getRecentPerformanceSamples

getRecentPerformanceSamples returns a series of recent performance snapshots from Solana, the high-throughput Proof-of-Stake chain whose native token is SOL. Each sample covers a fixed time window (roughly 60 seconds) and reports the slot it ended at, numTransactions, numSlots, samplePeriodSecs, and numNonVoteTransactions. Because Solana runs at very high throughput, these samples are the standard way to derive live transactions-per-second and watch how busy the network is without scanning individual blocks. The optional limit caps how many samples come back (up to 720, the most recent first). Call it against https://solana.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY as a JSON-RPC 2.0 POST.

Use cases

• Compute Solana's network TPS by dividing numTransactions by samplePeriodSecs for each sample.
• Chart throughput trends across the recent windows to show how load on the network rises and falls over the last several minutes or hours.
• Separate validator vote traffic from real user load by using numNonVoteTransactions, which strips out the consensus votes that dominate raw counts.

Parameters

Response

Example request

1curl https://solana.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
4  -d '{
5  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
6  "id": 1,
7  "method": "getRecentPerformanceSamples",
8  "params": [
9    5
10  ]
11}'

Errors & troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• Each sample is a window (about 60 seconds), not an instantaneous reading — always divide by that sample's samplePeriodSecs to get a per-second rate rather than treating the raw count as TPS.
• numTransactions includes Solana's consensus vote transactions, which make up a large share of activity. For user-facing throughput use numNonVoteTransactions instead.

Supported networks

• Mainnet
• Devnet

See also

• getTransactionCount
• getEpochInfo