; Civo K3s Free 3 nodes up to 3 months, $25/mo after 2x10GB; Coolify OSS Free + $5/mo VM; Nomad OSS Free
Object Storage for Snapshots & Artifacts
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsR2 Free 10GB 10M Class A zero egress $0.015/GB-mo after; B2 $0.006/GB-mo $0.01/GB egress Free 10GB; Storj Free 150GB; S3 $0.023/GB-mo $0.09/GB egress; Wasabi $6.99/mo per TB zero egress; 500GB Pruned geth snapshot ~$7.50/mo R2 $3/mo B2
CDN for Explorer & API Docs Assets
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free unmetered CDN 100TB+ soft cap, Pro $20/mo + WAF + image resize; Bunny CDN Free 14d, $1/mo min $0.01/GB NA/EU $0.03/GB Asia; CloudFront $0.085/GB first 10TB + $0.02/10k req; Fastly $50/mo min + $0.12/GB + $0.0075/10k req
CI/CD for Node Deployments
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions Free 2000 min/mo Linux, 500MB storage, Pro $4/user/mo 3000 min; GitLab Free 400 compute min, Premium $29/user/mo; Drone OSS Free self-hosted + $5/mo VM; Buildkite Free 1 concurrency, Team $15/user/mo; CircleCI Free 6000 min, Scale $15/credit 25k credits ~ $75/mo
Uptime SLA & Status Page
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpptime OSS Free + GitHub Actions; Uptime Kuma Free OSS status page + $5/mo VM; Instatus Free 1 status page, Starter $29/mo 1k subscribers, Growth $79/mo; Statuspage Free 100 subscribers, Growth $29/mo 500 subs $99/mo 2.5k, Business $399/mo; Cachet OSS Free + $5/mo VM
How this small scale infrastructure and node services checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a small scale infrastructure and node services build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.