Helius is a Solana developer infrastructure platform for applications that need to read blockchain state, follow activity in real time or submit transactions. It combines authenticated mainnet and devnet RPC endpoints with indexed APIs, webhooks and streaming services managed from a web dashboard.
What you can do with Helius
- Read Solana data: use standard JSON-RPC methods or Helius data endpoints to retrieve accounts, transaction history, transfers, blocks, tokens, NFTs and compressed assets.
- Listen for activity: receive server-side webhooks or subscribe to account, program and transaction updates through LaserStream WebSocket or gRPC.
- Send transactions: submit signed transactions through regular RPC endpoints or Sender routing, and query priority-fee estimates for supported workflows.
- Build backend services: supply wallet views, indexers, alerts, exchange infrastructure, analytics systems and automated Solana applications with onchain data.
Fit, requirements and limits
Useful for: developers and technical teams building Solana applications, backends, data pipelines or transaction systems. Less suitable for: someone looking for a consumer wallet, a point-and-click trading app or one provider covering several blockchains.
Account required: yes. Helius authenticates API requests with a project API key. Wallet required: not for account access or read-only requests; a transaction must have the appropriate signature before it can be submitted. Basic integration requires familiarity with HTTP requests, JSON-RPC or an SDK.
Helius has a free plan and paid monthly plans. Credits, request rates, support and access to some streaming or trading infrastructure vary by plan. Certain products, including raw Shred Delivery and data add-ons, have separate charges. The standard platform is focused on Solana rather than multichain development.
Choose the data or wallet product
Wallet API provides REST wallet balances, history and identity data. Wallet-as-a-Service is a separate beta for embedding wallets and signing in an application; it is documented for paid plans, with signatures consuming credits. Creating a wallet and querying an existing public wallet are different operations.
Plan limits and operational costs
The current Free plan lists 1 million monthly credits, 10 RPC requests per second and 1 sendTransaction per second. DAS and Enhanced APIs have separate limits. Monthly paid plans are listed at $49 for Developer, $499 for Business and $999 for Professional. Mainnet gRPC and data add-ons have their own plan requirements and usage rules.
A credit allowance is not a count of interchangeable requests: methods consume different credits. Monitor both request rates and monthly credits, and handle rate-limit or exhausted-quota responses before relying on a production pipeline.
Read-only RPC example: send a JSON-RPC request with method getBalance and your public Solana address to the documented Helius endpoint. Replace both placeholders below; no private key or transaction signature is needed. The method returns the SOL balance in lamports; a fictitious result.value of 1000000000 means 1 SOL. See the method reference.
POST https://mainnet.helius-rpc.com/?api-key=YOUR_API_KEY
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"getBalance","params":["YOUR_PUBLIC_SOLANA_ADDRESS"]}