What are faucets?
With the world of Web3 becoming increasingly costly to interact with, there comes the need at some point to look for alternative, cheap (and if possible, free) ways to get these tokens. That is where faucets come in.
As the name suggests, faucets are programs and software that provide users with free tokens of the supported network. These tokens are usually quite small and may sometimes require users to complete certain tasks or meet specific requirements.
How do faucets work?
Typically, faucets involve the benefactor having a sufficient supply of these tokens and then providing a means for users to get these tokens for free by fulfilling certain requirements. These requirements can range from simple ones like posting to social media, subscribing to a newsletter or service, streaming videos, downloading content, or simply having an account with a service provider.
Regarding the tokens, while very few of them are real ETH tokens spendable on the mainnet, most of them are actually ETH that is only usable on test networks like Sepolia or Goerli. These kinds of tokens are important for developers testing and developing on the blockchain where it would not make much sense to use real ETH which costs real money. Ideally would need to use fake ETH tokens to iterate new features and test out their code as many times as they need, for little or no money.
These test tokens are also utilized by other participants in the Web3 world who participate in tasks and challenges that include testing out new blockchains and protocols.
Top 5 faucets I have come across
Right away, I will be listing out some really nice Ethereum faucets I have come across, including shamelessly plugging in one of mine.
Goerli Drop
I built this simple faucet that gives out free test ETH tokens for the Goerli test network. The tokens can be as high as 0.05 ETH redeemable every 6 hours or so. The main requirement for getting this faucet is to be subscribed to my growing newsletter. On visiting the site, it automatically requests to switch to the Goerli network if MetaMask is installed and not on Goerli. Give it a try!
[UPDATE]: Goerli has been deprecated and is no longer supported. You can visit the new faucet I built for Sepolia.
Infura Faucet
This faucet was built by the incredible team at Infura, one of the leading blockchain technology companies. They have faucets for Sepolia and Linea networks. Their requirement? Simply create an account with them and log in to request for free 0.5 test ETH after completing a simple captcha. This is one of the most generous offerings I've encountered, and you are eligible for it once per day.
All That Node
The team at All That Node has a simple-to-use faucet that drips free 0.025 test ETH for Sepolia and Goerli once per day. No requirements are necessary. Simply specify where you'd like your tokens sent. (Please double-check your testnet address) and solve a captcha. However, at the time of writing this (Sept 10, 2023), the platform is down for maintenance.
Goerli Faucet and Sepolia Faucet
These awesome faucets were developed and are maintained by the Alchemy team. They are faucets that give out free 0.02 Goerli and 0.5 Sepolia ETH for the respective test networks, per day. To use this faucet, you have to be registered with the platform and signed in. However, for the Goerli faucet, you need to have a minimum mainnet balance of 0.001 ETH on the wallet address being used.
Ethereum Faucet by QuickNode
This faucet is one of the simplest faucets I have ever used. You only need to connect your wallet, select one of the many networks they support (or Ethereum in this case), choose between Sepolia and Goerli, and submit. They give out free 0.05 ETH, but if you wish to double this to 0.1 ETH, you can simply share the link to a tweet they require you to post. However, my only concern is that at the time of writing this, their user interface seemed a bit disorganized, with the original content of the screen overlapping on the left side, and no feedback was provided when I submitted the request.
Conclusion
This list does not cover all the faucets out there. There are still many I have not come across or used. But I believe the 5 listed out here are enough to get you started with whatever you require the tokens for. In case you wish to learn how to build one for yourself just like I did, I may be writing an article on how to build one. Stay connected and subscribe to my newsletter to know when this happens. And hey, you can get free Goerli ETH while you're at it!
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