Smartbit is back after a few days of downtime (weird but ok). BlockCypher appears to behave well. An online instance of Blockstream Esplora is also nice.
Blockchair looks promising, but haven't tested it yet. For now I'll stick to the listed ones and switch between them in case of problems. If that approach fails, I'll go for deploying full node and communicating through json-rpc (or for node + own instance of esplora, idk yet)
Thanks for all advices.

Hi!

I'm looking for a robust API allowing access to testnet3 (pushing txs, browsing utxos, etc).
I was using blockcypher, but it hasn't performed well. Chain.so API was good, but now it disappeared. Smartbit API was also pretty decent and recently it also disappeared.

Do you have anything else to recommend?
Or maybe a tutorial how to kick off own testnet node and hit it with jsonrpc calls? (Note that in my case regtest is not an option, I need a connection to testnet)
Or maybe I can find somewhere list of well-known testnet node urls with exposed json-rpc endpoint?

I don't generate heavy traffic, but still finding something that will last more than few months is difficult.
Please advice. I'm totally lost.

Cheers.

Looks like smartbit is gone. Does anyone know what happened?

I'm ok with spending even ~100$-200$ on that. Nicehash looks good, but how can I use it when there are no testnet mining pools? Can someone guide me how to mine those test bitcoins with rented hashing power?

What amount of hashrate do you consider, tiny, but powerful enough to mine ~100 coins in not more than few days?
(Btw what is the current block reward on testnet?)

Hi
I'm working on a project that is going to be tested with end users. I need a bigger amount of test BTC. Something like 50-150 coins. Is there a place where I can get such amount of them? Or the only thing I can do is mining or setting up my own instance of the network?
Cheers

Basically my MSI MS-7681 have 5 PCIE slots (2x16 and 3x1), so it could be nice, but it doesn't work with R9 and I don't know what would work. I know I will not get maybe the best mobo for mining, but if someone could for example give me a list of mobos that are 100% sure to work well with R9 290 I'd be really grateful 

Any more ideas? 

Both are not regularly available in my country 
Maybe I can try to buy second hand asrock, but biostar is totally out of my range if I don't want to pay a lot for shipping from USA or waiting long because of shipping from China.

I bought cheap one R9 290 and decided to start minig. I have relatively cheap electricity so high power consumption of R9 290 is not a problem. Currently I'm an owner of MSI MS-7681 motherboard, but I cannot make them working together. I read somewhere on the internet, that running radeon on this mobo may cause problems so I'm probably gonna give it up and buy new mobo. I'd like to get around 3-4 PCIE slots. Which one would you recommend?
My PSU is fortron 800W so I hope it will do fine.