A full-stack Blockfrost alternative for Cardano, Bitcoin, and Midnight
Nexus is a full-stack Blockfrost alternative: one account and one base URL cover on-chain data, DEX market data across all 11 Cardano DEXes, FIFO wallet P&L, a server-side transaction builder, WebSocket streaming, and Bitcoin and Midnight coverage.
Blockfrost remains a solid blockchain API with a free tier and 15 official SDKs. The comparison below shows exactly where each fits.
Also weighing Maestro, Koios, or running your own stack? The same honest lens applies: pick the provider whose limits match your workload.
No free tier on Nexus. The trial is 7 days on the Builder plan, $29/mo after.
Why teams are re-evaluating their Cardano API in 2026
Four structural limits worth checking against your workload. Each one is documented in Blockfrost's own public docs.
The throughput ceiling
Every tier below Enterprise shares one flat per-IP limit: 10 requests per second with a 500-request burst. Upgrading raises the daily quota, not throughput, so STARTER free and DEVELOPER at EUR 79 hit the same ceiling.
Pagination multiplies requests
List endpoints return at most 100 items per page. A wallet with 5,000 transactions takes 50 paged calls just to enumerate, and every page counts against the daily quota.
Hard stops at the edges
At the daily quota Blockfrost returns HTTP 402 and stops serving. Continued flooding past the rate limit triggers an HTTP 418 auto-ban. Production teams need backoff logic around both failure modes.
A blockchain API, by design
Blockfrost covers Cardano chain data, IPFS, and Midnight. DEX market data, wallet P&L, server-side transaction building, and Cardano streaming sit outside that scope, so teams add vendors or custom indexers for them.
What Nexus is, in six products
Chain data is one of them. The other five are what teams would otherwise build themselves or buy from separate vendors.
Blockchain API
Blocks, txs, addresses & assets
Ten endpoint groups, accounts to governance, plus submit and evaluate.
WebSocket Streaming
Live blocks & txs, pushed to you
Push, not poll: market data on a 10 second cadence, Blueprints with REST backfill.
Transaction Building
Build & submit on-chain
Transfers, staking, and Conway governance built server-side. Unsigned CBOR out; keys never touch Nexus.
DEX Aggregator
Best-price swap routing
Best-price routing across Minswap, WingRiders, Splash, and SaturnSwap. You sign every swap.
MCP Server
Nexus data for AI agents
A hosted MCP endpoint: AI agents query Cardano, Bitcoin, and Midnight with your own key.
Market Data
Prices, pools & tokens
Prices, candles, pools, order books, and NFT sales across all 11 indexed DEXes.
Blockfrost vs Nexus, value by value
Real numbers in every cell, no check-mark theater. Rows where Blockfrost wins stay in the table.
Sustained rate limit, requests per second
Every Blockfrost tier below Enterprise shares the same flat 10 req/s per IP. Nexus throughput scales with the plan.
Request quota, monthly
At matched entry prices Blockfrost includes more raw quota. Nexus trades that for throughput that scales and the products beyond chain data.
A colored rule marks the side with the defensible advantage in that row. Rows without one are judgment calls.
