# Binance vs Coinbase vs Bybit vs OKX API: same price, different terms All four answer without a key and charge nothing. They split on who the licence covers, which IPs are refused, how limits count and what history is kept. *https://cryptomarkets.tools/compare/binance-vs-coinbase-vs-bybit-vs-okx-apis* - https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/binance-api.md - https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinbase-exchange-api.md - https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bybit-api.md - https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/okx-api.md ## Zero dollars on every card The four cards above agree on the parts a developer usually checks first. The price is zero, there is no account and no key, and there is no plan to upgrade to. Every card records an unauthenticated client getting real answers on 19 September 2026. Every card says the public rate limit counts against your IP address, not a key, so the only way to get more is more egress addresses. None of that tells you which one to use. The real differences are somewhere else: whom the licence lets you show the numbers to, which IP addresses get refused, what unit the rate limit is counted in, how much of the book you get without a key, and how much history the venue keeps for you. ## Who the licence lets you show the numbers to All four restrict redistribution. They restrict it in different words, and the words matter most in two cases: a company using the data internally, and a free page that shows it to the public. **[Coinbase Exchange](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinbase-exchange-api) is the only grant of the four that names your company.** Its Market Data Terms license "you and/or the officers and employees of your entity", for "personal or research purposes". An internal dashboard at a fund is inside that grant. **[OKX](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/okx-api)** limits use to "your own personal, non-commercial trading and account management purposes". It sends anyone who needs access for commercial or institutional purposes to a separate, unpriced agreement. **[Bybit](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bybit-api)** licenses you to develop, test and support "your own use" and forbids commercial exploitation of the APIs. **[Binance](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/binance-api)** has two documents. Its live endpoints point to Product Terms that an automated reader could not open on 19 September 2026. Its flat-file archive is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. For a company's own trading desk, only Coinbase's wording plainly says yes. **A free public page is ruled out in so many words on two of them.** OKX forbids showing the data to any third party "whether for commercial gain or otherwise", and says this applies "equally" to public endpoints. Coinbase forbids showing the data, or anything derived from it, to anyone outside your organisation. Bybit's terms forbid repackaging and reselling. Binance's archived terms forbid feeding services and anything that profits from the data, advertising included. Neither names a free, ad-free page. That is not permission: the Binance card's advice is to get in writing any use that shows the data to somebody else, and nothing in Bybit's terms exempts the public routes. **Models and benchmarks are covered by separate clauses, and "benchmark" means two different things.** Coinbase bars any use of the data to train, evaluate or run an AI system, and it has no MCP server for this API. OKX bars training or evaluating a model "intended to be commercialised". Neither the Binance card nor the Bybit card records an AI clause. Bybit, though, forbids using the API to monitor its own availability or performance, which covers the venue-latency dashboard this data is often collected for. Coinbase's "benchmark" clause is about building indexes and fair-value prices. The paid route differs too. Binance, Bybit and OKX each point to a licence you have to ask for. Coinbase also names an authorised redistributor programme, and the partners it lists include [Kaiko](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/kaiko) and [Tardis.dev](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tardis-dev). Coinbase is the only one of the four whose card names third parties you can buy its licensed data from. The clauses are compared in more detail in [What exchange API terms actually let you do](https://cryptomarkets.tools/guides/exchange-api-terms). ## Which IPs get an answer at all Bybit refuses requests from US and Mainland China IP addresses with 403 Forbidden, before any key is checked. That is a property of where your servers are, and no plan or credential changes it. The card says nobody documented or tested whether the same block covers its file host, `public.bybit.com`. Watch the status code. Bybit also uses 403 for exceeding its rate limit, with the message "access too frequent" and an unban after at least ten minutes. A client that logs only the status code cannot tell "you are in the wrong country" from "slow down". The other three cards record no block on the API itself. That records only that nothing was found. It does not prove the endpoints are open, so test from your own hosting region before you build. ## Four rate