Why teams leave Alchemy for MeterCall

Alchemy is the polished incumbent in centralized RPC. MeterCall is a decentralized L4 that does chain RPC plus 20M real-world APIs on the same meter, with agent payments via x402. Here's the honest read.

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Side by side

Dimension	MeterCall	Alchemy
What's sold	Chain RPC + 20M real-world APIs + bridge attestations	Chain RPC, enhanced APIs, embedded wallets (centralized)
Chains covered	30+ via upstream config, expanding	18+ chains, very mature
Real-world APIs	Stripe, Twilio, Slack, 2,400 modules live, 20M catalog	Not in scope
Pricing	Flat $0.001 per call, pay-as-you-go, PCP or USD	Compute Units + tiered plans ($49–$289+ monthly)
Decentralization	Independent node operators, on-chain settlement	Fully centralized SaaS
Agent payments	x402 live — agents pay per call from their own wallet	Developer-billed only
Vendor lock-in	Plain HTTPS, any SDK, swap upstreams	Alchemy SDK + dashboard auth
Open source	Node + contracts MIT	Closed source core

Where Alchemy still wins

Polish. Alchemy's dashboards, Mempool Watcher, and Supernode are best-in-class. We are not pretending to match their UI surface area on day one.
Enhanced APIs. Token API, NFT API, Transfers API — these are well-documented and reliable. Replicating them at quality takes time.
Team. Alchemy has eight years of RPC infra muscle memory. Their uptime on EVM mainnets is excellent.

If you need a turnkey centralized EVM provider and nothing else, Alchemy is the safe choice. MeterCall is for teams that want more than EVM on one meter.

Where MeterCall wins — with specifics

One meter for the whole stack. Your agent calls eth_getLogs and then stripe.charges.create — same API key, same invoice, flat $0.001 per call. Alchemy is EVM-only; you still need Stripe + Twilio + 12 other vendors.
Agent-native pricing. x402 is live. An agent pays for its own calls from its own wallet. Alchemy plans assume a human developer with a credit card.
Decentralized failover. If one upstream RPC chokes, the L4 router reshuffles. No single region, no single SaaS — your pipeline does not die when a provider does.

Migrate from Alchemy

Drop-in replacement. Point your Web3.js / ethers / viem client at rpc.metercall.ai/eth, pass X-MeterCall-Key, and you're on a flat $0.001 meter. No dashboard project, no compute units, no tier tax.

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