Data, APIs & indexers
NEAR data sources: RPC providers, FastNEAR, NearBlocks, Pikespeak and Intear APIs, neardata and indexers — when to use RPC, an API or your own indexer.
Intermediate4 min read3-question check
RPC answers questions about current state: "what is this account’s balance?", "what does this view method return?". It cannot answer "every transfer this account ever made" or "all NFTs owned by alice across contracts" — that needs indexed data. You can rent it (data APIs), or build it (stream blocks and store what you need).
RPC: current state and sending transactions#
| Service | What it’s for | Link |
|---|---|---|
| RPC providers list | The official list of mainnet/testnet RPC providers (FASTNEAR, Ankr, dRPC, Lava, QuickNode, BlockPI, Intear, …) with free-tier limits. The NEAR-hosted rpc.mainnet.near.org is marked severely rate-limited, so pick a provider for production. | docs.near.org/api/rpc/providers |
| FASTNEAR RPC | Free public endpoints (https://free.rpc.fastnear.com, testnet https://test.rpc.fastnear.com) plus keyed plans; the near-api-js README uses it in examples. | docs.fastnear.com |
Indexed data APIs#
| Service | What it’s for | Link |
|---|---|---|
| FastNEAR API | Account-centric reads: all FT balances, NFT contracts and staking pools of an account in one call; public key → account IDs; plus transactions and block-data APIs. | api.fastnear.com · docs |
| NearBlocks API | The explorer’s REST API: account transactions and receipts, function-call history, token transfers, supply and chain stats. | API docs · nearblocks/nearblocks |
| Pikespeak API | Analytics-oriented: events, wallet analytics, validators and delegators, historic balances. Requires an API key. | doc.pikespeak.ai |
| Intear Events API | Historical HTTP and real-time WebSocket feeds of decoded on-chain events (15+ event types) on mainnet and testnet; Intear also runs a token indexer with prices. | docs.intear.tech |
| BigQuery public dataset | Run SQL over the whole chain history in Google Cloud — good for analytics, not for app back ends. | docs |
Building your own indexer#
| Library / source | Language | What it’s for | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| neardata | HTTP (any language) | FastNEAR’s block-data service: fetch full blocks (with shards, receipts and outcomes) by height or the latest final/optimistic block. The documented replacement for NEAR Lake. | mainnet.neardata.xyz · fastnear/neardata-server |
| inindexer | Rust | Indexer framework by Intear: implement one Indexer trait and receive blocks, receipts or full transactions from neardata (or Intear’s teardata), with retries and auto-resume built in. | INTEARnear/inindexer |
| Nearcore Indexer | Rust (runs a node) | Embed indexing in your own NEAR node for full control and no third-party dependency — the most operationally expensive option. | docs |
| Goldsky / The Graph / SubQuery | Managed | Hosted indexing pipelines and subgraph-style GraphQL APIs that support NEAR. | Data APIs on docs.near.org |
Shell
# 1. RPC: current state of one account
curl -s https://free.rpc.fastnear.com -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{
"jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 1, "method": "query",
"params": { "request_type": "view_account", "finality": "final", "account_id": "root.near" }
}'
# 2. Data API: every token, NFT contract and staking pool the account touches
curl -s https://api.fastnear.com/v1/account/root.near/full
# 3. Raw blocks for your own indexer: the latest final block
curl -sL https://mainnet.neardata.xyz/v0/last_block/finalCheck yourself
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