Which public Monero nodes answer right now

Of the 198 public nodes listed on the day this page was built, 73 could be reached over HTTPS and 38 answered a request from a web page. The rest are not down. A page served over HTTPS is forbidden from opening a plain HTTP connection at all, and a node that sends no cross-origin header is invisible to any website while working perfectly in Feather, Cake or the official wallet. So this page measures something narrower than "is it up", and a node it cannot reach has failed a browser test your wallet never takes.

• Most public nodes are HTTP only, which no HTTPS page may contact.
• A browser is not allowed to tell a refused connection from a dead one.
• Everything here is a floor: your wallet can reach more than this page can.

It sees your IP address and every block and output your wallet asks about, which is close to seeing when you use your wallet and roughly what for. It cannot spend anything, cannot read your keys and cannot sign for you, so the risk is being watched rather than being robbed. That makes choosing one a privacy decision with no correct answer - and running your own node the only way out of the question rather than a better answer to it.

• A node cannot take your money; it can build a picture of your activity.
• Using the same node for years tells it more than spreading the questions would.
• Over Tor it sees an exit rather than you, and gets slower in exchange.

A public node is meant to run in restricted mode, which hides the administrative half of its interface from strangers. There is a simple tell that needs no trust: an unrestricted daemon answers with its version number and a restricted one does not, so the table can mark it without asking anybody. It does not put your coins at risk either way. It is a statement about how carefully the machine is run, and that is worth a glance before you point a wallet at it for a year.

Every node reports the height it has reached, and the page takes the highest number anybody reported as the tip rather than trusting a single source - sixteen independent machines asked the same question make a better answer than any one of them, ours included. A node a couple of blocks behind is mid-relay and fine. A node still catching up is a different problem: it will answer questions about recent blocks wrongly rather than slowly, which is how a wallet ends up showing a balance that is not there.

A node I use is shown as not answering. Is it broken?

Probably not. Most likely it does not accept requests from web pages, which is a setting that has nothing to do with wallets. A browser is not permitted to see the difference between that and an unreachable machine, so this page reports what it observed rather than guessing which it was.

Which one should I pick?

Any that answers, is at the tip, and is not run by someone you would mind knowing when your wallet is open. Speed matters less than it looks: the difference between 300 and 800 milliseconds is invisible during a sync and irrelevant to a transaction.

Can a malicious node steal from me?

No. Your keys never leave your wallet, and a node cannot construct or sign a transaction for you. It can lie about what it has seen - showing you fewer blocks than exist, or claiming a transaction has not arrived - and it can record everything you ask. Being lied to and being watched are the real risks.

Is running my own node worth it?

It is the only way to stop asking a stranger about your own money, and it costs a few hundred gigabytes and a few days of first sync. If you hold Monero rather than pass it through, it is worth the disk.