# DefiLlama vs Token Terminal vs Artemis: Only One Is Free to Pull

All three are free to read. Only DefiLlama is free to query by code; Token Terminal quotes its API and Artemis starts API access at a $500-a-month seat.

*https://cryptomarkets.tools/compare/defillama-vs-token-terminal-vs-artemis*

- https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/defillama.md
- https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/token-terminal.md
- https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/artemis.md

## Three free websites, one free API

All three cards sell the same idea: somebody has already decided what fees, revenue, TVL and
active users mean, applied it to every protocol, and written it down, so two protocols on two
chains can be read side by side. All three are free to read in a browser. The difference is what
happens the moment the numbers have to leave the browser.

- **[DefiLlama](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/defillama)** — the public REST API needs no key. $300 a month buys the
  catalogue the free endpoints do not serve (unlocks, active users, token liquidity), a documented
  rate limit and the MCP server.
- **[Token Terminal](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/token-terminal)** — free to read with full history, Pro at $350 a
  month, and the API as a third tier with **no published price**, booked through a demo. Pro does
  not include it.
- **[Artemis](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/artemis)** — a free Intern tier and a $100-a-month Investor seat, both sold in
  Analyst queries. API keys start at the **$500-a-month-per-user Plugin seat**, the spreadsheet
  add-in.

So the cheapest way to get protocol fundamentals into your own code is $0 at DefiLlama, $500 a
month at Artemis, and unknown at Token Terminal until a sales call. Everything below either
explains that gap or qualifies it.

## The same word, counted three ways

Each card records where its vendor writes its definitions down, and the three places say different
things about the same words.

**TVL.** DefiLlama is the one whose TVL definition is the product: two docs pages, one for
contributors and one for analysts, and a per-protocol `methodology` string returned inline by the
API. Deposits into a protocol's own contracts count. Borrowed coins, the protocol's own token,
tokens it mints itself, vesting tokens and native chain staking are excluded or split into
toggles, and double counting is flagged rather than summed. Token Terminal and Artemis both list
TVL among their metrics, and neither card records how either vendor defines it. Two TVL figures
for one protocol from two of these sites are not known to be the same measurement, and the cards
cannot tell you whether they are.

**Fees and revenue.** Here DefiLlama and Token Terminal agree, and both publish it: revenue is
fees minus supply-side revenue, the share the protocol keeps after paying lenders and liquidity
providers. DefiLlama frames it as an income statement "inspired by GAAP", on an accrual basis,
with negative values recorded rather than clamped. Artemis publishes a different distinction:
`FEES` folds application-level fees on top of raw gas, while `CHAIN_FEES` does not. If you put an
Artemis chain-fee series next to another vendor's fees, check which of the two you pulled.

**Earnings.** This is where Token Terminal stands alone. Its earnings are revenue minus cost of
revenue, token incentives and operating expenses. Token incentives are framed explicitly as the
analogue of stock-based compensation. The vendor also warns that the figure can understate costs
a project does not report on-chain. The DefiLlama card names earnings as one of the terms it
defines, but records no subtraction beyond protocol revenue and token holder revenue. The Artemis
card does not list earnings at all. A multiple built on Token Terminal's earnings or its P/S ratio
inherits every one of those judgements. It is a valuation input, not a valuation.

**Active users.** Artemis is the only one of the three that names the trap. `CHAIN_DAU` counts
addresses that send a transaction on the chain, and `DAU` counts addresses that use a protocol's
products. It also states that splitting `DAU` by category double-counts addresses active in two
categories: 605,380 against 439,738 for Ethereum on the same day. Token Terminal lists daily,
weekly and monthly users, and DefiLlama serves active users on its paid API. Neither card records
the definition behind either number.

One more Artemis warning travels with any long series: in July 2026 its stablecoin transfer volume
changed from an adjusted figure to gross transfers minus mints and burns **under the same field
name**. A chart that crosses that date is two measurements.

