by Hedera (network governed by the Hedera Council)Data anchoring and timestamping
A public ledger service that orders and timestamps messages for a published fee of $0.0008 each, paid in HBAR.
Ordered, consensus-timestamped records on a public ledger at a published $0.0008 per message, with no contract or vendor account.
HCS gives each message a consensus timestamp and a place in an ordered topic on the Hedera public ledger, and mirror nodes keep the history for anyone to query. The fee is published in USD per message, so a buyer can price an audit trail before writing code. Teams that would otherwise run their own notary service, or pay a vendor per proof, can submit hashes directly and verify them through public or self-run mirror nodes.
Against 3 other products we reviewed in Data anchoring and timestamping: what you pay for with each, the five access facts, the plan limits we recorded and each review's bottom line. The note under the table says how each one was checked.
| Metric | Hedera Consensus Service | OriginStamp | Bernstein | Truestamp |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Worth the priceOrdered, consensus-timestamped records on a public ledger at a published $0.0008 per message, with no contract or vendor account. | Saves engineering timeAnchor your hashes to Bitcoin and Ethereum through one REST call, without running wallets, nodes or Merkle batching yourself. | Compliance includedCourt-oriented proof of authorship for IP files: Bitcoin anchoring plus EU qualified timestamps, without the vendor seeing your files. | Saves engineering timeProofs that verify offline with an open-source CLI, committed to two public chains, and free for 50 items a month. |
| Overall score | 4.8Best | 3.8 | 3.7 | 3.5 |
| Free option | Paid only | –Not measured | Paid only | Free plan |
| Card to start | –Not measured | –Not measured | –Not measured | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Sales call required | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $0.0008/message | –Not measured | $54/mo | $0 |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Custom quote | Tiered | Tiered |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Prices hidden | Public prices | Prices hidden |
| What it anchors to | Hedera public ledger (messages on a topic) | Bitcoin and Ethereum (Merkle root per batch) | Bitcoin, plus EU and China timestamp authorities | Stellar and Bitcoin (epoch roots of its own ledger) |
| Billing unit | $0.0008 per message, paid in HBAR | Offer based on timestamps and proofs | Registration credit (one project version, up to 99 files) | Items a month per plan; paid tiers not on sale |
| Free option | Testnet only | Free web tool for single proofs; test API key on request | None; certificate validation is free | 50 items a month, 90-day retention |
| Reference scenario (100,000 hashes/mo) | $80, one hash per message, computed | Priced by sales | Not offered (no API) | No plan on sale |
| Proof you keep | No proof file; records on mirror nodes | Downloadable certificate or raw proof | PDF certificate | Self-contained proof bundle (JSON or binary) |
| Verify without the vendor | Open-source mirror node you can run | Manual steps documented | Manual steps documented; browser validator | Open-source CLI, offline |
| Only the hash leaves your systems | Yes, you choose the message content | Yes | No; files uploaded encrypted | Yes; content can also be redacted |
| Qualified timestamps (eIDAS) | No | eIDAS compatibility on request | EU qualified on Scale and Enterprise | No (terms say not qualified) |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Node data centres must be SOC 2 Type 2 | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| API and webhooks | SDKs, mirror node REST and gRPC; no webhooks | REST API, batch hashes, webhooks | None | REST, GraphQL, CLI, MCP; webhooks on paid tiers |
| SSO | Not applicable (key-based accounts) | Not listed | Enterprise plan, one-time setup fee | Not listed |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, HCS is the cheapest way here to put hashes on a public ledger at a price you can compute. You build the proof handling yourself, and there is no plan, contract or vendor audit report. | From its public pages, OriginStamp is a long-running anchoring API with two chains, batching and webhooks. The price is an offer, and a few docs pages describe an older anchoring method. | From its public pages, Bernstein is the most legally oriented option here, with EU qualified timestamps on a self-serve plan. It is a web app for IP files, not an anchoring API, from $54 a month. | From its public pages, Truestamp has the strongest proof portability here: two chains, self-contained bundles and an open-source offline verifier. Only the free plan can be used today. |
Evidence: Hedera Consensus Service: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; OriginStamp: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Bernstein: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Truestamp: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
Review from public pages
Written from Hedera Consensus Service's public pages (pricing, security or privacy, and docs) as read on Oct 15, 2026. We did not sign up, and no hands-on run is published yet.
