--- title: 'Best crypto historical data API: 6 options compared' url: https://comparand.xyz/blog/crypto-market-data-apis-compared description: CCXT, CoinGecko, CoinGlass, Kaiko, Amberdata and Comparand compared by data type, published prices, history limits and who each one suits. updated: '2026-10-21' category: AI agents --- # Best crypto historical data API: 6 options compared CCXT, CoinGecko, CoinGlass, Kaiko, Amberdata and Comparand compared by data type, published prices, history limits and who each one suits. The best crypto historical data API depends on the job: CCXT for free raw exchange candles, CoinGecko for coin-level history, CoinGlass for funding and liquidations, and Kaiko for trade and order-book detail at a fund. Published starting prices run from free (the CCXT library) to $29 a month for CoinGlass ($348 a year) and $1,000 a month for Kaiko. Comparand fits a narrower job: AI agents and scripts that want free exchange bars plus past charts that looked like today's. One limit catches many people. CoinGecko's coin-chart request returns hourly points only for the past 100 days, and it has no way to pick an exchange. Prices are as published in October 2026 and change, so check the linked pages before you pay. ## What should you decide before comparing APIs? An API is a way for your program to ask a service for data. Before you compare prices, write down five things: the coin, the exchange, the price currency, the market type and the bar size. Binance BTCUSDT perpetuals and Coinbase BTC-USD spot are different markets with different prices. Spot means the coin itself. A perpetual, or perp, is a futures contract that never expires. USDT is a crypto coin built to track the US dollar. A candle, also called a bar, records the open, high, low and close price over a set time. OHLCV means those four prices plus volume, the amount traded. Our guide on [why Bitcoin prices differ between exchanges](https://comparand.xyz/blog/why-bitcoin-price-differs-between-exchanges) shows how much the exchange choice changes the numbers. *Diagram: Show a data request with separate labels for coin, exchange, price currency, market type, bar size and requested dates.* ## How do the main crypto data APIs compare? All prices are in US dollars; history limits are as published, not confirmed by download. | Option | Lowest published price | Published history | Best fit | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | CCXT | Free (MIT open-source license) | Whatever each exchange allows; long downloads need many requests | Hobby scripts that want raw exchange candles and full control | | CoinGecko API | Not quoted here; we could not confirm its current plan page | Coin-chart request: hourly points only for the past 100 days; hourly data starts 30 Jan 2018 | Coin-level prices, market cap and volume | | CoinGlass | Hobbyist $29/month ($348/year) | Hourly history: Startup 180 days, Standard 360, Professional 720 | Funding, open interest and liquidation history | | Kaiko | L1 Aggregations from $1,000/month | OHLCV claimed back to 2010, depending on the data package | Firms that need trades and order books | | Amberdata | No current separate price found | Older terms could not be confirmed | Ask Kaiko, which now owns it | | Comparand | Venue data tools free on any key; a key comes with PAYG from $5 or Starter at $19/month | Chart search, hourly bars: Coinbase from Jan 2017, Binance from Sep 2019, Hyperliquid from Apr 2025 | AI agents and scripts that want bars plus past-chart search | CoinGlass monthly amounts equal its yearly totals divided by 12; we did not confirm a month-by-month price. Kaiko's starting price is for one package, not every market. ## When does CCXT fit a hobby script? CCXT is a code library you add to your own program. It gives you one common way to ask over 100 exchanges for data. Its candle tool gets bars from the exchange you pick. It is free, open source, and you control every request. But one call returns a limited page, not years of bars. You loop through pages, stay under each exchange's request limits and store the results. Testing a rule or searching for similar charts is code you write. Sources: [CCXT's description](https://docs.ccxt.com/about-us) and [candle-download guide](https://docs.ccxt.com/blog/backtest-before-you-bet). ## Why are CoinGecko's history limits confusing? CoinGecko's coin-chart request returns price, market cap and volume for a coin. Market cap means price times the number of coins in circulation. That fits questions about a coin overall. Its catalog also lists separate requests for coin OHLC, exchanges, derivatives and on-chain pool data. Two things trip people up. First, the coin-chart request cannot pick an exchange or contract, so it cannot stand in for Binance BTCUSDT perpetual candles. Second, a plan's history and one request's history can differ. The coin-chart docs say spacing turns daily above 90 days when you let it choose. An explicit hourly request covers only the past 100 days, and hourly data starts on 30 January 2018. We do not quote CoinGecko's plan prices or plan history years, because we could not confirm its current pricing page. Sources: [coin-chart docs](https://docs.coingecko.com/reference/coins-id-market-chart) and [CoinGecko API pricing](https://www.coingecko.com/en/api/pricing). Our guide to [CoinGecko API alternatives](https://comparand.xyz/blog/coingecko-api-alternatives-ohlcv) goes deeper. ## When does CoinGlass fit better than price data alone? CoinGlass lists prices, funding, open interest and liquidation history, plus options and ETF data. Funding is a small payment traders on one side of a perp pay the other side. Open interest is the total size of trades still open. A liquidation is when an exchange closes a trade because the trader's money ran out. Plan rules matter. The hourly history entry for Hobbyist is blank, which means not stated, not zero. Hobbyist and Startup are for personal use. Standard ($299/month, $3,588/year) and Professional ($699/month, $8,388/year) allow commercial use. Sources: [CoinGlass pricing](https://www.coinglass.com/pricing) and [API catalog](https://docs.coinglass.com/reference/endpoint-overview). ## What should a fund ask Kaiko or Amberdata? Kaiko sells trades, order books and OHLCV through APIs, live streams, files and cloud delivery. An order book is the list of waiting offers to buy and sell at each price. Its page claims 100+ exchanges. Packages run from $1,000/month (L1 Aggregations) to $2,500/month (L2 Tick-Level). Its 2010 OHLCV date covers the whole dataset, not your market, so ask for exact dates. Amberdata is now part of Kaiko, which describes it as an institutional data business with derivatives analytics, on-chain data and market intelligence. Ask Kaiko which Amberdata data is still offered and on what terms; Kaiko's prices are not Amberdata quotes. Sources: [Kaiko's data packages](https://www.kaiko.com/products/l1-l2-data) and [Kaiko's acquisition announcement](https://www.kaiko.com/news/kaiko-acquires-amberdata-in-landmark-digital-asset-data-consolidation). ## Where does Comparand fit, and where does it not? Comparand finds past charts that look like today's and shows what price did next. A search compares a coin only with its own past on the same exchange. It shows past cases, not a forecast. Where it fits: an AI agent or script that wants exchange bars and past-chart search in one place. The six venue data tools are free with any key. The chart search covers up to 10 big coins on Binance, Bybit, OKX and Coinbase, plus about 210 Hyperliquid perps. Our guide to [connecting Claude or ChatGPT](https://comparand.xyz/blog/connect-claude-chatgpt-to-crypto-data-mcp) shows the setup. In the pages we read, we did not find a ready-made past-chart search at CCXT, CoinGecko, CoinGlass or Kaiko. Where it does not fit: Comparand does not offer order-book depth, so Kaiko is the better pick for that. Its market data covers dozens of exchanges, fewer than CCXT or Kaiko claim. Its chart-search history (table above) is shorter than the 2010 start Kaiko claims for its OHLCV data. For more on reading its results, see [why past crypto moves are not a forecast](https://comparand.xyz/blog/past-crypto-returns-not-forecasts). ## How can you check an API before paying? Pick one market you care about, like Binance BTCUSDT perp. Ask the API for one week of hourly bars. Then check three things: - Is there one bar for every hour, with no gaps? - Do the closing prices match the exchange's own chart for a few hours you spot-check? - Is the first available date as old as the plan claims, for your market, not just for Bitcoin? ## How we measured this We read each company's official pricing, product and documentation pages, and linked the sources under each section. We wrote down published prices and history limits. We did not download data from these services, so we did not measure speed, gaps or trading results, or your own costs like hosting and coding time. ## Try this in Comparand With Comparand connected to your AI agent, ask: - "Which exchanges and markets can I request?" venue_coverage lists exchanges and prediction markets with their datasets and bar sizes. venue_markets lists the markets on one exchange. - "Show completed hourly bars for Binance BTCUSDT for last week." venue_bars returns open, high, low, close and volume, completed bars only. - "Show funding payments for this perp." venue_funding returns up to 400 days per call. venue_trades returns up to 24 hours of trades where the exchange publishes them. - "Show the price history of this Kalshi or Polymarket market." venue_prices returns prices as probabilities from 0 to 1. - "List Hyperliquid archive files for September." hl_bulk_files returns a catalog of whole-day files with their sizes, 100 days per page. It lists files; it does not download them. - "What have I used this month, and how much credit is left?" The usage tool returns your key's usage and credit balance. All six venue tools, hl_bulk_files and usage are free. On the [pricing page](https://comparand.xyz/pricing), Starter costs $19 a month with $30 of credits and 60 requests per minute. Pay as you go (PAYG) starts at $5, and PAYG credits never expire. You can also [try 3 coins free](https://comparand.xyz/try). ## The short version - Write down coin, exchange, market type and bar size before comparing APIs. - CCXT is free code for raw exchange candles; CoinGecko suits coin-level history. - CoinGlass adds funding and liquidation data; Kaiko sells order-book detail to firms and now owns Amberdata. - Comparand pairs free exchange bars with past-chart search, but covers fewer markets and has no order-book depth. - Test one week of bars for your exact market before you pay for anything. ## Questions people ask **What is the best crypto historical data API?** It depends on the job. CCXT is a free code library for pulling candles from exchanges yourself, CoinGecko suits coin-level price history, CoinGlass adds funding and liquidation data, and Kaiko sells detailed trade and order-book data to firms. No single tool is best at everything. **Can CoinGecko replace Binance perpetual candles?** Not with its coin-chart request. That request has no way to pick an exchange or a contract, so its coin-level price points are not the same as Binance BTCUSDT perpetual candles. CoinGecko has other request types that need their own check. **Is CCXT a free historical archive?** No. CCXT is a free, open-source code library that asks each exchange for data. Each exchange's own history limits still apply, and you must page through long downloads and store the results yourself. **Does Amberdata still sell its own data plans?** We could not confirm a separate current Amberdata plan. Its pricing page now leads to Kaiko's announcement that Kaiko bought Amberdata, so ask Kaiko which Amberdata data is still offered. **Which crypto data API works inside Claude or ChatGPT?** An AI app needs a tool it can call, often through MCP, a standard way for AI apps to use outside tools. Comparand offers an MCP server with free exchange data tools and paid past-chart searches. Check each other provider's docs for its own AI app support.