Using the XDC Network RPC: A Practical Guide for Developers, Wallets, and Integrations

If you are building on, integrating with, or transacting on the XDC Network, you will need an RPC endpoint. RPC (Remote Procedure Call) is the URL your wallet, dApp, or backend uses to read from and write to the blockchain. Without it, your software cannot talk to the network.

The two canonical lists of XDC RPC providers are on Chainlist:

• Mainnet (Chain ID 50, native asset XDC): https://chainlist.org/chain/50
• Apothem Testnet (Chain ID 51, native asset TXDC): https://chainlist.org/chain/51

Anyone developer, exchange, custodian, dApp team, or end user can pick any of the endpoints listed there. No permission needed; just a working URL.

XDC Mainnet RPC providers (Chain ID 50)

Widely used public HTTP endpoints:

• https://rpc.xinfin.network
• https://rpc1.xinfin.network
• https://erpc.xinfin.network
• https://earpc.xinfin.network (archive endpoint)
• https://rpc.xdc.org
• https://rpc.xdc.network
• https://rpc.xdcrpc.com
• https://erpc.xdcrpc.com

WebSocket endpoints:

• wss://rpc.xdcrpc.com/ws
• wss://erpc.xdcrpc.com/ws
• wss://ews.xinfin.network/ws

Established commercial RPC-as-a-service providers also expose XDC Mainnet endpoints, including Ankr, Tatum, and Dwellir.

XDC Apothem Testnet RPC providers (Chain ID 51)

Use Apothem for development and testing. Test TXDC is free from the faucets at https://faucet.apothem.network and https://faucet.blocksscan.io.

HTTP endpoints:

• https://rpc.apothem.network
• https://erpc.apothem.network
• https://apothem.xdcrpc.com

WebSocket endpoint:

• wss://ws.apothem.network

"Free" public RPCs are not really free at scale

Every RPC endpoint public or commercial has rate limits. Public/community URLs are fine for development, wallets, and light-traffic apps. Once your application starts generating real load, you will hit throttling, timeouts, or outright blocking.

Commercial providers expose the same trade-off explicitly: a free tier with a hard request cap, then paid tiers above it. As a reference point, Ankr's freemium tier on XDC has historically been around 30 requests/sec, with paid premium going up to ~1,500 req/sec at roughly USD $0.02 per 1,000 requests — cheap on a unit-cost basis, but it scales with your call volume. Verify current pricing on the provider's site before committing.

There is no genuinely free, unlimited, production-grade RPC for XDC or any other major chain.

How RPC is actually provided on a decentralised network

XDC is decentralised, so there is no single "official" RPC. Anyone who can run a node can expose an endpoint, which is why the Chainlist directory grows over time. In practice, RPC reaches end users through four layers:

1. Public/community endpoints — free, rate-limited, no SLA. Good for development and low-traffic use.
2. Commercial RPC-as-a-service (Ankr, Tatum, Dwellir, etc.) — free tiers for moderate use, paid tiers for production volume, optional dedicated managed nodes (e.g. archive nodes) for institutions.
3. Projects building on XDC providing RPC to their own customers as part of their product — either by running their own infrastructure or by routing customers to a commercial provider.
4. Self-hosted nodes — run by exchanges, custodians, indexers, and any team for whom XDC is core infrastructure.

The reason the market is layered like this is simple: someone has to fund and maintain the servers. A single free, unlimited, ultra-reliable public RPC would attract everyone, saturate, and stop being reliable. The layered market is how that catch-22 gets resolved in practice.

Run your own RPC node, the right call for serious users

For institutions and any project that depends on XDC for core operations, the right answer is to run your own node. The setup is well documented and the hardware needs are modest.

Why it matters:

• No rate limits — you control throughput.
• Privacy — your queries and transaction broadcasts stay inside your own network.
• Latency — a node in your own VPC is materially faster than any external endpoint.
• No vendor lock-in — no third-party outage, throttling, or pricing change can take you down.
• Predictable cost — pay for hardware and bandwidth, not per request.

This should be a baseline requirement, not an optimisation, for:

• Exchanges (CEX and DEX), custodians, and institutional wallet providers
• Banks, payment processors, and regulated entities
• Block explorers, analytics platforms, and indexers

Setup resources:

• Dedicated/private RPC server setup guide: https://www.xdc.dev/ruslan_wing/setting-up-an-rpc-node-server-for-your-dapp-on-xdc-network-a-comprehensive-guide-3dm9
• Full-node repository: https://github.com/XinFinOrg/XinFin-Node
• XDC documentation: https://docs.xdc.network and https://docs.xdc.community

A standard production setup is two full nodes behind a load balancer plus a separate archive node for historical queries, with monitoring on sync status, peer count, and disk health.

When you need RPC, and when you don't

• A centralised trading system does not need RPC for its core matching engine. Trades are off-chain, inside the exchange's own systems. RPC only matters at deposit and withdrawal edges.
• A decentralised exchange (DEX) lives on-chain. Every swap and quote depends on RPC, and RPC quality directly drives user experience.

Recommendations

1. Development and testing — use Apothem with the public RPC URLs above.
2. Small production app or wallet — public Mainnet endpoints with fallback logic across two or three URLs; move to a paid commercial plan as traffic grows.
3. Exchanges, custodians, wallet providers, banks, and core-XDC operations — run your own RPC node. Treat it as required infrastructure.

FAQ

What is an RPC, in plain English?
A URL your software uses to read from and write to the blockchain. Without it, your application has no way of seeing or interacting with the chain.

Mainnet (50) vs Apothem (51)?
Mainnet uses real XDC. Apothem uses free test TXDC. Use Apothem for development; Mainnet for production.

HTTP vs WebSocket (wss://)?
HTTP is request-response — fine for normal reads and writes. WebSocket keeps a connection open and lets you subscribe to events (new blocks, contract logs) in real time — needed for trading bots, indexers, and live dashboards.

Do I need an archive node?
Only if you need to query historical state — explorers, analytics, audit/accounting systems. Most apps don't.

How much does paid commercial RPC cost?
Cheap per request (around $0.02 per 1,000 on Ankr's premium tier historically), but total cost scales with your call volume. Always check the provider's current pricing.

Why doesn't the XDC Network just provide one definitive RPC?
Doing so means running an operating business with capacity, support, and liability obligations. It is also self-defeating: a single free, reliable, unlimited RPC would be used by everyone and saturate. The layered market — community, commercial, self-hosted — is how decentralised networks solve this in practice.

What if my public RPC goes down?
Reads time out, transactions fail to broadcast. Production apps should run their own node or, at minimum, keep a list of fallback URLs and rotate on failure.

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The full and most current list of providers is always on Chainlist:

• Mainnet: https://chainlist.org/chain/50
• Apothem: https://chainlist.org/chain/51