Before this guide starts, the news that brought you here.
On June 2, 2026, Kaiko acquired Amberdata. Terms stayed confidential.
Searches for Amberdata API alternatives climbed from there.
The problem with Amberdata was never the data.
It built the options layer almost nobody else would touch. Genesis Volatility in 2022, rebuilt as Amberdata Derivatives. Greeks, implied volatility surfaces and gamma exposure, all by API.
Desks paid for it because it worked.
The problem was what it cost. And now, who owns it.
Nothing has been switched off. Amberdata still sells its API, and the docs are live. No sunset notice exists, and none is implied here.
The concern is quieter than a shutdown. Two vendors with heavy product overlap are now one. Reference data, pricing feeds and derivatives analytics all exist twice. Someone will eventually decide which stack survives.
Buyers hate that uncertainty in a production data path.
Cost and access were already a wall for smaller teams. Amberdata publishes no API prices at all. Its pricing page lists a Startup tier and an Enterprise tier. Both route to a quote form. There is no API free tier, only a trial key on request.
You cannot budget a roadmap against a quote form.
So this guide ranks seven providers that can carry the load instead. We checked public pricing pages, docs and API terms on August 6, 2026. Real pricing, real limits and honest fits.
Each pick targets a different job. All-in-one product data, institutional reference rates or normalized exchange feeds. Tick-level derivatives history, volatility surfaces, onchain metrics or custom queries. You should leave with a clear shortlist, not a longer one.
Want the wider field first? Start with our roundup of the best crypto API providers.
Building for trading systems or AI agents? See our ranking of the best crypto APIs for trading and AI agents.
Let’s be fair first. Amberdata does its core job well. Spot and derivatives market data sit alongside onchain and DeFi coverage. Options analytics run deep, with volatility surfaces and gamma exposure. Delivery reaches REST, WebSocket, S3, Snowflake and Databricks.
That is a serious institutional stack. It was built for desks, not side projects.
The friction starts at access. Amberdata publishes no self-serve API pricing today. The pricing page shows two unnamed tiers and a quote form. There is no API free tier. A trial key arrives only after a demo request.
For a small team, that is a two-week detour before the first call.
Then comes the consolidation question. Kaiko closed the acquisition in June 2026. Both companies sell reference data, pricing feeds and derivatives analytics. Overlap on that scale usually ends with one platform retiring. No timeline has been published, and none may exist yet.
Agent tooling is the third gap. Amberdata ships no official Model Context Protocol server. Its docs index carries no MCP entry. Many teams now wire crypto data into Model Context Protocol clients. They need a provider that already speaks it.
Most Amberdata alternatives here do.
We scored every provider on six factors. Each one maps to a real build decision.
One factor deserves a note. Reference rates and indexes carry regulatory weight in Europe. The EU Benchmarks Regulation sets the rules administrators follow. If your product quotes a benchmark, that lineage matters more than latency.
Pricing transparency separates these providers faster than feature lists. Here is the full picture side by side.
| Provider | Free tier | Entry paid (published) | Cost per 1K calls | Beyond market data | MCP / AI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CoinStats API | 20,000 credits/mo, commercial use | $49/mo, 1M credits | ~$0.05 📉 | Wallet, DeFi, P&L, exchange sync, token risk | ✅ Official, with portfolio data |
| Coin Metrics (Talos) | Community tier, no key needed | Not publicly listed | Not public | Network data, reference rates, indexes | ❌ None |
| Laevitas | x402, no signup | $500/mo Enterprise | $0.001/call* | Options analytics, gamma, flow | ✅ Official |
| Tardis.dev | Self-hosted clients only | $350/mo single data class | Not per call | Options chains, L3 books, liquidations | ❌ None |
| Block Scholes | Trial API key | From £499/mo | Not public | Volatility surfaces, options, funding | ✅ Official |
| Glassnode API | ❌ None | $49/mo billed yearly* | Not public | Onchain, ETF and derivatives metrics | ✅ Official |
| Dune | ✅ Free plan includes API | Analyst tier* | Credit-based | Decoded onchain and DeFi data | ✅ Official |
CoinStats API publishes its entry price at roughly $0.05 per 1,000 calls. Only CoinStats API here pairs a commercial free tier with portfolio data.
CoinStats API covers the market data jobs most products need. Coverage spans 100,000+ coins, 200+ exchanges and 120+ blockchains. Prices, charts, metadata and market insights ship in one schema. The data powers a portfolio platform with 1M monthly users.
The real difference is the portfolio layer. Pass a wallet address and get token balances back, priced. This works across EVM chains, Solana and Bitcoin. Bitcoin supports xpub, ypub and zpub keys.
