• Managed service nodes offer fast setup, high uptime, and reliable performance for most prod use cases.
• Advanced features like archive access and debug RPC are now supported by top providers like Tatum.
• Self-hosting makes sense when you need full control, sovereignty, or ultra-low latency.
• Most teams don’t need to self-host—unless compliance, scaling, or specific RPC needs force the issue.
• Hybrid setups give you the best of both: fast launch, with control where it actually matters.

Why Developers Need Reliable Node Infrastructure

For blockchain devs, node infra isn’t just backend noise—it’s the backbone of everything your app does on-chain. Whether you’re pulling wallet balances, indexing contract events, pushing txs, or running a validator, your node setup decides how fast, accurate, and bulletproof your system is.

Sure, public nodes like Infura, or Alchemy work fine for prototyping or early-stage testing. But, once you’re live, their limits start to bite — hard. Think: aggressive rate limits, missing RPC methods (like, debug_traceTransaction), lag during peak hours, and the occasional “sorry, we’re down” moment, thanks to centralized infra.

Blockchain was built to be decentralized and permissionless. Offloading node access to a third party kinda tosses those ideals out the window. Some teams live with that. Others—especially when handling sensitive logic, financial flows, or regulatory heat—can’t afford the risk.

In this blog article, we’ll break down self-hosted vs. service-based nodes, what each brings to the table, and how to pick what fits your stack. We’ll also show where Tatum fits in—offering devs a clean balance of reliability, flexibility, and ease of use.

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Understanding the Types of Blockchain Nodes

Blockchains run on distributed nodes — but, not all nodes do the same job. Depending on the chain and what you're building, a node might just watch the network, help validate blocks, or act as a high-speed gateway or your app.

On Ethereum (and EVM-style chains), running a full node means spinning up two separate components — an execution client, and a consensus client.

The execution client—like Geth, Nethermind, Besu, or Erigon—handles tx execution, smart contract logic, and tracks Ethereum’s full state. This is also where the JSON-RPC lives, so it’s the part your app talks to via web3 libs.

The consensus client—like Prysm, Lighthouse, Teku, or Nimbus—syncs with the beacon chain, verifies PoS blocks, and takes care of finality. Since the Merge (Ethereum’s 2022 transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake), these two parts run as separate processes, connected via JWT and a defined handshake protocol.

Some newer clients (like Paradigm’s reth) promise faster syncs and lower resource usage. They’re still maturing, but for perf-critical setups, they’re worth keeping on your radar.

Other chains—like Bitcoin, Solana, or Avalanche—do it differently, but the split still holds: core protocol vs. external access. Solana, for example, is a beast with RAM and disk IOPS, and Avalanche adds its twist with subnets. Knowing how these pieces fit helps you decide: do you trust a third party, or do you roll your own infra?

Service Nodes: What They Are, and What Developers Gain or Lose

Service nodes are third-party infra — usually, cloud-based — that expose RPC, or WebSocket endpoints, your app can hit over HTTP/S. Most big players—Tatum, QuickNode, Ankr—cover Ethereum mainnet plus a mix of L2s and sidechains.

A lot of devs use these without even realizing it. MetaMask? Defaults to Infura. Some dev tools? Plug you straight into Tatum, or something similar. It’s smooth — fast — and perfect if you don’t want to mess with node ops.

But yeah—there’s a trade-off. You get solid uptime, autoscaling, and pro-grade monitoring, but you give up control. Usage caps, missing RPC methods, rate limits, and the occasional black-box behavior when traffic spikes or something controversial hits the chain.

Most service providers restrict or throttle calls like:

• “debug_traceTransaction”
  
  
• “txpool_content” and “txpool_inspect”
  
  
• “eth_getProof”
  
  
• “admin_, personal_” methods
  
  
• Archive queries on older blocks
  
  

And these aren't just nice-to-haves—they're key for building custom indexers, sim tools, deep debugging, or any real forensic-level work.

