Best for: Developers and careful users who want the official, open-source view of mainnet, devnet, testnet or their own RPC node.
Speed8.6
Token data7.8
Readability8.2
Developer tools9.8
What we like
- +Official and open source under the MIT licence
- +Cluster switcher with Mainnet Beta, Devnet, Testnet and Custom RPC
- +IDL tab, Anchor decoding and a verified-build tab
- +Shows Solana Attestation Service accounts and Token-2022 extensions
What could be better
- −No CSV export for transaction history
- −Few market analytics, holder rankings or labels
- −Denser, more technical wording for beginners
Every Solana developer ends up with explorer.solana.com in their bookmarks. The official Solana Explorer is the Solana Foundation’s own window onto the chain: plain, free, open source, and the only major explorer that lets you point it at any cluster or RPC endpoint you like. We used it for months next to Solscan and Helius’s Orb, and this review covers what the interface shows, which features are genuinely unique, and where it leaves you reaching for another tab.
What is the official Solana Explorer?
The official Solana Explorer is a web explorer at explorer.solana.com, maintained by the Solana Foundation and published as open source on GitHub. It shows transactions, accounts, tokens, blocks and programs for Solana’s mainnet and test clusters.
“Official” here means it is run by the foundation behind the network, not that its data is more correct. Every explorer reads the same ledger through RPC nodes, so a confirmed transaction looks identical everywhere. What the official explorer gives you is neutrality: no token promotions, no ads, no trading widgets, and code anyone can audit. The repository at github.com/solana-foundation/explorer is MIT-licensed, with a licence line reading “Copyright (c) 2023 Solana Labs” from its earlier history. You may see claims online that Anza runs it; we found nothing to support that.
- URL
- explorer.solana.com
- Maintainer
- Solana Foundation
- Source code
- GitHub, MIT licence
- Account needed
- No
- Clusters
- Mainnet Beta, Devnet, Testnet, Custom RPC
- Program verification
- Via OtterSec's verify.osec.io
- CSV export
- Not offered
- Native mobile app
- None; responsive website
A tour of the Solana Explorer interface
The Solana Explorer interface is a single search bar, a cluster selector and tabbed detail pages. It looks spare next to Solscan, and that is deliberate: every field maps closely to what the RPC returns.
Home page. The front page shows the cluster you are on and live network figures such as supply and recent performance. It is a useful sanity check that the cluster is producing slots; for a fuller live view, see our network stats page.
Transaction page. Paste an 87- or 88-character signature and you get the overview first (result, timestamp, slot, fee, compute units consumed), then an Account Input(s) list showing which accounts were writable or signers, then each instruction decoded where the program is known, and finally the program logs. The compute-unit details are more precise than on most explorers, which is why developers debugging a failed transaction come here. Our transaction explorer guide walks through each field.
Account page. An address page shows SOL balance, owner program and data size, then tabs that change with the account type: token holdings for a wallet, history, and decoded data for program-owned accounts. Anchor accounts are decoded into named fields when the program’s IDL is available.
Token page. A mint shows supply, decimals, mint and freeze authority, and for Token-2022 mints a token-extensions tab listing each extension. What you will not find is a ranked holder list with percentages; for that, Solscan is quicker. See our token explorer guide for which authority settings to worry about.
Clusters and custom RPC: the feature nobody else matches
The cluster switcher is the official explorer’s biggest advantage. One dropdown moves the whole explorer between Mainnet Beta, Devnet and Testnet, or points it at any RPC URL you enter.
Real SOL, real tokens
The production cluster. The word "beta" in its name is historical and does not mean the explorer is a test version.
Free test SOL
Devnet is where you deploy and test programs; Testnet is used mainly for validator and client testing.
Your own node
Enter any RPC URL, including a local test validator, and the full explorer reads from it.
This is why so many people search for a “Solana explorer beta”: the Mainnet Beta label sits right in the header. Newer features do tend to appear in the open repository first, so if something looks experimental, the commit history on GitHub is the best place to check what changed.
Custom RPC is the quiet hero for developers. Run a local validator, paste its URL, and you can inspect transactions from your own test suite with the same interface you use on mainnet. No other major explorer we reviewed does this. Our devnet and testnet explorer guide lists the public endpoints and their limits.
