We are excited to announce the formal relaunch of the Blockstream Explorer API. With this update, we are moving the project into open beta, introducing enhanced infrastructure, simplified onboarding, and transparent pricing to make it easier than ever for developers and businesses to access reliable Bitcoin and Liquid Network data.
Designed for speed and reliability, the new Blockstream Explorer API offers a scalable HTTP REST API for Bitcoin mainnet, testnet and the Liquid Network, with an Electrum JSON-RPC service coming soon. Built on the open-source Esplora technology, the API is now taking a leap forward with new dedicated infrastructure, robust support, and an improved user experience.
A Brief History of Blockstream Explorer
Launched in 2018 as an open-source project, we built Blockstream Explorer to provide transparent access to Bitcoin network data. As demand grew, it expanded—adding Liquid support, API integrations, and enterprise-grade infrastructure. Today, it powers a wide range of applications, from wallets and exchanges to analytics tools, delivering reliable blockchain data with robust performance guarantees.
Why Builders Need APIs Like Blockstream Explorer
APIs like the Blockstream Explorer API are essential for builders integrating Bitcoin and Liquid functionality into their applications. For example, a financial app or dashboard can use the API to query the blockchain for real-time fee rates, track mempool congestion, and monitor on-chain activity to provide users with better intelligence and insights.
App builders using Bitcoin Development Kit (BDK) for key management and transaction building can choose Esplora as the blockchain backend. They can either self-host Esplora or leverage the free infrastructure Blockstream has maintained since 2021. Esplora serves as the wallet’s data provider, supplying UTXOs, mempool data, and transaction history. It also simplifies complex tasks like fetching blockchain state, monitoring transactions, and constructing payment workflows.
The Blockstream Explorer API eliminates the cost and DevOps burden of running high-uptime nodes. With reliable, neutral, and privacy-preserving blockchain access, teams can focus on building their apps without the complexities of infrastructure management.
Why Integrate with the New Blockstream Explorer API?
Built on dedicated infrastructure, the new Blockstream Explorer API ensures data integrity and availability, even during peak loads. Extensive indexing and caching enable faster address lookups and efficient mempool syncing. It supports Bitcoin and Liquid, offering reliable access to layer-2 data, including Confidential Transactions and multi-asset support.
The new Blockstream Explorer API is a fully capable primary data source, allowing developers to build on it from the ground up without the complexity of planning disaster recovery. For businesses relying on blockchain data at scale, redundancy is key. Relying solely on self-hosted infrastructure can create a single point of failure. In these cases, the Blockstream Explorer API serves as both a reliable failover solution and a robust alternative to in-house infrastructure. Its dedicated infrastructure ensures uninterrupted access even if a primary provider experiences downtime. With a 99.9% Service Level Agreement (SLA), the Blockstream Explorer API delivers enterprise-grade reliability, making it an essential tool for wallets, exchanges, and services that demand performance, scalability, and security.
To guarantee uptime and performance, the service is backed by redundant nodes running in parallel, ensuring uninterrupted access even in the event of hardware failures or network issues. For those who prefer to maintain their own high-volume infrastructure, Esplora—the open-source technology behind the Blockstream Explorer API—remains available for self-hosting. Running your own Esplora instance, however, comes with significant infrastructure requirements. You will need a fully synced Bitcoin node, which currently requires around 600GB of storage. Additionally, Esplora itself needs its own data store of approximately 1.7TB, requiring high-speed storage—SSDs at a minimum—to handle indexing and queries effectively. Combine that with a minimum of 16 CPUs, 64GB RAM and bandwidth to manage the load, and it quickly becomes a complex, resource-intensive setup. For many, the managed Blockstream Explorer API offers a far more practical solution, delivering similar capabilities without the operational burden.
Privacy is a core principle of the Blockstream Explorer API. By separating transaction broadcasting from syncing, the API minimizes exposure risks while ensuring reliable data access. With no persistent logging and no tracking, developers can integrate blockchain data without compromising user privacy.
Our transparent pricing model ensures cost certainty. The free tier includes 500k requests per month—ideal for testing and small-scale projects. As usage grows, pricing adjusts predictably, with a clear cost cap to prevent surprise expenses, even during high-traffic months. This approach provides flexibility while keeping costs manageable for businesses of all sizes. Projects can configure the Blockstream Explorer API as a backup solution at no upfront cost, with billing only triggered once usage exceeds the free-tier threshold, ensuring a risk-free safety net.
We will also be introducing a self-service dashboard with real-time monitoring to help teams manage API keys and stay updated on API usage, performance metrics, and network status. The upcoming Electrum RPC service will provide even more comprehensive blockchain access, further enhancing the capabilities of the API.
A Solution for the Bitcoin Ecosystem
The Blockstream Explorer API has been trusted by numerous projects, including wallets like Blockstream Green, Aqua Wallet, Sparrow, SideSwap, and Nunchuk. Its technology is also used in libraries such as the Bitcoin Development Kit (BDK), Green Development Kit (GDK), and Liquid Wallet Kit (LWK), as well as tools like the BitGo Recovery Wizard. It’s the backbone for projects needing reliable blockchain data. Mempool.space, a widely-used blockchain explorer, was originally built on this technology, demonstrating its foundational role in the ecosystem.
With a history of continuous improvement since its launch in 2018, the Blockstream Explorer project has evolved to meet the changing needs of the Bitcoin community. From its initial release to the integration of Liquid support, providing a robust API for building Bitcoin applications, and now enhanced infrastructure with a 99.9% SLA, it remains a trusted and reliable solution for developers and businesses alike.
Get Started Today
Start harnessing the power of the new Blockstream Explorer today. Visit blockstream.info/explorer-api to apply for the open beta and gain instant access. With our free tier, which includes 30 days of free usage for testing, exploring the API is risk-free, empowering your projects without financial commitment.
As your project grows, our transparent and flexible pricing model scales with you, ensuring that you have access to the data you need at a cost that aligns with your usage. For enterprise-grade applications requiring higher volume and dedicated infrastructure, such as exchanges, high-volume wallets, payment processors, and institutional custody solutions, we also offer tailored plans featuring geographically distributed single-tenant instances to support large-scale Bitcoin and Liquid operations.
Launching soon, our self-service dashboard will simplify API key management, usage monitoring, and integration.
Not ready to switch? Sign up and use Blockstream Explorer as a backup—free until needed, with billing only when usage exceeds free-tier limits ensuring a risk-free safety net.