The best Solana explorers of 2026, ranked

The best Solana explorer for most people in 2026 is still Solscan, but the gap has narrowed. Orb, which Helius launched on 29 October 2025 to replace XRAY, now reads complex transactions better than anything else we tested, and the official Solana Explorer keeps adding developer features to its public repository. This ranking scores seven Solana block explorers on the same test set and tells you which one to open for each job, including a few specialist tools that don’t fit the “explorer” label but belong in your bookmarks.

How we ranked the best Solana block explorers

We ran every explorer against the same fixed set of real mainnet items: simple SOL transfers, multi-hop Jupiter swaps, failed transactions, a busy wallet, token mints with and without active mint authority, NFT mints and a set of upgradeable programs. Each explorer gets a score from 1 to 10 in four areas, and the final score is a weighted average.

• Speed: time to first useful result for signatures and addresses, and how fresh new transactions are.
• Token data: holder lists, supply, authorities, USD prices and spam filtering.
• Readability: whether a normal person can understand what a transaction did without reading raw instructions.
• Developer tools: cluster support, IDLs, verified builds, logs, compute units and API access.

We also weigh maintenance. An explorer that has stopped shipping updates loses points even if its old features still work, because stale prices and undecoded new programs are a real risk when you check money. The full weighting and test list are on our methodology page. Nobody paid for a position.

The 2026 ranking: best Solana explorers in order

The ranking widget above shows the scores at a glance. Here is the reasoning behind each position, with what each explorer does best and where it lets you down.

1. Solscan: 9.4/10

Solscan is the best all-round Solana blockchain explorer and the most popular one. Etherscan bought it in January 2024, when it reported about 3 million monthly users, and it has kept its lead on breadth. Search is fast, token pages show holder lists and supply, and the documented feature list includes an analytic dashboard, DeFi and NFT dashboards, a transaction map, address labels, Anchor-verified programs, a watchlist and a notification bot. CSV export from the Transfers and Holders tabs is the main reason tax-minded users stay.

Where it falls short: busy transaction pages can feel dense, and some decoded swaps still show more raw detail than a beginner wants. The API free tier is limited, and the Lite plan costs $49 per month for 20 million compute units with some endpoints excluded. Full details are in our Solscan review.

2. Orb by Helius: 9.2/10

Orb is the most readable Solana explorer we’ve tested. It uses Helius archival data to turn instructions into plain-language actions, adds AI explanations for transactions and tokens, filters spam, and lets you filter wallet history by slot and time. It is free, needs no signup, and works well on a phone. Old XRAY links now redirect to orbmarkets.io.

Where it falls short: Helius’s launch material is about mainnet, so devnet and testnet work still belongs on the official explorer, and the promised Apache 2.0 open-source release was a plan rather than a finished fact at the time of writing. We also didn’t find a CSV export comparable to Solscan’s. Read the Orb review for our test results.

3. Solana Explorer: 9.0/10

The official Solana Explorer at explorer.solana.com is maintained by the Solana Foundation and open source under the MIT licence. It supports Mainnet Beta, Devnet, Testnet and a custom RPC, and its source includes an IDL tab, Anchor account decoding, a verified-build tab fed by OtterSec, Token-2022 extension views, feature-gate pages, compute unit profiling and support for Solana Attestation Service accounts.

Where it falls short: token pages are thin compared with Solscan or Birdeye, there are no holder analytics or USD portfolio totals worth mentioning, and wallet history is a plain list of signatures. It is a reference tool first. See our Solana Explorer review.

4. Birdeye: 8.7/10

Birdeye is a token analytics platform rather than a classic block explorer, and it’s the best tool here for researching a token you might trade. It covers Solana plus Sui, Ethereum and other EVM chains, with price charts, trades, holders and wallet profit and loss, and sells a Data API with REST and WebSocket access on usage-based plans.

Where it falls short: it tells you little about a transaction’s instructions, logs or compute units, and it doesn’t replace a real explorer for checking a payment. Our Birdeye review covers the launch explorer for new listings.

5. OKLink: 8.0/10

OKLink, operated by the OKX group, is a multi-chain explorer with a Solana section. It suits researchers who follow funds across several chains and want one interface with entity labels and investigation tools.

Where it falls short: Solana is one chain among many, so Solana-specific decoding and new program support tend to lag the native explorers. We found it fine for addresses but less clear on complex swaps. Details in the OKLink review.

6. Solana Beach: 7.6/10

Solana Beach, launched in March 2020 by Staking Facilities, calls itself a real-time network monitor, validator explorer and wallet lookup service. It is still one of the clearest places to browse validators, stake and epoch data, and it publishes API documentation.