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Service node pricing’s all over the place—depends on your performance tier, archive access, geo replication, and which chains you need. As of Q1 2025, most paid plans start around $49–$99/month for shared access with limits. Tatum offers archive data with almost all endpoints we offer.

Infura recently pulled back on archive node support. Alchemy still offers it, but only on premium plans. QuickNode and Ankr keep full archive access across multiple chains—props to them for that.

As for latency and rate limits: expect 300–800ms RPC response times under normal load, with spikes if things get busy. Free tiers usually cap you at 50–100k reqs/day and 10–30 reqs/sec. That’s fine for casual use, but won’t cut it for anything high-frequency or data-heavy.

Self-Hosted Nodes: Complete Control, but at a Huge Cost

Running your own node is the most direct (and hardcore) way to talk to the chain. You’re in charge of everything—spinning up servers, installing clients, keeping them alive, scaling disks, locking down access, updating stuff, watching metrics… all on you.

But the upside? Full control. Your node becomes a first-class peer in the network—validates blocks, stores full state, and serves RPC/WebSocket endpoints with zero middlemen. No API limits, no hidden filters, no surprises.

You call the shots: tweak logs, fine-tune pruning, set your own rate limits, flip on sensitive RPC methods or bolt-on, custom indexers. Want to trace every tx with debug_traceTransaction? Go ahead. Need archive data on-chain from three years ago? It’s all yours. Contracts blocked by public providers? Not your problem.

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Since the Merge, running a proper Ethereum node means running two processes in sync. The execution client—like Geth or Nethermind—handles txs and state changes. The consensus client—Prysm, Lighthouse, Teku, or Nimbus—keeps you in sync with the proof-of-stake chain. If you need fast reads or archive access, Erigon and reth are popular alt execution clients thanks to their leaner architecture and optimized disk usage.

It’s more demanding than it used to be—but still totall y doable without bleeding cash. A non-archive full node needs at least 4 physical CPU cores, 16 GB RAM, and a 2 TB SSD or, ideally, NVMe. You’ll want solid bandwidth too—expect ~25 Mbps sustained traffic during sync or high activity. Most of the bottlenecks hit your disk, so skip the SATA SSDs. Go NVMe or go home.

Sync time depends on your stack. With checkpoint acceleration and decent hardware, you can be fully synced in under 48 hours. No checkpoints? Genesis sync can take a week or more. Once live, disk usage creeps up by 50–80 GB/month—so plan ahead or enable pruning. Pruned nodes drop old state data but keep history, balancing space and usability.

Archive nodes are a different beast. They store everything—every state change ever. That’s 15+ TB and climbing. They’re only worth it if you're building forensic tools, running historical sims, or doing deep analytics with heavy query logic. For most use cases, a regular full node, paired with smart indexing or caching, is more than enough.

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For high availability or failover, self-hosted setups usually spin up multiple node instances behind a reverse proxy—think Nginx, HAProxy—or go full container mode with Docker Compose or Kubernetes. That gives you load balancing, redundancy, and horizontal scaling when traffic spikes. Want geo-redundancy? Just deploy node replicas across data centers or cloud regions and route traffic with DNS-level tools like Route53 or Cloudflare.

But you can’t just set it and forget it. Self-hosted nodes need real monitoring. Track metrics like peer count, sync lag, RPC latency, disk growth and RAM usage—Prometheus + Grafana remains the go-to combo. Native exporters like geth_exporter, ethstats or your own latency probes can help catch stuck peers, RPC hiccups, or odd network behavior before it hits users.

Security’s non-negotiable. Never expose RPC ports to the wild without firewalls. Use JWTs, IP whitelisting, and rate limiting to lock things down. Exposed RPC = open invite to get drained or DoSed. Basic tools like ufw and fail2ban go a long way.

You’ll also want a disaster recovery plan. Snapshot backups via ZFS, LVM or AWS EBS let you bounce back quickly if your data gets toasted. Most ops teams snapshot synced nodes, and spin up fresh clones instead of syncing from scratch—it’s just faster.