| Dimension | Blockfrost (verified 2026-07-17) | Nexus |
|---|---|---|
| Performance and limits | ||
| Rate-limit model | Flat 10 req/s per IP with a 500-request burst, on every tier below Enterprise. Higher tiers raise the daily quota, not throughput. | Advantage: Nexus. Scales with tier: Builder 25 req/s (burst 250), Growth 50 req/s (burst 500), Scale 100 req/s (burst 1,000), Enterprise 500 req/s (burst 5,000). |
| Request quota | Advantage: Blockfrost (verified 2026-07-17). Daily: 50,000 free (STARTER), 300,000 (HOBBY, EUR 29/mo), 1M (DEVELOPER, EUR 79/mo), Enterprise custom. | Monthly: 2M (Builder, $29), 10M (Growth, $79), 50M (Scale, $199), 200M (Enterprise, $499), Dedicated custom. |
| Over-quota behavior | Hard HTTP 402 cutoff at the daily quota; HTTP 418 auto-ban for continued flooding. | Advantage: Nexus. HTTP 429 with X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset, and Retry-After headers plus a reset_at JSON body. No auto-ban. |
| Pagination | 100 items per page on all list endpoints. | Same 100-items-per-page cap. Batch endpoints (bulk UTXO resolve, bulk CBOR) and a single-call transaction object cut the total number of requests. |
| Pricing | ||
| Pricing model | EUR flat tiers, plus Pay-As-You-Go paid in ADA (about 0.0000171 ADA per request). | USD flat tiers, plus opt-in add-ons: Market Data $19, Wallet Analytics $15, Transaction Builder $19, MCP Server $19, IPFS $5; WebSocket packages $29/$59/$99. |
| Free tier / trial | Advantage: Blockfrost (verified 2026-07-17). Free STARTER tier: 50,000 requests per day. | No free tier. 7-day trial on the Builder plan. |
| Enterprise | Custom plans, contact Blockfrost. | Enterprise $499/mo (200M requests, 500 req/s). Dedicated from $2,000/mo: your own cluster and a contractual SLA, contact sales. |
| Coverage and products | ||
| Chains | Cardano, plus IPFS and Midnight (launched April 2026). | Advantage: Nexus. Cardano (deepest coverage), Bitcoin (including ordinals, runes, and mempool), Midnight (including transaction build and DUST); IPFS as a $5 add-on. |
| Market data | Not offered. | Advantage: Nexus. First-party across all 11 Cardano DEXes: prices, OHLCV candles, pools, order books, NFT floor and sales. |
| Wallet analytics | Not offered. | Advantage: Nexus. Holdings, transaction history, and FIFO-based P&L per wallet. |
| Transaction building | Client-side, via the official SDKs. | Advantage: Nexus. Server-side builder for transfers, staking, and Conway governance operations. Returns unsigned CBOR; keys never touch Nexus servers. |
| Streaming | No Cardano streaming. | Advantage: Nexus. WebSocket streaming plus Blueprints on-chain event streams. |
| AI agents | Not offered. | Advantage: Nexus. Hosted MCP server add-on: connect Claude and other AI agents to Nexus data and tools. |
| Developer experience | ||
| SDKs | Advantage: Blockfrost (verified 2026-07-17). 15 official SDKs; the default provider in Lucid, Mesh, PyCardano, and cardano-client-lib. | No first-party SDKs. A NexusProvider is merged in Mesh, a Lucid Evolution provider PR is open, and the OpenAPI 3.1 spec generates typed clients for any other language. |
| Auth | Per-network tokens; HTTP 403 on network mismatch. | One key per chain and network, sent as an X-Api-Key header. |
| Provider architecture | Single provider. | Advantage: Nexus. Multi-provider failover behind one endpoint. |
Blockfrost figures verified 2026-07-17 from public Blockfrost documentation and pricing. Nexus figures reflect current plans; see the pricing section for detail. Spot an error? Email [email protected] and we will fix it.
What Nexus adds beyond a blockchain API
The pitch is not "the same API, cheaper". It is fewer vendors: the data stack most Cardano teams assemble from three or four services, behind one integration.
Chain reads run behind our own indexers plus Yaci, Koios, and Blockfrost, with per-provider health checks routing around any degraded upstream, including Blockfrost itself.
The full stack on one integration
One Cardano integration covers chain data, first-party market data across all 11 Cardano DEXes, FIFO wallet P&L, a server-side transaction builder, and WebSocket streaming with Blueprints, as opt-in add-ons on one base URL and one auth header.
Rate limits that scale with your tier
Builder gets 25 req/s, Growth 50, Scale 100, and Enterprise 500, with bursts from 250 up to 5,000. Paying more buys real throughput, not just a bigger daily counter.
UTXO-native multi-chain
Cardano with the deepest coverage, Bitcoin including ordinals, runes, and mempool data, and Midnight including unshielded transaction build and DUST registration. One key per chain and network, one account.
Flat, predictable pricing
Flat monthly tiers from $29 to $499, with opt-in add-ons: Market Data $19, Wallet Analytics $15, Transaction Builder $19, MCP Server $19, IPFS $5, WebSocket packages $29 to $99. Bills do not spike with traffic.
Want the endpoint-level view of the Cardano surface? See the Nexus Cardano API page.
Running an exchange or aggregator?
Enterprise is $499/mo for 200M requests at 500 req/s. Dedicated starts at $2,000/mo with your own cluster and a contractual SLA.