limits in four units The limits look comparable and are not, so here they are in one unit: candle bars per minute from one IP address, on the documented ceilings. - **Bybit:** 600 requests per rolling 5 seconds, or 7,200 a minute. The card finds no separate cost for market routes. At 1,000 bars a page, that is about 7.2 million bars a minute. - **Binance:** 6,000 spot weight a minute, and a klines call costs 2, so 3,000 calls. At 1,000 bars a call, that is 3 million bars a minute. The `x-mbx-used-weight-1m` header shows how much you have used. - **OKX:** `history-candles` allows 20 requests per 2 seconds on its own counter, or 600 a minute. At 300 bars a request, that is 180,000 bars a minute. - **Coinbase Exchange:** 10 requests a second, bursting to 15, for all public REST from one IP. At 300 bars a call, that is at most 180,000 bars a minute, and the reference says historical rates "should not be polled frequently". Backfilling candles is about forty times faster on Bybit than on Coinbase, before you count Coinbase's missing intervals. **For a book, Binance charges by depth.** A 5,000-level snapshot costs 250 weight, so 24 a minute uses the whole spot budget. A 100-level snapshot costs 5. Coinbase serves the whole order-by-order book in one keyless call, within its ten a second. On Bybit's documented ceiling, a 1,000-level snapshot is one request out of 600 per five seconds. **OKX counts each endpoint separately, and some of them per contract.** Funding rate allows 10 requests per 2 seconds and open interest 20, each counted per IP and instrument together. Polling a hundred contracts means scheduling a hundred small budgets, but one stuck loop cannot use up the others. **The penalties differ.** Binance turns ignored 429s into a 418 ban, from two minutes up to three days. Bybit locks you out for at least ten minutes. OKX returns code 50011 over HTTP 429. The Coinbase card does not say what exceeding its limit returns. ## The book you can get without a key **[Bybit](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bybit-api) documents the deepest keyless stream.** It pushes level 1 every 10 ms, 50 levels every 20 ms, 200 every 100 ms and 1,000 every 200 ms. REST snapshots go to 1,000 levels, or 25 for options. Retail Price Improvement orders are left out of both, so a book rebuilt from the API will not match every fill. **[Coinbase Exchange](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinbase-exchange-api) gives more over REST than over its websocket.** `level=3` returns the entire non-aggregated book with no key. Its websocket's `level2`, `level3` and `full` channels need an account. Without a key you get `level2_batch` every 50 ms, plus `matches` for trades. That is enough to keep a book up to date, but not tick-for-tick what an account holder sees. **[Binance](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/binance-api) and [OKX](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/okx-api) record websocket limits but not book depths.** Binance allows 1,024 streams per connection, 5 incoming messages a second, and 300 new connections per IP every five minutes. It drops every connection at 24 hours, so build reconnection in from the start. OKX allows three new connections a second per IP and 480 subscribe messages an hour per connection. It drops a connection after 30 seconds without a push and serves candles on a separate `business` URL. OKX also warns that successive REST polls can return older data than the one before. If you poll it rather than stream, discard any response with an older timestamp than the last. For connection count, Bybit allows up to 1,000 concurrent market-data connections per IP, counted separately for each product line. Coinbase caps the websocket at 8 requests a second and 100 client messages a second per IP. ## History the venue keeps, and history you keep Treat each kind of history separately. **Daily candles are free from all four, back to different dates.** Coinbase starts BTC-USD in July 2015, earliest of the four, but leaves intervals with no trades out of the series rather than filling them with zeros. Binance's BTCUSDT daily starts on 17 August 2017. OKX's `history-candles` returned BTC-USDT for December 2017, while its regular candles endpoint keeps only the latest 1,440 entries. Bybit goes back to each instrument's launch: November 2018 for BTC on the inverse contract, March 2020 on the USDT perpetual and July 2021 on spot. **Tick trades depend on whether the venue publishes files.** Binance's `data.binance.vision` has trades, aggregate trades, klines and futures funding history as zipped CSV. Bybit's `public.bybit.com` has daily trade files, and the BTCUSDT perpetual runs from 25 March 2020. OKX's portal has trades from September 2021. The Coinbase card records no archive at all. A Coinbase tape older than the day you start recording is something you buy from a redistributor. **Order-book history is the gap.