We read the Hedera Consensus Service page, the network fees table, the fee model, mirror node and account creation docs, and the submit-message reference on Oct 15, 2026; we did not create an account or submit a message for this review. HCS is a network service rather than a SaaS app: there is no plan to choose, only a fee schedule set in USD and paid in HBAR at the live exchange rate.
The pricing pieces are all public. A topic costs $0.01 to create and each message $0.0008, with the first 100 bytes of payload included and $0.00000068 per byte above that. The fees page calls its tables a low-end estimate: extras such as more signatures raise the fee. The docs ask you not to call Hedera a blockchain; it is a public, proof-of-stake distributed ledger whose consensus nodes are run by the Hedera Council.
What surprised us is the account step. The Developer Portal creates testnet and previewnet accounts but not mainnet ones; for mainnet the docs point to a supported wallet or an existing account holder.
At $0.0008 per message, 100,000 single-hash messages cost $80 a month by the fee table.
vs KAS Anchor API: OriginStamp and the KAS Anchor API are priced by offer; Bernstein has no API.
One message carries up to 1,024 bytes, so one Merkle root per batch covers many hashes. BatchTransaction also groups transactions in one network call.
SDKs and node software are open source under the Hiero project, and you can run your own mirror node to read the record.
A topic can have a submit key, so only parties holding it can post messages.
Verification reads the message and its consensus timestamp from a mirror node; there is no receipt format meant to be checked offline.
Workaround: Store the transaction ID, topic and sequence number with each hash, or run your own mirror node.
Without your own Merkle batching, every hash is a separate $0.0008 message.
Workaround: Submit a Merkle root per batch and keep the branches yourself.
The docs require node data centres to be SOC 2 Type 2, but no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report for Hedera itself is stated.
The Developer Portal does not create mainnet accounts, and fees are paid in HBAR.
HCS is pay per transaction: $0.0008 per message, $0.01 per topic, $0.05 per account, with fees set in USD and charged in HBAR at the live rate. The first 100 payload bytes are included, so a SHA-256 hash in hex or binary adds nothing. For our scenario, 100,000 hashes as one message each cost 100,000 × $0.0008 = $80 a month. Batching changes this: one Merkle root per hour is 720 messages in a 30-day month, or $0.58 (our arithmetic), but you then build and store the Merkle branches yourself. There is no support plan or SLA on these pages.
Records sit on a public ledger that anyone can read through mirror nodes, including one you run yourself. There is no vendor account to leave; the dependency is on the Hedera network and on keeping your own index of which message holds which hash.
From its public pages, HCS is the cheapest way here to put hashes on a public ledger at a price you can compute. You build the proof handling yourself, and there is no plan, contract or vendor audit report.
| Limit | As recorded |
|---|---|
| What it anchors to | Hedera public ledger (messages on a topic) |
| Billing unit | $0.0008 per message, paid in HBAR |
| Free option | Testnet only |
| Reference scenario (100,000 hashes/mo) | $80, one hash per message, computed |
| Proof you keep | No proof file; records on mirror nodes |
| Verify without the vendor | Open-source mirror node you can run |
| Only the hash leaves your systems | Yes, you choose the message content |
| Qualified timestamps (eIDAS) | No |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Node data centres must be SOC 2 Type 2 |
| API and webhooks | SDKs, mirror node REST and gRPC; no webhooks |
| SSO | Not applicable (key-based accounts) |
Read from the vendor's public pages on Oct 15, 2026. No hands-on run is published yet. How we check
We have not published a sign-up run for Hedera Consensus Service yet. The access facts above were read from its sign-up and pricing pages on Oct 15, 2026.
We have not published API calls for Hedera Consensus Service yet.
Hedera Consensus Service lists 2 plans. The cheapest paid plan costs $0.0008/message.
Prices as listed, USD, excluding tax; observed 2026-10-15.
Source: docs.hedera.com pricing page. Prices change; the observed date above is when our agent read them.
We read the pricing, fee, security, legal and docs pages of three data anchoring services on the same day and scored them on the same six indicators. How each one bills, what 100,000 hashes a month cost, and who should pick which.
