Index Stellar Network Data with OnFinality
Learn how to deploy a Stellar Indexer with OnFinality and SubQuery for faster data access. Scale your dAppt today with reliable RPC nodes
The Stellar Network has long been recognized for its fast, low-cost transactions and global reach. But to truly unlock the potential of building on Stellar, developers need powerful tools to query, organize, and analyze blockchain data. That’s where a Stellar Indexer comes in.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through deploying a Stellar Indexer with OnFinality and SubQuery, giving your application scalable access to reliable RPC nodes and flexible indexing solutions.
What is a Stellar Indexer?
A Stellar Indexer is a service that extracts, organizes, and structures data from the Stellar network, making it simple for developers to query and use. Instead of pulling raw ledger data or relying solely on Horizon—which can be limited or inefficient—an indexer provides tailored APIs that surface exactly the information your application needs.
For Stellar developers, this means:
- Faster access to payment, asset, and account data
- Reduced strain on Horizon and RPC endpoints
- Simpler building of apps for remittances, stablecoins, and tokenized assets
- Scalable support for cross-border payments and financial services
Why SubQuery + OnFinality for Stellar?
SubQuery is a powerful open-source framework for building custom blockchain indexers. With SubQuery, you can extract, transform, and serve blockchain data to your dApp using a flexible GraphQL API.
By publishing your SubQuery project on OnFinality, you benefit from:
- One-click deployment — No need to run your own infrastructure
- Auto-scaling infrastructure — Scales with your app's usage
- Reliable RPC Node Access – OnFinality provides globally distributed RPC endpoints, ensuring low-latency and high-uptime connections.
Together, OnFinality and SubQuery provide a powerful solution to quickly deploy, manage, and scale your Stellar Indexer.
How to Deploy a Stellar Indexer with OnFinality
🛠 Prerequisites
Before getting started, ensure you have:
- A working SubQuery project for the Stellar network
- A GitHub repository or IPFS-hosted version of your project - today we'll be using QmXRtg1LQTfPnJRqApQGC3AYv77fUKLGP1HtRD9vdMEba4
- An account on OnFinality’s Indexing Service
Step 1: Log In to OnFinality’s Indexing Service
To create your first project, head to OnFinality Indexing Service. You'll need to authenticate with your GitHub account to login.
On first login, you will be asked to authorise OnFinality’s Indexing Service. In this step, you can also request or grant access to your GitHub Organisation account so you can post SubQuery projects under your GitHub Organisation instead of your personal account.
OnFinality Indexing Service is where you manage all your hosted projects uploaded to the OnFinality Indexing Service platform. You can create, delete, and even upgrade projects all from this application.
Step 2: Create Your Stellar Indexing Project
There are two methods to create a project in the OnFinality Indexing Service: you can use the UI or directly via the subql cli tool
Using the UI
Start by clicking on "Create Project". You'll be taken to the new project form. Start by selecting what project type you would like to deploy (SubQuery), and then follow the steps and enter the following (you can change this in the future):
- Project Name: Name your project.
- Description: Provide a description of your project.
- Database: Premium customers can access dedicated databases to host production SubQuery projects from. If this interests you, you can contact sales@onfinality.io to have this setting enabled.
- Visible in Explorer: If selected, this will show the project from the public explorer to share with the community.
Create your project and you'll see it on your OnFinality’s Indexing Project's list. Next, we just need to deploy the first version of it.
Using the CLI
You can also use @subql/cli to create a new deployment of your project to our Indexing Service. Please follow the guide on how to create a new project on the OnFinality’s Indexing Service in the CLI documentation.
Step 4: Deploy your First Version
While creating a project will setup the display details of the project, you must deploy a version of it before it becomes operational. Deploying a version triggers an indexing operation to start, and sets up the required query service to start accepting GraphQL requests. You can also deploy new versions to existing projects here.
With your new project, you'll see a "Deploy your first version" button. Click this, and fill in the required information about the deployment:
- CID: Provide your IPFS deployment CID from Step 1
- Manifest: The details are obtained from the contents of the provided CID, used to confirm that you have the correct deployment
- Query Version: This is the version of SubQuery's query service that you want to run this project on. We suggest using the latest version
- Advanced Settings: There are numerous advanced settings which are explained via the in built help feature.
You can use the limited public Stellar Network endpoint https://horizon.stellar.org and the Soroban Network endpoint https://soroban-rpc.mainnet.stellar.gateway.fm to get started.
Step 5: Connect to your Project
Once your deployment has successfully completed and our nodes have indexed your data from the chain, you'll be able to connect to your project via the displayed GraphQL Query endpoint.
Alternatively, you can click on the three dots next to the title of your project, and view it on SubQuery Explorer. There you can use the in browser playground to get started.
Additional Resources
For deeper insights, check out these resources:
- Stellar Documentation – Official guides for Stellar developers.
- SubQuery Academy – Tutorials on building indexers with SubQuery.
- OnFinality Docs – How to use OnFinality’s RPC and indexer services.
Common Questions about Stellar Indexing
Who needs to index Stellar data?
Any team building wallets, payment platforms, remittance services, stablecoin apps, or asset issuance solutions on Stellar needs to index Stellar data to deliver fast, reliable, and structured blockchain queries.
How do I build my first Stellar Indexer?
The easiest way to build a Stellar Indexer is with SubQuery. Simply initialize a project, configure your Stellar data sources, and deploy it on OnFinality Indexing. You can follow the official SubQuery docs for step-by-step guidance.
What is the best data indexer for Stellar?
The best data indexer for Stellar is SubQuery. It provides flexible, high-performance indexing tailored to Stellar’s payments and asset issuance use cases, and it deploys seamlessly with OnFinality’s scalable infrastructure.
How do I choose the right Stellar RPC provider?
When selecting a Stellar RPC provider, prioritize speed, scalability, and reliability. OnFinality delivers high-performance RPC nodes with worldwide coverage, ensuring developers building on Stellar always have a fast and stable connection.
Ready to Build on Stellar Network?
You now have everything in place to create fast, scalable, data-rich dApps on Stellar Network—powered by OnFinality’s robust infrastructure and SubQuery’s flexible data indexing.
Need help? Contact support@onfinality.io or join our Telegram community.
Let’s build the future of Web3 on Stellar Network 🚀
About OnFinality
OnFinality is a blockchain infrastructure platform that saves web3 builders time and makes their lives easier. OnFinality delivers scalable API endpoints, nodes, and indexers for the biggest blockchain networks and empowers developers to automatically test, deploy, scale and monitor their own blockchain nodes in minutes.
To date, OnFinality has served hundreds of billions of RPC requests, supports over 125 networks including Avalanche, BNB Chain, Cosmos, Polkadot, Ethereum, and Polygon, and is continuously expanding these mission-critical services so developers can build the decentralised future, faster!