** Only OKX's archive carries an L2 book, from March 2023. For Binance, Bybit and Coinbase, the card records no book history from the venue. You record it yourself from the day you start, or you buy it. The [OKX card](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/okx-api) points to [Tardis.dev](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tardis-dev) for history the venues do not keep. The steps are in [Backfill tick-level trade history](https://cryptomarkets.tools/how-to/backfill-tick-level-trade-history). The archive licences match each venue's live terms. Binance's files are non-commercial and ShareAlike, and caching is explicitly covered. OKX's are personal use only, and you must delete every copy if the licence is revoked. The Bybit card does not say whether its file host is covered by its API Terms. ## One venue's tape is not the market Each of these returns one exchange's trades, book and instrument list, and nothing when that exchange is down or delists a pair. Even the symbols differ: the cards write `BTCUSDT` for Binance and Bybit, `BTC-USDT` for OKX and `BTC-USD` for Coinbase, and the Coinbase pair is quoted in a different currency. Coinbase is spot only. The other three carry funding, open interest and long/short series. Going direct to all four means four licences, four rate-limit units and four symbol formats. Bybit also decides where the collector can run. A multi-venue collector hosted in the US or Mainland China cannot include Bybit directly. [CCXT](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/ccxt) gives you one client across them and no data of its own. [CoinAPI](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinapi) and [Kaiko](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/kaiko) sell the cross-venue view as a product. Others are in [Crypto Market Data APIs](https://cryptomarkets.tools/categories/market-data-apis). ## Checked on one day, under terms of different ages All four cards were verified on the same day, 19 September 2026, so the live behaviour above is comparable. The documents behind the licences are not the same age. Bybit's API Terms are dated 16 January 2026, OKX's API Agreement 28 July 2026, Coinbase's Market Data Terms 7 August 2026 and Binance's archive terms 26 August 2026. Binance's clause for the live endpoints is the weakest source here: its text comes from archived captures between October 2020 and February 2023, because the current page refuses automated readers. Before relying on Binance's live-data terms, read that page yourself. ## Which one, and when **For one venue's live tape**, use the venue the trades happen on, because no other API has its tape. If the venue is not fixed yet, start with Bybit for the deepest documented keyless book stream and the fastest candle backfill. Switch the moment your servers are in the US or Mainland China: from there, use Binance if you will poll, because its weight header lets you pace requests exactly, or OKX if you will stream, because streaming avoids its REST polls going back in time. Use Coinbase Exchange when the job is spot only and the user is a company's own staff, because its grant is the only one that plainly covers them. **For several venues**, go direct with CCXT while the numbers stay inside your organisation and host outside the US and Mainland China if Bybit must be included. Once anyone outside your organisation will see the numbers, buy the cross-venue feed from a licensed redistributor. The free terms of all four rule out showing the data to others. **For history**, pull daily candles from all four for free. Use Binance's and Bybit's archives for tick trades in a backtest you run yourself. Order-book history from any venue but OKX, OKX's before March 2023, and any Coinbase tape older than your own recording have to be bought. If you will need either later, start recording the venue's book today. ## FAQ ### Which exchange API is best for free market data? The one whose venue you need, because each returns only its own exchange's trades and book. Where the choice is open, three conditions settle it. If your servers are in the US or Mainland China, Bybit refuses them. If you need funding, open interest or options, Coinbase Exchange has none of them. If you are backfilling candles, Binance and Bybit return 1,000 bars a call and allow far more calls a minute than Coinbase or OKX, which return 300. ### Can I call these APIs from the United States? Not Bybit's. Its integration guide says requests from US or Mainland China IP addresses get 403 Forbidden, before any key is checked. The Binance, Coinbase Exchange and OKX cards record no block on the API itself. They do not record that one was tested either, so absent there means not documented rather than confirmed open. ### Can I show prices from these APIs to other people? Not on the free terms of any of the four. OKX forbids showing its data to any third party whether for commercial gain or otherwise, and says this covers public endpoints. Coinbase limits use to you and your entity's staff. Bybit forbids repackaging, reselling or commercially exploiting the data. Binance's archived terms forbid feeding services and services that profit from its data. Each sells a licence for that case, and none publishes the price. ### Which one has the most free history? For daily candles, Coinbase Exchange, which starts BTC-USD in July 2015, but it leaves out intervals with no trades and returns 300 bars a call. Binance's daily BTCUSDT starts on 17 August 2017 and has a free CSV archive. For tick trades, Binance and Bybit publish free files, OKX has them from September 2021, and Coinbase has none on its card. OKX is the only one of the four with an order-book archive, which starts in March 2023.