Transactions arrive pre-classified with USD values and per-trade profit or loss. DeFi positions resolve per wallet across 10,000+ protocols. Staking, lending and liquidity all detected automatically. Exchange sync covers 200+ venues, including Binance, Coinbase and Hyperliquid. Token Risks endpoint flags honeypots, hidden fees and pausable transfers. It runs on the free tier.
For AI builders, MCP Server exposes wallet, DeFi and portfolio data natively. Pricing stays simple and public. The free tier gives 20,000 credits a month with commercial use allowed. Starter costs $49 a month for 1,000,000 credits. That is roughly $0.05 per 1,000 calls, published and self-serve. Amberdata lists no public price and offers no API free tier.
Coin Metrics is the closest structural match to Amberdata. It sells market data, network data, indexes and reference rates together. Network metrics for Bitcoin and Ethereum run back to genesis. Atlas adds entity-level blockchain data on top.
Methodology is the moat. Coin Metrics documents how each metric is computed. Reference rates and index families are built for audit, not vibes. That is what funds and administrators actually buy. Delivery covers REST v4, WebSocket, flat-file feeds and a Python client.
There is a Community tier and it needs no API key. It allows 10 requests every 6 seconds per IP. Coverage is a subset, with 30 days of Atlas history. Reference rates return the last 7 data points only. Paid pricing is not publicly listed and routes through sales.
One caveat matters here. Talos acquired Coin Metrics in July 2025. Its marketing site now redirects to talos.com. Products and API docs remain active under the Coin Metrics name. So it carries the same consolidation story Amberdata now carries.
If Amberdata Derivatives was your reason for the contract, start here. Laevitas ships the GVOL metric set almost item for item. Implied volatility surfaces, Greeks, skew and term structure all arrive by API. So does gamma exposure, which most alternatives simply do not carry.
Coverage runs Deribit, Binance, OKX, Bybit and Coincall. Bullish options data was added in April 2026. Open interest, volume and flow break down by strike and expiry. Funding rates and liquidations ride alongside on the futures side.
Pricing has two doors. Seat plans run free, $50 for Premium and $500 for Enterprise. API keys sit behind the Enterprise tier, which is steep. The second door is far cheaper. API V2 takes x402 payments at $0.001 a call. No key and no signup are needed.
Tardis.dev does one job and does it deeply. It archives tick-level market data from 50+ exchanges. L2 and L3 order book snapshots land as daily flat files. Incremental updates, trades and quotes come too. Liquidations, funding rates and open interest ship as well.
Options are the reason it sits this high. Full options chains with Greeks are archived from Deribit, OKX and Bybit. That is the dataset Amberdata Derivatives buyers actually care about. Development stays active, with changelog entries through July 24, 2026.
Pricing is published and steep. Single data classes run $350 a month for Academic use. Solo is $700, Professional is $1,000 and Business is $3,000. All-exchange access runs from $650 to $6,000 depending on tier. Real-time streaming is free through open-source clients you host yourself, with no API key.
Block Scholes targets the exact niche Amberdata built with GVOL. It publishes options data across listed strikes and expiries. Volatility surfaces are SVI-calibrated, with surface points available on demand. Perpetual funding, open interest and futures basis ride alongside.
Coverage spans 22+ venues, with options history back to 2020. Delivery runs REST and WebSocket, plus push and pull oracles for onchain consumers. An official MCP server ships too, with a documented client setup.
Self-serve plans start from £499 a month. Note the currency is pounds, not dollars. Tiers run Core, Prime and Enterprise. Core serves hourly REST, while Prime adds minutely data and WebSocket. Billing period sets lookback: monthly gives a week, yearly gives three years. A free trial API key is available from the console.
Glassnode API covers the onchain half of Amberdata, then keeps going. It serves hundreds of metrics across major assets. Supply distribution, address activity, miner flows and entity-adjusted figures all ship. Bitcoin history runs from 2009.
Its 2026 releases moved onto Amberdata turf directly. Perp and spot order-book metrics arrived. An IBIT options suite and gamma exposure heatmaps followed. Macro and traditional finance series joined the same API. An official MCP server is included on paid tiers.
Pricing needs care. Advanced lists at $49 a month, billed annually, with VAT excluded. The plan table shows API Light on Advanced. History caps at 14 days, with daily resolution. The FAQ on the same page says API access is a Professional add-on. Confirm which applies before you commit.
Dune answers the DeFi questions Amberdata packaged for you. It holds decoded onchain data across 100+ chains. You write SQL against it, then expose saved queries through a REST API. DEX trades, contract events and protocol activity all sit there.
The tradeoff is honest. You build the dataset yourself instead of buying a curated one. In exchange you are not limited to a vendor’s metric list. Webhooks and data transformations cover scheduled pipelines.