Who should stay on Blockfrost
A comparison page you can trust has to say this part out loud. Blockfrost is the better choice for:
Projects inside the free tier
Hobby and pre-revenue projects comfortably under 50,000 requests per day. Blockfrost's free STARTER tier is a genuinely good deal, and Nexus has no free tier.
SDK-dependent stacks
Stacks built deep on the 15 official Blockfrost SDKs or the PyCardano and cardano-client-lib defaults. The gap is narrowing: Mesh has merged a NexusProvider and a Lucid Evolution provider PR is open. For zero integration change today, stay.
Low-throughput workloads
Workloads that stay under 10 req/s and never touch the throughput ceiling. The flat limit only matters if you hit it.
Migrating from Blockfrost to Nexus
Nexus is not API-compatible with Blockfrost. Authentication headers, endpoint paths, and response schemas differ. Migration means changing your data layer, not repointing an SDK.
1. Check coverage
Everything you query Blockfrost for is available on one Nexus Cardano API key: blocks, transactions, addresses, assets, pools, DReps, and metadata.
The market data, wallet analytics, transaction building, and streaming surfaces Blockfrost does not offer sit on the same base URL as opt-in add-ons.
2. Map your endpoints
A dedicated Blockfrost-to-Nexus endpoint mapping guide is planned. Until it ships, the API docs list every endpoint with request and response shapes and a try-it console.
3. Generate a typed client
Nexus ships no SDKs. Instead, generate a typed client in your language from the OpenAPI 3.1 spec, so your compiler catches schema differences during the port.
4. Run both side by side
Use the 7-day Builder trial to run Nexus next to Blockfrost against production traffic, compare responses, and cut over only when the numbers match.
# Nexus auth: one key per chain and network, nxs_ prefix
BASE="https://nexus.gerowallet.io/api"
ADDR="addr1qx..."
curl "$BASE/addresses/$ADDR/transactions/history" \
-H "X-Api-Key: nxs_your_api_key_here"
# Over quota? You get HTTP 429 plus headers,
# never an auto-ban:
# X-RateLimit-Limit
# X-RateLimit-Remaining
# X-RateLimit-Reset
# Retry-After
# { "reset_at": "..." } in the bodyRate-limit and over-quota behavior verified 2026-07-17. Full request and response shapes live in the docs.
Blockfrost alternative FAQ
Straight answers, including the ones that favor Blockfrost.
Is Nexus a drop-in replacement for Blockfrost?
No. Authentication headers, endpoint paths, and response schemas differ, so migration means changing your data layer. Nexus covers the core on-chain data surface most Cardano applications use, plus DEX market data, wallet P&L, transaction building, and streaming. Check the API reference against your specific endpoint list before you plan a migration. A dedicated Blockfrost-to-Nexus endpoint mapping guide is planned.
Does Nexus have a free tier like Blockfrost?
No. Plans start at Builder, $29 per month for 2M requests, with a 7-day trial. Blockfrost's free STARTER tier (50,000 requests per day) is the better fit for hobby projects.
How do Nexus rate limits compare to Blockfrost's?
Blockfrost applies a flat 10 req/s per-IP limit with a 500-request burst on every tier below Enterprise. Nexus limits scale with tier: 25 req/s on Builder, 50 on Growth, 100 on Scale, and 500 on Enterprise.
Does Nexus support Midnight?
Yes: network info, unshielded transaction build and submit, and DUST registration. Blockfrost also offers Midnight support (launched April 2026), so compare depth for your use case.
Can I keep using Blockfrost SDKs with Nexus?
No, Blockfrost SDKs only speak Blockfrost. Nexus ships no SDKs of its own, but Mesh has merged a NexusProvider, a Lucid Evolution provider PR is open, and the OpenAPI 3.1 spec generates typed clients for any other language.
What happened with Blockfrost's governance proposal?
Blockfrost proposed transitioning to a community-governed free public good, funded from the Cardano treasury. The vote concluded in July 2026 and the proposal did not pass, so Blockfrost continues to operate as a commercial provider. This page compares the two services as they operate today.
Run Nexus next to Blockfrost for a week
The 7-day Builder trial is the honest test: point real traffic at both providers and keep whichever fits. No free tier, no lock-in theater.