What a Solana DAS API workload really costs: per-call credits vs flat plans

The Digital Asset Standard (DAS) API is how Solana applications read NFTs, compressed NFTs and fungible tokens without scanning accounts themselves: one call returns the assets a wallet owns, a collection's members, or the proof a compressed-NFT transfer needs. Because each call is answered from an index and can return large pages, providers price DAS above ordinary reads.

Helius's credits documentation (read 2026-09-22) states the weights plainly — a standard RPC call is 1 credit and each DAS call is 10 — but stops at the unit price. A team budgeting a DAS-heavy product needs the next step: a workload, priced under each model, with the point where the answer flips. That is this post. For a method-by-method reference of DAS itself, see our DAS reference; for the general theory of credits, compute units and flat plans, see RPC credits vs flat pricing.

What DAS calls are and why they cost more

A DAS method answers a question that the base Solana RPC cannot answer in one call. getAssetsByOwner returns every asset a wallet holds, with metadata, paged. getAssetsByGroup returns the members of a collection. searchAssets combines conditions. getAssetProof returns the Merkle proof a compressed NFT needs to be transferred. All of them read from an index built alongside the chain rather than from live account state — responses carry a last_indexed_slot — and the work per call is larger and less predictable than a getBalance.

Providers recover that cost in one of three ways:

1. A per-call weight inside a credit allowance. Each plan includes a number of credits a month; a DAS call spends more credits than a standard call; beyond the allowance you pay overage or upgrade.
2. A per-call price. You prepay and each DAS call has a price per million.
3. Access by plan. DAS is part of a plan or it is not, and calls are not weighted.

The three produce very different bills for the same traffic.

The credit model: weight × calls, plus a DAS rate cap

These are Helius's published plans as recorded in our provider dataset:

The credit weights come from helius.dev/docs/billing/credits, verified 2026-09-22: 1 credit per standard call, 10 per DAS call.

With DAS at 10 credits a call, the monthly credit need is DAS calls × 10, and every ordinary RPC call your app makes spends from the same allowance. There is also a second constraint that is easy to miss: each plan caps DAS requests per second. A workload whose average fits the Developer allowance but whose peak is 20 DAS calls per second does not fit Developer at all; it needs Business.

The pay-per-call model

Triton One publishes a prepaid, pay-as-you-go rate (triton.one/pricing, verified 2026-09-22): DAS calls at $50 per million, plus bandwidth at $0.08 per GB, against a $125 minimum deposit that is valid for 12 months. It states no fixed request-rate entitlement on its pricing page. The bill is proportional to calls, with no step between plans — cheap at low volume, linear at high volume. Bandwidth is not modelled below, because it depends on page sizes we cannot know for you, so every Triton figure here is a lower bound.

The flat model: DAS by plan, not by call

On Triport, DAS is gated by plan and not metered per call:

• The 7-day trial has no DAS access.
• Basic ($20): "Part of the method set", as the pricing table puts it. The plan matrix does not name which methods, so if your product depends on a specific one, do not plan on Basic.
• Pro ($249) and above: "All methods" — every DAS method we sell: getAsset, getAssetProof, getAssetsByGroup, getAssetsByOwner, getTokenAccounts and searchAssets.

A DAS call carries no weight and there is no credit allowance to run out of — plans are a flat monthly price with no credits, compute units or overage. Responses show it: on 2026-09-22 a getAsset call answered with X-RateLimit-Category: sol_das and X-RateLimit-Limit: -1, the value our gateway uses for "no per-second budget for this category". That is not the same as unlimited capacity, and we do not publish a DAS requests-per-second figure; if your peak is a hard requirement, test it during evaluation. The product details are on the DAS API feature page.

A worked workload

Take a wallet app that shows each user's NFTs and tokens. Assumptions, stated so you can replace them:

• 10,000 active users a day;
• each session makes 8 DAS calls (three pages of getAssetsByOwner, five getAsset look-ups);
• 30 days a month, so 2.4 million DAS calls a month;
• traffic is uneven: the busiest second of the day sees 20 DAS calls;
• ordinary RPC calls are ignored here, which flatters the credit model slightly, since they spend the same credits.