Where it falls short: transaction and token pages are basic by 2026 standards, and it isn’t where we’d go to understand a DeFi transaction. Read the Solana Beach review.

7. SolanaFM: 7.2/10

SolanaFM, founded in 2021 by students in Singapore, pioneered human-readable transaction flows on Solana. Jupiter acquired it in September 2024. The site still loads, but in our September 2026 test several dashboard widgets stayed on “Loading”, and Helius calls it largely unmaintained.

Where it falls short: maintenance. We keep it in the list because it still works for basic lookups and no shutdown has been announced, but we wouldn’t make it your main tool. Our SolanaFM review tracks its status.

Best Solana explorer by use case

Different jobs have different winners. This table is the short version; the notes below explain the picks.

Use case	Best pick	Also good
Developers	Solana Explorer	Orb
Traders	Birdeye	DexScreener, Solscan
NFT collectors	Solscan	Orb
Validators and stakers	Solana Beach	validators.app, Stakewiz
Tax and CSV export	Solscan	Crypto tax software

Developers. The best Solana block explorer for developers is the official one, because it switches clusters, reads IDLs, shows verified builds and runs on open-source code you can audit or self-host. Pair it with Orb when you need to explain a production transaction to someone else.

Traders. Birdeye for token research and DexScreener for pairs and liquidity pools, with Solscan to confirm the mint address and check holders. Our guide to DeFi and DEX explorers explains how these tools fit together.

NFT collectors. Solscan’s NFT dashboard and Orb’s decoded history both handle mints and transfers well. Floor prices and rarity usually come from marketplaces, which our NFT explorer guide covers.

Validators and stakers. Solana Beach is still the most complete explorer-style view of validators, with dedicated dashboards filling the gaps. Our validator and staking guide compares commission and performance data sources.

Tax. Solscan wins because of CSV export, but explorers don’t calculate cost basis. Read the tax export guide before filing season.

Other Solana tools worth bookmarking

Several tools that people call “explorers” are really trading terminals, pair trackers or validator dashboards. They’re excellent at one job and weak at general lookups, which is why they aren’t in the ranking.

• DexScreener: the standard pair explorer for Solana DEXs. It shows pools, liquidity and volume, and its free public API allows 60 requests per minute on profile endpoints and 300 per minute on pair endpoints. It’s also where our lookup tool gets DEX market data. See dexscreener.com.
• Photon: a Solana trading terminal by TinyAstro, built for fast memecoin trades. Treat it as a trading tool, not a place to verify payments.
• GMGN: a multi-chain meme-trading terminal covering Solana, BSC, Base and Ethereum, with a 1% fee per trade and an Android app.
• Solana Compass: a project directory with staking and validator data and ecosystem news.
• validators.app: free validator performance data maintained by Block Logic.
• Stakewiz: a validator-selection dashboard with a public API, useful when you compare commission and uptime.
• Jito Bundle Explorer: the official explorer for Jito bundles and tips at explorer.jito.wtf, the tool to open when you want to see MEV bundles and tip payments.

Our own browser-based lookup tool also fits here: it isn’t a full explorer, but it reads the chain directly from public RPC nodes and links out to Solscan, Solana Explorer and Orb for every result.

SVM explorers beyond Solana mainnet

The Solana Virtual Machine now runs outside Solana mainnet, and those networks need their own explorers. A Solana mainnet explorer won’t find an Eclipse transaction, so always match the explorer to the chain.

Eclipse is an Ethereum layer 2 that executes transactions with the SVM. It has two explorers, Eclipsescan and the Eclipse explorer at explorer.eclipse.xyz. Addresses and signatures look exactly like Solana ones, which is the most common cause of “transaction not found” confusion.

Helium moved its network to Solana on 18 April 2023 under HIP 70. Helium tokens and accounts therefore live on Solana mainnet, and the normal Solana explorers in this ranking show them. The old explorer.helium.com address now redirects to world.helium.com; we couldn’t confirm what that site currently offers, so use Solscan or Orb for on-chain checks.

How often this ranking changes

We re-test the full list whenever an explorer ships a major change and at least once a quarter. The last full pass was in September 2026, shortly after Solana’s slot time was cut from 400 ms to roughly 250–300 ms, so freshness was part of the test.

The biggest movement in the past year came from Orb. When XRAY began redirecting to Orb, it went from “nice open-source alternative” to a serious challenger to Solscan. At the other end, SolanaFM has slipped to last place because it shows few signs of active maintenance since the Jupiter acquisition. If Orb adds CSV export and keeps its readability lead, the top spot could change hands in the next update. If you want to see why the scores are this close, check any transaction you know well on Solscan and Orb side by side and see which one tells you what happened faster. For the broader picture of how explorers work, go back to our Solana explorer overview.