The free plan includes API access, which is rare at this level. It allows 15 requests a minute on low-limit endpoints and 40 on high-limit ones. Storage caps at 100 MB. Paid tiers run Analyst, Plus and Enterprise, with prices listed on the pricing page. An official MCP server runs at api.dune.com.
Scope varies as much as price. This table shows what each key actually reaches.
| Provider | Assets | Venues | Chains | Historical depth | Delivery |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CoinStats API | 100,000+ coins | 200+ exchanges | 120+ blockchains | Full market history | REST + MCP |
| Coin Metrics (Talos) | Broad institutional set | Major spot and derivatives | Major chains | Network data to genesis | REST, WS, flat files |
| Laevitas | Options and perps | 6+ options venues | Hyperliquid only | Not documented | REST, WS, MCP |
| Tardis.dev | Instrument level | 50+ exchanges | CEX only | Options with Greeks archived | Flat files, replay API |
| Block Scholes | Options and perps | 22+ venues | Oracle output onchain | Options to 2020 | REST, WS, oracles |
| Glassnode API | Major assets | Spot, perps and ETF | Major chains | Bitcoin to 2009 | REST, CLI, MCP |
| Dune | Onchain tokens | DEX only | 100+ chains | Full chain history | SQL, REST, webhooks |
Amberdata built something real. The derivatives and options stack earned its reputation. Nothing here changes that record.
But 2026 buying decisions turn on access. A quote form is friction. No free tier is friction. An unresolved merger is risk you did not sign up for.
The specialists still earn their slots. Coin Metrics owns auditable rates. Laevitas owns options positioning and gamma. Tardis.dev owns tick archives. Block Scholes owns volatility surfaces. Glassnode API owns onchain research. Dune owns custom queries. Weighing CoinStats API itself? See the CoinStats API alternatives we ranked the same way.
For product teams, the math favors breadth and clarity. CoinStats API covers market data. Then it adds wallets, DeFi positions, portfolio analytics and token risk checks. One key, one schema, one published price.
Start with the free tier and test it against your roadmap.
Explore CoinStats API docs →
Quick answers to common questions about Amberdata API alternatives.
Yes. The acquisition was announced on June 2, 2026. Terms were not disclosed. Both companies described it as consolidation of digital asset data.
No. Amberdata still sells its API, and the docs remain live. No sunset or migration notice has been published. The open question is product overlap between the two stacks.
Through a demo or trial request on the Amberdata site. There is no self-serve signup for the API. Most alternatives here issue a key immediately.
Shawn Douglass, who co-founded the company in 2017. Joanes Espanol is co-founder and CTO. Amberdata now sits inside Kaiko.
No. There is no API free tier. A trial API key is available after a demo request. The derivatives analytics platform offers a separate free signup.
Amberdata publishes no API prices. Its pricing page lists a Startup tier and an Enterprise tier. Both route to a quote form. Budget teams should assume a sales cycle.
CoinStats API offers 20,000 free credits a month with commercial use allowed. Dune includes API access on its free plan. Coin Metrics runs a Community tier with no key.
For most product teams, CoinStats API. It covers market data and adds wallet, DeFi, portfolio analytics and token security endpoints. Entry pricing is published at roughly $0.05 per 1,000 calls.
It depends on the job. CoinStats API wins on price transparency and portfolio data. Laevitas wins on options positioning and gamma. Tardis.dev wins on tick-level derivatives history.
Coin Metrics is the closest structural match. It sells market data, network data and reference rates together. Block Scholes covers the options and volatility side.
Sometimes. Options analytics or tick archives may need a specialist key. Most product teams can run on one aggregator. Our guide to the best crypto wallet APIs covers the wallet side.
CoinStats API, Laevitas, Block Scholes, Glassnode API and Dune all run official MCP servers. Coin Metrics and Tardis.dev do not. Amberdata ships none.
Block Scholes for live calibrated surfaces. Tardis.dev for archived options chains with Greeks. Laevitas is cheaper, though API access sits on a $500 seat.
Glassnode API leads on metric depth and rigor. Dune wins when you need custom logic. CoinStats API covers wallet-level balances and DeFi positions by address.
Yes. Tardis.dev archives L2 and L3 snapshots as flat files for replay. Coin Metrics serves order book snapshots through its market data feed.
Tigran is a growth marketer at CoinStats, working across crypto and consumer apps. He has tracked his own crypto since 2017. That spans centralized exchanges, hardware wallets, and DeFi positions. The habit shapes how he tests these products. He connects real accounts rather than reading feature lists.
He writes about portfolio tracking, wallet data, and crypto market tools.
