When creating a financial app or platform that includes cryptocurrency services, the ability to track and analyze data from crypto exchanges can be precious for both your business and your customers. But what is your best option for getting that information?
Table of Contents
What Is a Cryptocurrency API?
A Cryptocurrency API allows your software or site to retrieve data from cryptocurrency exchanges and provide tools to analyze that data. As a result, they enable developers to include real-time tracking of crypto market data in their websites and services. A great API to pair with a crypto API is a currency conversion API.
CoinLayer vs CoinAPI
Here we will compare the two crypto API against the following criteria: Functionality, currencies supported, reliability, wallet integration, tech support and, finally, pricing
Functionality
Both APIs in this comparison have similar functionality but where they differ is in the number of exchanges they access and the historical information they provide.
Coinlayer
Coinlayer can retrieve market data from more than 25 crypto exchanges., selected for their reliability to ensure accurate and up-to-date data at all times. Coinlayer users can also analyze market data going all the way back to 2011.
CoinAPI
CoinAPI retrieves market data from 336 exchanges and provides access to historical market data, though not as far back as Coinlayer.
Supported Cryptocurrencies
Here we will compare the number of currencies each API supports.
Coinlayer
Instantly retrieve up-to-date crypto exchange rate data for more than 385 cryptocurrencies, collected from 25+ exchanges. All of the most popular cryptocurrencies are here such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.
CoinAPI
CoinAPI supports more than 12,000 currencies, which includes fiat currencies as well as crypto.
Reliability and Responsiveness
Reliability and responsiveness are indicators of each APIs call latency in milliseconds and uptime percentages.
Coinlayer
Coinlayer can respond to API calls in less than 20 milliseconds. Its market data is updated every 60 seconds. The API has an average uptime of 99.7% over the last 90 days.
CoinAPI
CoinAPI uptime is not publicly available. However, CoinAPI estimates average response times at around 20 milliseconds, depending on location.
Wallet Integration
Neither API has native support for wallet integration. However, Coinlayer offers clearer and more complete API documentation, with comprehensive integration guides, making it easier to create an integration for the wallet of your choice.
Tech Support
Tech Support takes to account the number of support channels each API gives you access to.
Coinlayer
Coinlayer provides limited support to free users and premium support to all paid packages. In addition, enterprise customers get a dedicated support line.
CoinAPI
CoinAPI provides basic email support only to non-Enterprise customers and no support to free users.
Pricing
Here we compare each APIs pricing plans.
Coinlayer
Coinlayer has 3 fixed-price packages and a scalable option for enterprises:
- Basic: $9.99 per month for 5,000 API calls
- Professional: $39.99 per month for 30,000 API calls
- Professional Plus: $79.99 per month for 100,000 API calls
CoinAPI
CoinAPI also offers 3 paid packages as well as a flexible option for enterprises:
- Startup: $79 per month for 30,000 API calls
- Streamer: $249 per month for 300,000 API calls
- Professional: $599 per month for 3 million API calls
Overall Rating
Taking all the above criteria into account, we compare and contrast each APIs pros and cons and assign a final star rating.
Coinlayer
Pros:
- Lower cost per API request
- Better support for non-Enterprise customers
- No daily limits on API calls
Cons:
- Fewer currencies and exchanges
Overall rating: 5 stars out of 5
CoinAPI
Pros:
- Many more exchanges and currencies supported, including fiat currencies
Cons:
- Unclear documentation
- Daily request limits
- No support for free users
Overall rating: 3 stars out of 5
Which crypto API is better?
The availability of full support to all paying customers is an important factor to consider for any API, especially for smaller businesses. Coinlayer is much more suitable for smaller businesses in general, offering a more flexible range of packages for businesses of different sizes. Furthermore, the real value of an API is what you can do with it yourself. Coinlayer provides clearer and more complete documentation, making the API more straightforward to integrate into your site or app.
CoinAPI certainly has more currencies, but the cryptocurrency world is full of currencies that don’t stand the test of time. So, unless supporting these short-lived meme coins are part of your design goal, the 12,000+ currencies may not be of value to you.
Empower your users with accurate market data from the biggest crypto exchanges to track and manage their investments in the most important cryptocurrencies on the market.