Helius. 2.4M calls × 10 credits = 24M credits. Developer includes 10M; the overage would be 14M credits × $5 per million = $70, for $119 in total — but Developer allows 10 DAS requests per second, and the peak is 20. The smallest plan that allows 20 is Business: $499, with 76M credits to spare.

Triton. 2.4M × $50 per million = $120 plus bandwidth, drawn from a prepaid deposit.

Triport. The workload needs getAssetsByOwner and getAsset with certainty, so Pro: $249, whatever the call count.

The same app at other sizes, same assumptions about call mix:

At the top row a flat plan is the expensive choice, and we say so. At the bottom row the credit plan is right at its allowance edge: a single extra ordinary call per DAS call would push it into overage.

Break-even logic, not a winner

Two break-even points fall out of the published prices.

• Against pay-per-call: $249 ÷ $50 per million = about 5 million DAS calls a month. Below that, Triton's rate (before bandwidth) is cheaper than Triport Pro; above it, Pro is cheaper.
• Against credits: Developer plus overage reaches $249 at 40M overage credits, i.e. 50M credits, or 5 million DAS calls a month — but only while your peak stays within Developer's 10 DAS requests per second. Once the peak needs 50 per second, the credit option starts at $499 regardless of volume.

So the variables that decide your bill are, in order: the peak DAS rate, the monthly DAS volume, how many ordinary calls share the credit allowance, and response size where bandwidth is billed. Plug your own numbers into the DAS cost calculator, and see the RPC pricing index for the dated source of every competitor price.

When per-call pricing is the better model

• Low or bursty-but-small volume. A few hundred thousand DAS calls a month is cheapest on a per-call price or a small credit plan. A flat Pro plan is paying for headroom you do not use.
• You need a published per-second DAS figure. Credit plans state a DAS requests-per-second cap per plan; we do not publish one for DAS. If a contractual peak matters more than the monthly bill, that is a reason to choose a plan that states it.
• One method on Basic. If the method you need turns out to be in Basic's subset, $20 beats every row above — but confirm it first, because the plan matrix does not name the subset.

For the full per-plan picture across networks, including the rest of the Solana limits, see pricing.

When this is the wrong approach

• You need live account state. DAS answers from an index. For the current state of one account, read it with getAccountInfo; for a stream of changes, subscribe.
• You are pricing a whole product, not DAS. Ordinary reads, sends and streams usually dominate the bill. Price them together with the RPC cost calculator rather than optimizing the DAS line alone.
• The prices have moved. Every competitor number here was verified on 2026-09-22 and will age. Re-check before you sign anything.

Sources

1. Helius, Credits — https://www.helius.dev/docs/billing/credits, read 2026-09-22 (1 credit per standard call; getProgramAccounts and each DAS call 10).
2. Helius, Pricing — https://www.helius.dev/pricing, read 2026-09-22 (Free $0 / 1M credits / 2 DAS req/s; Developer $49 / 10M / 10; Business $499 / 100M / 50; Professional $999 / 200M / 100; overage $5 per 1M credits on paid plans). Recorded in our provider dataset with last_verified 2026-09-22.
3. Triton One, Pricing — https://triton.one/pricing, read 2026-09-22 (DAS $50 per 1M calls plus $0.08/GB; $125 minimum prepaid deposit valid 12 months; no fixed request-rate entitlement stated).
4. Triport, getAssetsByOwner and getAsset references; DAS feature gating from the plan matrix (trial none, Basic part of the set, Pro and above all six methods), as shown on pricing. getAsset and getAssetsByOwner answered on production on 2026-09-22 with X-RateLimit-Category: sol_das, X-RateLimit-Limit: -1 and a last_indexed_slot field.
5. Arithmetic: 10,000 × 8 × 30 = 2,400,000; 2,400,000 × 10 = 24,000,000 credits; (24M − 10M) × $5/1M = $70; 2,400,000 × $50/1M = $120; $249 ÷ $50 = 4.98M; $200 ÷ $5 × 1M = 40M credits → 50M credits ÷ 10 = 5M calls.