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5 Best Crypto Market Data Aggregators and APIs (Updated 2021)

ShrimpyApp
Coinmonks
Published in
7 min readNov 5, 2020

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Market data aggregators are a powerful resource for investors who are looking for a deeper understanding of the cryptocurrency market and want to analyze specific events.

Over the years, several crypto data aggregators have emerged as the premier platforms for accessing market data. Each of these platforms has become trusted by the most sophisticated investors in the space.

Although each platform is unique in its own way, we will be focusing on a few distinct ways of how each company services the industry.

Some important factors to consider when selecting a market data provider include:

  • The precision of historical market data (Aggregated, Individual)
  • The breadth of markets covered (Exchanges, Trading Pairs, Assets)
  • Length of supported data history (Years, Months)
  • Availability of data types (Order Books, Trades, Candlesticks)
  • Data access offerings (Live Websocket APIs, Historical Rest APIs, Live Rest APIs)

Throughout this article, we will discuss a variety of different data aggregators that each focus on a niche area of the data market.

Bitquery

Bitquery is a blockchain data company that provides real-time and historical data for 40+ chains.

One of the main advantages of Bitquery is its ability to display data from multiple chains, providing a holistic view of the crypto market.

In addition to DEX data, Bitquery also collects data from major DeFi protocols such as MakerDAO and Compound, giving users access to key metrics such as total value locked (TVL), lending and borrowing rates, and user activity.

Length of supported data history: Since Genesis Block

Precision: Both real-time and historical data

Users can track on-chain activity such as transactions, addresses, and smart contracts in real-time.

Plus, with Bitquery’s Coinpath® technology, compliance officers can track money flow and cross-chain tracing using advanced machine learning capabilities.

Get real-time mempool data for Ethereum, BSC, Arbitrum, and other blockchains. The NFT API provides data for NFT collection, metadata, floor price, ownership, holders, marketplace trades, transfers, transactions, and more. It also supports NFT marketplace APIs like Opensea, Blur, and Rarible.

Give Bitquery a try and see the difference it can make for your projects.

Kaiko

Kaiko has been the king of historical data since 2014. Institutions and enterprise customers have found a home with Kaiko, due to their extensive offerings for OHLCV data, order book snapshots, and tick-by-tick trade data across 100 different exchanges.

In recent developments, Kaiko has begun offering deeper analytics of the crypto market. By providing market reports, they have continued to attract the attention of institutions who are looking for an extra edge.

When it comes to precision historical data, enterprises can’t go wrong with Kaiko. The vast catalog of data types that are supported by the platform put other historical data providers to shame.

  • The precision of historical market data: Kaiko supports exact data for each individual exchange and market pair
  • Breadth of markets covered: 35,000+ market pairs, 100+ exchanges, and 3,000+ assets
  • Length of supported data history: As early as 2014
  • Availability of data types: Order book snapshots, tick-by-tick trade data, OHLCV candlesticks, VWAP, and derivatives data
  • Data access offerings: Live websockets, historical REST APIs, and flat files

Try out Kaiko.

CoinMarketCap

CoinMarketCap originally launched in 2013. Since then, it has become the de facto website in the crypto space to learn about new assets, view a high-level overview of the price of an asset, get market pairs for exchanges, and of course access market cap data.

Although the historical data from CoinMarketCap is only mediocre when compared to other data providers, the one thing that CoinMarketCap does better than anyone in the industry is tracking assets across exchanges and track each asset’s market cap.

It’s certainly a feat that takes a significant amount of manpower to complete.

When it comes to historical and live market data, CoinMarketCap falls short in many ways. Firstly, the way data is only accessible on an aggregated basis makes the data ineffective for any technical analysis.

Additionally, CoinMarketCap lacks support for the most meaningful data types — order books and trade data. As a result, most investors will be left unsatisfied with what’s available in the CoinMarketCap APIs.

  • The precision of historical market data: CoinMarketCap only offers imprecise aggregated data
  • Breadth of markets covered: 32,000+ market pairs, 300+ exchanges, and 7,500+ assets
  • Length of supported data history: As early as 2014
  • Availability of data types: Aggregated OHLCV candlesticks and market cap data
  • Data access offerings: Historical REST APIs

Try out CoinMarketCap.

CoinGecko

CoinGecko is similar to CoinMarketCap in some ways. In contrast to CoinMarketCap, they provide some alternative metrics like social stats for assets and developer activity.

CoinGecko is a great resource for supplemental data that doesn’t tie directly into the market. They also provide APIs for accessing a list of indexes, finance products, events in the space, and more.

Unfortunately, most of the data provided by CoinGecko is aggregated in a similar way to CoinMarketCap. This makes the data ineffective for deeper market analytics.

The major saving grace for CoinGecko is the unique offerings that are available for supplemental data.

  • The precision of historical market data: CoinGecko only offers imprecise aggregated data
  • Breadth of markets covered: 25,000+ market pairs, 400+ exchanges, and 6,000+ assets
  • Length of supported data history: As early as 2014
  • Availability of data types: Aggregated OHLCV candlesticks, market cap data, and social data
  • Data access offerings: Historical REST APIs

Try out CoinGecko.

Messari

Messari is known as the resource for institutions and professional investors. The platform was built with the understanding that they wouldn’t focus on the underlying exchange data, but rather analytics they could calculate from the primary sourced data.

With the most popular aspect of Messari being the screener application, the core offering of their API is the easy access of this data through APIs.

Customers can use Messari to access descriptions of assets, various asset metrics, market pairs, news, and blockchain stats.

Although Messari is not a primary market data provider, they offer a unique selection of data through their APIs that gives an additional dimension to the crypto market.

Certainly, Messari might not provide the complete dataset that’s required for many investors, but the supplemental data can provide context that other services don’t offer.

  • The precision of historical market data: Messari only offers imprecise aggregated data
  • Breadth of markets covered: 35,000+ market pairs, 100+ exchanges, and 3,000+ assets
  • Length of supported data history: As early as 2014
  • Availability of data types: Asset profiles, asset metrics, news, and exchange markets
  • Data access offerings: Rest APIs

Sign up for Messari

Conclusions

Each of these data aggregators has a different purpose when it comes to understanding the cryptocurrency market. If you are looking for precise exchange data, the best resources will be Shrimpy and Kaiko. However, if you are looking for supplemental data that could add additional context to the market, then services like Messari and CoinGecko will be best.

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ShrimpyApp
Coinmonks

Written by ShrimpyApp

1.7K Followers

Shrimpy is a crypto exchange trading bot for portfolio management, indexing the market, rebalancing, and strategy backtesting. Join now at shrimpy.io.

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