Best Crypto APIs for Developers
Bitcoin recently marked its 10th anniversary on January 3, 2019, a full decade since the genesis block was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2009. The beginning years of Bitcoin history flew under the radar for most people, aside from the most passionate individuals in the crypto community.
While infrastructure development was slow to start, the bull run of 2017 brought a new wave of products onto the crypto scene. Today, development in crypto is at an all-time high, with new developers flocking from other industries in search of a “crypto gold rush”.
Feeling the itch to develop your own crypto application? Whether you’re a cryptocurrency developer, trader, or just passionate about all things crypto, there are APIs available that are designed to make your crypto journey smoother. Whether you want to develop a personal trading bot, a payments application, or business settlement solution, there are APIs that can help you get started.
Let’s explore some of the best crypto APIs in the market.
Coin API
CoinAPI is a service provider that is solely focused on providing price and market data. With over 20TB of raw market data in its database, CoinAPI has a reputable name for high-quality crypto data in the market.
CoinAPI provides real-time data streaming services and a database of historical market data. CoinAPI has servers located all around the world, designed to transfer data reliably and quickly.
CoinMarketCap is a website that tracks exchange and liquidity markets for a variety of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. As one of the most well-known resources in the crypto space, CoinMarketCap is a top data aggregator when it comes to tracking crypto markets. CoinMarketCap also has a professional API for traders and developers that includes complete historic cryptocurrency market data since 2013.
CoinMarketCap API has a limited free plan that quickly increases in price based on the number of monthly call credits
Shrimpy’s Universal Crypto Exchange API allows 3rd-party application developers to leverage Shrimpy’s trading engine and server-side architecture to quickly implement and deploy their own application. Shrimpy’s API offers a low-latency order execution & automated trading engine based on real-time data, with the ability to manage users AND scale usage as necessary.
Shrimpy APIs are the most powerful trading APIs in the market. They connect to a network of the most popular crypto exchanges. Providing real-time full order book data, limit orders, open orders, smart order routing, exchange account management, user management, and a complete cloud infrastructure solution right out of the box. All of this plumbed into a single set of APIs that work across every exchange.
Development teams are often stretched thin due to limited resources and tight schedules. This challenge becomes further magnified when it comes to developing crypto apps, which currently lacks tools for scaling operations. For independent and 3rd-party app developers, maintaining a working business product is extremely costly.
Unlike many other crypto API service providers that charge arm-and-leg for limited services, Shrimpy’s API is an affordable low-cost solution that addresses several developer challenges and costs as low as $14/month.
Nomics is a Bitcoin and cryptocurrency data API with the functional purpose of becoming “the data backbone for developers and professional crypto investors.” Nomics’ API was built upon its core product of archiving, aggregating, and analyzing complete crypto asset data.
Nomics’ API is a great resource for traders, quants, and hedge fund managers as it provides detailed raw trade data, but can be quite expensive for small teams and independent developers in search of an affordable data provider.
CoinCap API is a useful tool that collects real-time pricing and market activity for over 1,000 cryptocurrencies from thousands of markets, with the goal of providing transparent and accurate data on digital asset markets. Created by the ShapeShift team, CoinCap API is free for all users.
CoinCap API funcations well as a free API for agreggating real-time prices and markets, but can fall short as a solution which requires historic data, such as backtesting portfolio strategies.
Wyre API provides crypto apps and services with a regulated and compliant fiat-to-crypto on-ramp. Wyre API is a simple integrated payment solution for crypto startups looking to implement crypto as a payment method, rather than traditional payment methods.
CryptoCompare’s API is used by both a wide range of busineses from investment institutions to financial and crypto companies. CryptoCompare includes a wide range of market data, from trade/orderbook data to blockchain and social data.
CryptoCompare’s APIs provide highly reliable and scalable endpoints, reaching 180 million requests per hour at peak times and collecting 800+ trades per second. With over 30k+ clients connected to hundreds of servers spread across global data centers, CryptoCompare’s also secures its API endpoints through SSL to secure traffic from data requests.
BitPay is a Bitcoin and cryptocurrency payment processor that enables merchants and conusmers to instantly accept and receieve cryptocurrency as payment without risk or price fluctuations. Currently, credit cards can charge up to 3% in processing fees on every transaction. Compared to credit cards, BitPay only charges a flat 1% setlement fee for crypto-to-fiat bank conversion. Furthermore, traditional payment methods require that a customer provide sensitive personal information that could potentially lead to fraud and identity theft.
The BitPay API can be used to create and manage invoices, issue refunds, manage bills, retrieve real-time rates information, view merchant ledger entries, and much more. Using a standards-based REST interface, Developers may call the API directly over HTTPS using the language of their choice, or take advantage of one of BitPay's Node.js, PHP, and Ruby API clients.
CoinGecko’s mission is to empower crypto users and help them gain a better understanding of fundamental factors that drive the market. In addition to crypto prices, trading volume and market capitalization, CoinGecko also measures community growth, open-source code development, events and on-chain metrics for a complete analysis beyond just technical indicators. Operating since 2014, today CoinGecko is one of the largest crypto data aggegators, tracking nearly 3,300 tokens from more than 260 cryptocurrency exchanges.
CoinGecko is a free-to-use API that provides access to data such as live pricing, trading volume, tickers, exchanges, and historical data. The API also provides non-market data such as images, development & social community statistics, events, global markets, and exchange status updates.
About Shrimpy
Shrimpy is an automated crypto trading & portfolio management tool that lets users automate their cryptoasset portfolio strategy like a traditional index fund.
Shrimpy for Consumers
Users are able to configure a custom cryptocurrency portfolio and implement a passive management strategy, removing the hassle of having to actively trade crypto.
The core version of Shrimpy includes complete automated trading, indexing and rebalancing features for ALL users. Shrimpy also offers a monthly premium subscription for $8.99/month. The premium subscription includes:
Shrimpy Social: Follow, communicate, and share strategies with other Shrimpy traders.
Shrimpy Insights: Learn how other Shrimpy users are constructing and managing their crypto portfolio.
Advanced Backtesting: An robust backtesting tool for evaluating custom cryptocurrency portfolio & strategies.
Shrimpy Web Application: Shrimpy - Cryptocurrency Portfolio Management
Shrimpy’s Crypto Trading API for Developers
Beyond the consumer app, Shrimpy also offers a Trading API for developers looking to integrate scalable exchange trading functionality into their app.
Shrimpy’s Universal Exchange API was created as a cloud-based solution to address several crypto developer roadblocks including Exchange Trading, Product Scalability, and User Management. With Shrimpy’s API in hand, developers are not limited in scope when it comes to creating the next era of groundbreaking products that will shape the future of crypto.
Shrimpy’s API is a cryptocurrency trading API that is readily compatible with all of the following exchanges and their API endpoints: Binance API, CoinbasePro API, Bittrex API, Kraken API, Gemini API, Poloniex API, Huobi API, KuCoin API, Bibox API, BitMart API, and HitBTC API. Instead of having to manage all connections to every exchange, users can simply leverage Shrimpy’s existing crypto exchange trading infrastructure and focus on actual product development.
Shrimpy Crypto Trading API: Shrimpy | Crypto Trading APIs for Developers