What to use instead of Cryptowatch

The product

Cryptowatch was a charting terminal for people who watched more than one exchange. Kraken acquired it in 2017 and ran it as web, desktop and mobile apps: candles and aggregated order books drawn from dozens of venues side by side, a trade feed, alerts, order entry against exchange keys you connected yourself, and a chat layer called Cryptowatch Social. Underneath the apps sat the Cryptowatch API — a plain REST and WebSocket surface over the same markets, with one naming scheme across exchanges and a credit allowance you could start on for nothing. That API is why it turns up in so many Python and R wrapper packages: it was the easiest way to get comparable candles from several venues without writing an integration per venue.

On 31 July 2023 Kraken published the sunset notice. In its words, "Cryptowatch Web, Desktop and Mobile products will sunset. This includes Cryptowatch Social and Cryptowatch API." The schedule was three lines: new and existing subscriptions stopped on 1 August 2023; Desktop, Mobile and Web were discontinued on 30 September 2023; outstanding purchased credit was refunded after that. The stated reason was focus — "as we focus our attention and resources on enhancing Kraken's core range of products and services" — and existing users were pointed at Kraken Pro, Kraken's own trading interface, with a note that some Cryptowatch technology would be folded into it. Kraken Pro is a single-venue exchange front end, which is not the job Cryptowatch was hired for.

Three years on, the shutdown is complete in the way shutdowns usually are not. Checked on 19 September 2026: cryptowat.ch and www.cryptowat.ch both return a 301 to www.kraken.com, and api.cryptowat.ch and docs.cryptowat.ch have no DNS record at all. The apex still resolves because somebody kept the redirect; the API host does not resolve, which is the more useful fact — code pointed at it fails at name resolution, before any HTTP status a client could branch on.

One note on sourcing: the announcement is Kraken's own, but the live blog URL refuses automated requests with a 403, so the wording above was read from an Internet Archive capture of that page taken on 2 October 2023.

What to use instead

Say the awkward part first: this catalogue cannot replace the front end. The categories that would hold a multi-venue terminal or a charting platform — trading terminals, charting platforms — are still drafts here, so the honest answer for "I want that screen back" is that the list below does not contain it. Four cards cover four separable pieces of what Cryptowatch did, and all four are the data rather than the view.

If what you had was the API, and you can run code. CCXT is the closest match in this catalogue and it is first on the list for that reason. One interface over 104 exchanges, MIT-licensed, covering candles, order books, trades and — unlike Cryptowatch's read-only endpoints for most users — order entry with your own exchange keys. The difference that matters is architectural: Cryptowatch was a hosted aggregate you called once, CCXT is a client that calls each exchange for you. You inherit every exchange's rate limits, outages and schema changes instead of somebody else's.

If what you had was the API, and you do not want to run anything. CoinAPI is the hosted form — one symbol scheme across 400+ venues over REST, WebSocket and FIX, normalised on their side. It is the nearest thing in shape to what Cryptowatch sold. It is also the one that will surprise you on price: there is no free plan, entry is a card on file, and REST is metered in credits while WebSocket is metered in gigabytes. Budget before you port.

If what you actually miss is the screen. Velo is the only card on this list that is a thing you look at rather than a thing you call — cross-venue charts over Binance, Bybit, OKX, Deribit and Hyperliquid, free to use in the browser, with a CSV API on the paid tier. It is a derivatives product: open interest, funding, basis, liquidations. It is not a spot charting terminal and it does not draw an aggregated spot book. If your Cryptowatch layout was four spot pairs across four exchanges, the nearer answer is Tealstreet, which is free and charts every venue you hold a key for — though it, too, draws them side by side rather than merging the books.

If what you had was the history. Tardis.dev sells exactly the archive Cryptowatch never really had — tick-by-tick trades and L2 and L3 order books from 64 exchange feeds back to 2019, delivered as files to replay rather than as a live feed. Anyone whose Cryptowatch use was actually a backfill script should start here, not with a real-time API.

What you give up

The terminal, with nothing in this catalogue standing in for it. This is the loss and it is not a small one. Cryptowatch put several exchanges' books and candles on one screen with one layout, and the two categories here that would list a replacement are not open yet. Kraken Pro is one venue's own front end; Velo is five derivatives venues; CCXT and CoinAPI are things you write code against. If you need the picture rather than the numbers, the honest answer is that this page does not have it.

The aggregated order book across spot venues. Cryptowatch's signature view merged several exchanges' books into one depth chart. CoinGlass publishes cross-venue L2 and L3 books, but on roughly thirty futures venues, which is a different tape and a different question. No card in this catalogue does the spot version, which is why CoinGlass is not on the list above — it would be a pick chosen to make the list longer rather than to answer the question.

A free tier that started as a tier and not as a trial. Cryptowatch's API had a credit allowance you could use without a card. Of the four picks, CCXT is free because it is a library and you supply the infrastructure, Velo is free to look at but not to export, Tardis.dev's free tier is a sample of days rather than a reduced rate, and CoinAPI has no free plan at all.

The wrapper libraries. A decade of cryptowatchR, Python clients and community bindings went with it, and because the API host no longer resolves, they do not degrade — they throw at the DNS layer. Anything in your dependency tree that imports one is dead weight, not a fallback.

Migration notes

Nothing here is a port. Cryptowatch's response shapes, market identifiers and allowance model have no successor, so a migration is a rewrite of the data layer and should be planned as one.

• Market identifiers. Cryptowatch used exchange:pair strings with its own normalisation (kraken:btcusd). CCXT uses its own unified symbols (BTC/USD) mapped onto each exchange's native market ids, and CoinAPI uses its own EXCHANGE_SPOT_BASE_QUOTE scheme. In all three cases the mapping table is yours to build and maintain, and it is where a migration quietly loses a venue.
• Candle boundaries and periods. Cryptowatch returned candles keyed by period in seconds. Exchange APIs use string intervals with their own vocabularies, and not every exchange aligns a 4-hour candle to the same boundary. Two providers' 4h bars for the same market are often not the same bars, and the gap shows up as a phantom signal rather than an error.
• Rate limits change kind, not just size. Cryptowatch metered a credit allowance per account against a hosted service. Going to CCXT means each exchange's own limit, usually per IP and often weighted per endpoint, enforced by somebody who does not know you migrated. Going to CoinAPI means credits for REST and gigabytes for WebSocket, which are two meters to watch instead of one.
• Aggregated depth has to be assembled. If you were reading Cryptowatch's merged book, that merge was a product feature. Rebuilding it means subscribing to each venue's book stream, keeping each one in sync separately, and deciding what to do when one goes stale — which is a piece of engineering, not a configuration option.
• Order entry moves to the exchanges. Cryptowatch brokered orders through connected exchange keys. CCXT does the same job locally, but the keys, the permissions and the failure handling are now in your process, and so is anything you were relying on Cryptowatch to retry.
• Check the shutdown date against your data. Anything stamped after 30 September 2023 that claims Cryptowatch as its source did not come from Cryptowatch.

The rest of the field is in Crypto Market Data APIs.