And for latency-sensitive stuff—MEV searchers, oracles, rollup sequencers—you need the real deal: colocated hardware, private peer links, full RPC debug access. Only self-hosting gives you that level of control.

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How to Tell Which One Is the Right for You

Choosing between a self-hosted node and a managed service isn’t black-and-white. It all depends—on your stack, your team, your product stage, your threat model, and how much control (or chaos) you’re ready to take on.

When you’re early—building fast, testing ideas, breaking stuff—managed services are a no-brainer. You just need an RPC endpoint that works. No worrying about disk space, client versions or sync lag. Great for prototyping, messing with smart contracts, or wiring up a frontend on testnet. Yeah, some RPC methods might be locked and outages can happen—but at that stage, your users don’t care. You’re still in sandbox mode. Nevertheless, you should look for a service with the best uptimes within your budget. You can find Tatum’s uptime here.

But once you’re heading to prod, things change. If you’re handling real money—DeFi, wallets, custody, anything regulated—you can’t afford surprises. Self-hosting gives you full control: no RPC censorship, no silent throttling, no missing methods. You can monitor peer behavior, fine-tune logging, unlock debug tools, and keep your own archive data if needed. Just keep in mind—running your own node means taking full responsibility for uptime, security, and performance. That’s why many teams choose reliable partners with built-in failovers, SOC 2 compliance, and deep operational experience.

That said, self-hosting ain’t plug-and-play. You’ll need ops skills—firewalls, monitoring, backups, client updates. One missed config or an unpatched bug—and boom: downtime, data loss, or worse. If your team’s small, and juggling a million things, running your infra might slow you down more than help.

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Relying 100% on third-party node providers comes with its own set of risks. Centralized infra isn’t just a theoretical problem—when Alchemy or Infura hiccup, wallets and dApps everywhere feel it. No redundancy, no fallback. And if a provider rate-limits your traffic, or decides a smart contract is too "controversial" to serve? Oh well.

Even full nodes can choke under pressure. If your app needs heavy log indexing or real-time analytics, calling eth_getLogs over wide block ranges, or high-frequency contracts often leads to timeouts. That’s why many teams roll their own ETL pipelines—pushing logs into Postgres or Elastic for fast queries and rich analytics.

At the end of the day, it’s all about trade-offs: control vs. convenience. If you're building a high-performance backend that needs deep on-chain access, live indexing, tx sim or compliance-grade logging, self-hosted infra—or a dedicated partner—is usually the smart play. But if uptime, SLAs and managed ops matter more, a reliable service provider might be what keeps you sane.

There’s also a middle path. A lot of teams go hybrid: mission-critical stuff runs on their own nodes, while backup queries or public-facing endpoints hit managed RPCs. Some devs use service nodes during dev and switch to self-hosting before launch. That layered setup gives you flexibility now—and room to scale later.

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About Tatum's Nodes

Tatum takes a different route—offering a hybrid setup that gives you the firepower of self-hosted infra without the ops overhead.

Here’s what you get:

• Access to 60+ full nodes (Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polygon, Solana, and more)
• Unified API layer—no wrestling with raw RPC differences
• Archive access on major chains
• Zero-maintenance—infra’s fully managed
• Built-in SDKs, webhooks, and monitoring out of the box
• SOC 2-compliant infrastructure with enterprise-grade security
  

Paid plans start at ~$49/month, but there’s a solid free tier that’s more than enough for prototyping and early-stage builds.

Where Tatum really stands out:

• Combines multi-chain RPC with dev tooling (SDKs, templates, etc.)
• Delivers enterprise-grade uptime and reliability without config headaches
• Speeds up launch for teams who’d rather ship than babysit nodes
  

The abstraction layer is dev-friendly and cuts onboarding time way down—especially if you’re working across chains or need custom indexing, without rolling your own stack. Bottom line: if your use case needs flexibility, scale and performance, but you’re not keen on spinning up your own infra just to get there, Tatum’s got your back.

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