Arbitrum is two networks, not one. Arbitrum One is the optimistic rollup that posts call data to Ethereum, and Arbitrum Nova uses AnyTrust with a Data Availability Committee for cheaper gaming and social workloads. The right explorer depends on which chain you are debugging, whether you need API access, and whether your contracts are written in Solidity or Stylus (Rust, C, C++). This guide compares the four explorers most teams actually use and shows which one fits which job.
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For most Arbitrum One users, Arbiscan is the default because it is the Etherscan-built explorer and ships the deepest tooling for Solidity verification, internal-transaction tracing, and read-and-write contract UI. Blockscout is the open-source alternative with first-class Stylus support. Routescan offers a single multichain UI across Arbitrum One and Nova. Nova Explorer is the dedicated Blockscout instance for Arbitrum Nova.
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Arbiscan is operated by the Etherscan team and indexes Arbitrum One. It exposes the same UI patterns Ethereum developers already know: a transaction view that surfaces L1-to-L2 message status, contract verification with the standard solc compiler matrix, a token tracker for ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155, and a public API that mirrors the Etherscan v2 API surface.

If your stack is Solidity-on-Arbitrum-One and you already use Etherscan elsewhere, Arbiscan is the lowest-friction choice.
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Blockscout is an open-source explorer maintained by the Blockscout team and self-hosted by many rollup operators. The Arbitrum-specific instance indexes Arbitrum One and surfaces rollup-aware fields: parent L1 batch, sequencer inbox transaction, and confirmation status against the rollup contract.
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Blockscout's most useful Arbitrum-specific feature is Stylus contract verification. Stylus, introduced on Arbitrum in 2024, lets developers deploy WebAssembly contracts written in Rust, C, or C++ alongside Solidity contracts in the same EVM environment. Blockscout supports verifying Stylus contracts by uploading the Rust source and Cargo.toml, which Arbiscan did not support at parity feature levels at the time of writing. If your team is shipping Stylus, Blockscout is the better verification target.
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Blockscout also exposes both an Etherscan-compatible API and a native REST/JSON-RPC API, so existing tools that point at Arbiscan can usually be redirected with a base-URL change.
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Routescan operates a unified explorer that indexes hundreds of EVM chains under a single brand and a single API key. For Arbitrum users, the practical value is that you can pivot between Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova in the same interface without learning two URL schemes, and you can query both through the same Etherscan-compatible API endpoint.
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Routescan is also the default explorer behind several Avalanche subnets and Routescan-powered chain explorers, so multichain teams that already integrate Routescan elsewhere often consolidate Arbitrum onto it. Contract verification supports Solidity and Vyper through the standard solc input format. As of 2026, Stylus verification is not advertised as supported on Routescan, so Stylus teams typically pair Routescan with Blockscout.
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Arbitrum Nova has its own Blockscout instance at nova.arbiscan.io (Arbiscan brand) and at the Blockscout-hosted Nova explorer. Nova uses AnyTrust, where a Data Availability Committee posts data attestations rather than full call data to L1, which keeps fees low for high-frequency, low-value workloads like games and social apps. The explorer surfaces this with DAC attestation status alongside standard transaction details.
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If your application runs on Nova, you generally want a Nova-aware explorer rather than trying to read Nova activity through an Arbitrum One explorer; the two chains have different chain IDs (42161 for One, 42170 for Nova) and different sequencers.
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Pricing tiers above paid plans change frequently; check each provider's current pricing page before committing to a quota. Free reads on the web UI are universal across all four.
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An Arbitrum explorer is more useful than a generic EVM explorer when it surfaces four rollup-specific fields: the parent L1 batch transaction, the sequencer that ordered the L2 transaction, retryable ticket status for L1-to-L2 messages, and outbox claim status for L2-to-L1 withdrawals. Stylus-aware verification is the fifth field that matters for non-Solidity teams.

Choose Arbiscan if you are on Arbitrum One, your contracts are Solidity, and your team already uses Etherscan tooling elsewhere. Choose Blockscout if you ship Stylus, want open-source self-hosting, or need parity with rollup-operator tooling. Choose Routescan if you operate across many EVM chains and want one API key. Choose Nova Explorer if your workload runs on Arbitrum Nova specifically.
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Stylus contracts compile WebAssembly from Rust, C, or C++ and run alongside Solidity on Arbitrum. Verification UX is uneven: Blockscout has documented Stylus verification first, Arbiscan exposes Stylus contracts but treats verification as a Solidity-style flow, and Routescan inherits the Etherscan path. Pick the explorer that matches your toolchain.

If your team ships Stylus in production, document which explorer you treat as canonical for source verification. Mixing flows produces support tickets where one customer's verified contract appears unverified on a sibling explorer.
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Beyond verification, debug-trace parity matters when teams investigate failed Stylus calls. Arbitrum's Stylus documentation notes that Stylus reuses the EVM's call frame, so trace tooling that works for Solidity also captures Stylus reverts at the call boundary. Internal WASM execution is opaque to the standard EVM tracer, which affects how each explorer surfaces failures.

This comparison is based on the official documentation for each explorer as of May 2026. Feature parity, free-tier limits, and paid pricing change frequently; consult the linked documentation before committing a paid plan or production integration. We cross-checked rollup-specific fields (L1 batch, retryable tickets, outbox, Stylus) against the Arbitrum developer documentation.