## What the price ladder actually buys

The three ladders meter different things, so the headline numbers do not line up.

**DefiLlama** — Free $0; Pro $49 a month ($490 a year), for CSV downloads, custom columns,
spreadsheet functions and LlamaAI; API $300 a month ($3,000 a year), for 1,000 requests a minute,
1 million calls a month and then $0.60 per 1,000; Enterprise on request, for hourly history, raw
database access and TVL by token address. The checkout opens on the yearly tab, so it shows
$40.83 and $250. The figures here are the month-to-month rates.

**Token Terminal** — Free $0; Pro $350 a month, with annual billing advertised only as "Save 15%";
API custom, at 250,000 requests a day and 1,000 a minute; Datashare custom, with tables shared
into your own BigQuery or Snowflake, where **you also pay the query compute**. Its pricing page
contradicts itself on whether Free includes CSV exports, the spreadsheet plugin and MCP, and the
card does not settle the question.

**Artemis** — Intern $0, which the docs put at 20 Analyst queries a month and the pricing page
leaves unnumbered; Investor $100 a month for 100 queries; Plugin $500 a month per user for 1
million add-in calls and API access; Managing Director custom, from $50,000 a year in the docs,
and the only tier with MCP and the Snowflake share.

Normalised to the question a developer asks: DefiLlama and Token Terminal both document 1,000
requests a minute on their API tiers, but DefiLlama also caps the month at 1 million calls and
meters past that, while Token Terminal caps the day at 250,000. The Artemis card records no API
rate limit, only add-in call allowances. An Artemis query is a question to its chat Analyst, not
an API call, so the $100 tier buys nothing a script can use.

## How many protocols, and who decides

**DefiLlama** listed 8,308 protocols across 468 chains in 102 categories on 19 September 2026. A
protocol gets in through a pull request: a JavaScript adapter against a public repository,
reviewed by the team. The card's caveat is that the adapter's author is usually the protocol
being listed. The rules are public, but the person applying them is not neutral.

**Token Terminal** counts coverage per metric, and the spread is wide: on the same date, 718
projects with circulating market cap, 323 with fees, 322 with revenue, 233 with earnings and 201
with TVL. A project on the site is not necessarily a project in the metric you came for. Projects
are added weekly from submissions, with priority to those that arrive with complete smart
contract descriptions. You cannot add a metric. The vendor's own pages disagree on chains:
"14+" in the FAQ, "hundreds" on the data-approach page.

**Artemis** documents 112 chains, names a core set of twenty, and quotes 600-plus protocols
alongside 30,000-plus equity tickers in the same namespace. Its card records how coverage leaves
rather than how it arrives. On 27 May 2026 Artemis turned off the pipelines for 122 chains and
protocols "where customer demand had significantly declined", and stopped supporting them on 26
June. On 12 June it removed a list of application-level activity metrics as part of a move toward
equities.

## Getting the numbers out

**Into a spreadsheet.** All three have Google Sheets and Excel functions. DefiLlama's come with
the $49 Pro plan, and CSV downloads are switched off during its trial. Token Terminal's come with
Pro at 500,000 calls a month, or at Free if you believe the plan card rather than the matrix.
Artemis's `=ART()` add-in is the $500 Plugin seat. It also pulls Token Terminal and
[Dune](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/dune) data on API keys you already hold, which makes it worth more to a reader
already paying for those, and it can break for reasons that have nothing to do with Artemis.

**Into code.** DefiLlama: public REST with no key, and paid endpoints with one. Token Terminal:
REST at `/v2` with a bearer key and Python and TypeScript SDKs. A lapsed subscription answers 402
rather than 403. Artemis: three REST endpoints serving every series, and an unlisted Python
client on PyPI that still points at the pre-rebrand docs. **Artemis returns errors as HTTP 200,**
with a string where the array should be. A client that checks only the status code will see a
full response and no failure.