- Open the cluster menu Click the cluster name at the top right of explorer.solana.com.
- Pick a cluster or Custom RPC Choose Devnet or Testnet, or select Custom RPC and paste your endpoint URL.
- Check the URL The address bar now carries a cluster parameter, so links you share open on the same cluster.
- Search as usual Paste a signature, address or program ID; results come from the cluster you chose.
Developer tools: IDL tab, verified builds and more
For program work, the official explorer is the most complete free tool on Solana. Its source includes an IDL tab, Anchor account decoding, a verified-build tab, security.txt display, feature-gate pages, compute-unit profiling and instruction simulation.
The IDL tab on a program page shows the interface definition published on chain, so you can see instruction names, arguments and account layouts without hunting down the repository. The verified-build tab pulls data from OtterSec’s verification API at verify.osec.io and tells you whether the deployed bytecode matches a public source repository. That check, explained in the official verified builds guide, is the closest thing Solana has to “view verified source code”. Our program explorer guide shows how to read the result and what to do when a program is unverified.
Security.txt data, when a program publishes it, gives you a contact for reporting bugs. Feature-gate pages list protocol features and their activation status, which is handy while changes such as the move from 400 ms toward shorter slot times, or Alpenglow on testnet, roll through the network. The repository also exposes a public MCP endpoint at /mcp, so AI tools can query the explorer directly.
The public RPC limit matters: the default mainnet endpoint, api.mainnet-beta.solana.com, is rate-limited and not meant for production. If pages feel slow during busy periods, switching to your own RPC via Custom RPC usually fixes it.
SAS attestations on Solana Explorer
Solana Explorer is the one explorer we can confirm has code-level support for the Solana Attestation Service. Its source includes dedicated account and instruction cards for SAS attestations.
The Solana Attestation Service, announced by the Solana Foundation and the Solana Identity Group in May 2025, links verifiable credentials such as KYC status or geographic eligibility to wallets. On the official explorer, opening an attestation account shows its fields in a readable card rather than raw bytes, and transactions calling the SAS program decode their instructions. If you issue or check credentials, read our Solana Attestation Service guide for how the pieces fit together.
Limits: what the official explorer does not do
The official Solana Explorer is weakest where traders and accountants need help: exports, analytics and context. It shows what the chain says and very little else.
- No CSV export. There is no download button for wallet history. See our tax and CSV export guide for alternatives.
- Few analytics. No DeFi dashboards, NFT floor charts or trending tokens.
- Limited holder data. You can inspect token accounts, but you will not get a neat top-holders ranking with percentages.
- Few labels. Well-known programs are named, but exchange wallets and entities mostly appear as bare addresses.
- Technical wording. Terms such as “writable”, “signer” and “inner instructions” assume you know how Solana transactions work.
Note: "Transaction not found" on the official explorer usually means one of three things: you are on the wrong cluster, the transaction never landed because its blockhash expired after about 150 slots, or the public RPC is lagging. Check the cluster first.
Mobile experience
On a phone, explorer.solana.com is a responsive website rather than an app. Search, the cluster menu and transaction pages all work; long instruction lists and logs mean a lot of scrolling. For checking whether a payment landed it is perfectly usable, but Orb’s mobile layout is friendlier for reading history on the go.
Who should use Solana Explorer?
Use the official explorer if you build on Solana, verify programs, or want a neutral view without promotions. Choose something else if you mainly trade tokens or need exports.
Developers, auditors and security researchers will get the most out of it: custom RPC, IDLs, verified builds and precise compute-unit data are hard to beat. Careful everyday users benefit too, because the lack of token promotion makes it a calm place to double-check a mint. Traders and tax users should pair it with Solscan; our Solscan vs Solana Explorer comparison splits the jobs task by task, and the best Solana explorers ranking covers the rest of the field.
Verdict: 9.0 out of 10
The official Solana Explorer scores 9.0: near-perfect for developers, deliberately bare for everyone else. It is the only major explorer with a custom RPC option, it is open source, and its IDL, verified-build and SAS support are ahead of the competition. It gives up points for missing CSV export, thin token analytics and wording that assumes technical knowledge. Keep it bookmarked next to a commercial explorer and you will rarely be stuck. If you just want to check one signature quickly, you can also paste it into our lookup tool.
By the Solscanner research deskUpdated · Review methodology