**Into a warehouse.** Token Terminal's Datashare (BigQuery or Snowflake, compute on you) and
Artemis's Snowflake share (Managing Director only) both exist. DefiLlama's equivalent is raw
database access on Enterprise.

**Into an AI client.** The three MCP servers are three different things. DefiLlama's has 23 tools
returning data and requires the $300 API subscription. Token Terminal's is on every plan, with
tighter limits on Free, and has a single `research` tool that answers in prose, so two runs need
not agree. Artemis's is Managing Director only.

**Freshness.** DefiLlama updates TVL hourly, and fees and revenue hourly for most protocols, with
the site trailing its own API by up to an hour. Token Terminal and Artemis are daily. Artemis
returns the current day as null until it closes.

## Read on one day, edited on three

All three cards record pricing and coverage as verified on the same day, 19 September 2026, so
the prices and protocol counts above were taken together, not months apart. The cards were last
edited on different days: Token Terminal on 19 September, Artemis on 21 September and DefiLlama
on 4 October. None of the three is marked as tested hands-on. The Artemis card says outright that
nobody on this site has held a paid Artemis account. DefiLlama's checkout page sits behind a bot
check, and its prices were read through a text-extraction proxy. Anything that moved after 19
September — and Artemis has been moving — is not reflected here.

## Which one, and when

**Take DefiLlama** if the question is a TVL figure, a fees or revenue series across many
protocols, or anything a script has to fetch without a budget. It is the only one of the three
where code reaches the data for free, the only one with a self-serve API price, and the only one whose
protocol metrics update hourly. The trade, written on its card, is that the adapter behind a number was usually
written by the protocol being measured.

**Take Token Terminal** if the view you need is the income statement: revenue through token
incentives and expenses to earnings, with quarterly and yearly financial statements, on a smaller
set of projects counted strictly. Read it free. Treat the API as a quote you have to request
before you plan anything around it, and check the metric page for your project before assuming
it is covered.

**Take Artemis** if you are comparing chains with each other under one written definition, live in
a spreadsheet, and can justify $500 a month a seat. Its named metric pairs and stated aggregation
rules are the cross-chain methodology the other two do not offer. Before you commit, confirm your
chain survived the May–June 2026 cut, and that no field you rely on changed meaning in July.

The condition that decides most readers: **if the data has to reach your own code and nobody has
signed a budget, it is DefiLlama, whatever the other two do better.** Move to Token Terminal when
the question is earnings rather than activity. Move to Artemis when the question is one chain
against another, and the answer has to sit in a sheet.

## FAQ

### Which of the three can I query from code without paying?

DefiLlama. Its public REST endpoints answer without an account or a key for TVL, protocols, chains, prices and yields, although the free rate limit is not published. Token Terminal's API is a separate tier with no public price, and Artemis puts API keys only on its 500-dollar-a-month Plugin seat and on Managing Director, which its docs start at 50,000 dollars a year.

### Do the three mean the same thing by revenue?

DefiLlama and Token Terminal do, and both publish it — fees minus what goes to lenders, liquidity providers and other supply-side participants. They part at the next line. DefiLlama splits revenue into protocol revenue and token holder revenue; Token Terminal subtracts cost of revenue, token incentives and operating expenses to reach earnings, and warns that off-chain costs are missing. The Artemis card does not record how Artemis defines revenue.

### Which one covers the most protocols?

DefiLlama by a wide margin — 8,308 protocols across 468 chains on 19 September 2026. Token Terminal's coverage is per metric, from 718 projects with a circulating market cap down to 233 with earnings. Artemis documents 112 chains and quotes 600-plus protocols, and it stopped computing 122 chains and protocols in May and June 2026.

### Which one should I use for a quick TVL number?

DefiLlama. It is free, needs no account, updates TVL hourly, and publishes what it excludes from TVL — borrowed coins, the protocol's own token, native staking, vesting tokens. Token Terminal and Artemis both carry TVL, but both are daily and neither is bought for that number.