# What exchange API terms actually let you do

Public crypto endpoints answer without a key. The terms behind them still restrict redistribution, benchmarks and model training, and name an unpriced licence.

*https://cryptomarkets.tools/guides/exchange-api-terms · background to Crypto Market Data APIs*

**Answer:** Public crypto endpoints are open to anyone, but open is not the same as licensed. OKX, Coinbase and Bybit all confine their market data to personal or internal use and require written consent before you redistribute it, build a product on it or train a model with it. OKX applies that to public endpoints in as many words. The commercial route is a separately licensed redistributor, which is why that layer of paid vendors exists at all.

A crypto exchange will hand you its full order book over an unauthenticated HTTP request, with no
account, no key and no rate card. That is a decision about plumbing, not a grant of rights. The
document that decides what you may do with the numbers is somewhere else, and it is usually
narrower than the endpoint's openness suggests.

## How it works

Three separate documents govern an exchange's market data, and they are routinely mistaken for one
another.

**The key agreement** is what you accept when you create an API key. It governs the credential:
how you may use it, that it can be revoked at any time without notice, that you may not reverse
engineer the software behind it. Binance's API Key Terms are entirely of this kind and say nothing
about republishing prices. A developer who reads this one and stops has read the wrong document.

**The market-data licence** says who owns the trade prints and quotes and what you may do with them
once you hold them. This is the document that decides whether the thing you are building can ship.
Coinbase binds it explicitly from the developer docs — accessing the Exchange Market Data API is
stated there to bind you to the Market Data Terms of Use — and OKX folds its version into section 9
of the API Agreement itself.

**The archive licence** covers the flat-file dumps: `data.binance.vision`, OKX's historical-data
page, `public.bybit.com`. It is often the most restrictive of the three, because a bulk download is
the form in which data is easiest to resell.

None of the three is accepted by clicking anything. Binance Vision's Dataset Terms bind you, in
section 3.2, "upon downloading, caching, querying, or otherwise utilizing" the datasets. OKX closes
the obvious escape hatch in the last sentence of section 9.4: "The restrictions in this Section 9.4
apply equally to Market Data accessed through public endpoints as to Market Data accessed through
authenticated endpoints."

The money moves in one direction and the data in the other. The exchange generates the prints,
publishes them free on endpoints anyone can call, reserves every right in them by contract, and
then licenses those rights commercially under a separate agreement whose price it does not
publish. Firms that have bought that agreement collect the same data across dozens of venues,
normalise it into one schema and sell the result. Their customers are paying for the permission
and the normalisation, not for access.

## What each document actually says

Quoted from the documents named in the sources below, with the version each was read at. These
change; the clause numbers are the stable part.

### OKX

The API Agreement last updated 28 July 2026 is the strictest of the four and the clearest. Section
9.1 places every right in the "OKX Materials … including the API Services, Agent Trade Kit, MCP
Server, Skills, CLIs, SDKs, documentation, specifications, protocols, software, interfaces, data
schemas, and Market Data" with OKX or its licensors. Section 9.4 then grants use of Market Data
"solely for your own personal, non-commercial trading and account management purposes" and
prohibits four things absent OKX's prior written consent:

- reselling, redistributing, publishing, displaying or otherwise making the data available to any
  third party — "whether for commercial gain or otherwise", which removes the free-and-public
  defence;
- using it to "build, operate, or contribute to any competing data product, market data service,
  financial data aggregator, price feed, or analytics platform";
- using it "to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any machine learning model or AI system that is
  intended to be commercialized or made available to third parties";
- any use that "competes with or substitutes for OKX's commercial data licensing offerings".

Commercial or institutional scale, the same section says, requires "a separate data licensing
agreement". The flat-file archive has its own terms: a revocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free
personal-use licence that expressly covers "possession, retention and/or use of such Data for
development of your own trading strategy", defines commercial use to include "any re-distribution
and/or sub-license of such Data to your end users or business partners", and obliges you to
"immediately delete all copies" on revocation.

### Binance

Binance is the one case where the operative wording is hard to read in its current form. The API
documentation's own terms file is a pointer — "Binance products and services are subject to the
Product Terms of Use" — and the page it points at is rendered client-side and served empty to
automated clients. The restriction widely quoted from it is nevertheless traceable to the
exchange's own page, in section III.1.b:

> Without written consent from Binance, the following commercial uses of Binance data are
> prohibited: 1) Trading services that make use of Binance quotes or market bulletin board
> information. 2) Data feeding or streaming services that make use of any market data of Binance.
> 3) Any other websites/apps/services that charge for or otherwise profit from (including through
> advertising or referral fees) market data obtained from Binance.

That text is present in Internet Archive captures of the Terms of Use from October 2020 through
February 2023. Whether the wording survives in the version served today could not be checked, and
this page does not claim it does. Read it as the shape of the restriction rather than as a verified
current clause, and confirm it against the live page before relying on it. The third limb is the
one people trip over: an advertising-funded price widget is named as a commercial use.

The flat-file archive is unambiguous by comparison. The Binance Vision Dataset Terms, version 1.0,
last updated 26 August 2026, license the datasets under **CC BY-NC-SA 4.0** (section 3.1). Section
3.4 states that "Commercial licensing is strictly excluded under this agreement; any commercial
utilization requires a separate, written enterprise data license agreement executed with Binance."
Section 4.1 lists the permitted non-commercial uses — academic research, non-monetised open
educational projects, "algorithmic historical backtesting for purely personal non-production
research", non-commercial open-source data science evaluations. Section 4.2 rules out live
proprietary trading execution and signal distribution for compensation; 4.3 rules out licensing,
sub-licensing, hosting or commercially exploiting the data "or any derivative real-time or
historical data feeds"; 4.4 rules out integration into commercial financial products, hedge fund
tools, paid newsletters or commercial trading bot platforms.

The ShareAlike half is the clause that catches people who read only the price. Under section 4.5, a
derivative you redistribute must attribute Binance Vision and stay under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — so a
cleaned, resampled dataset you publish carries the non-commercial restriction onward to everyone
who takes it from you.

One scope question is genuinely unresolved in the document. Section 2.1 limits it to data "made
available through www.data.binance.vision and associated endpoints", while section 7.1 speaks of
"the Binance Vision repository and API base endpoints". Whether that reaches `api.binance.com` and
the market-data-only host is not spelled out either way.

### Coinbase

The Market Data Terms of Use, last updated 7 August 2026, grant a "nonexclusive, nontransferable,
non-sublicensable, revocable, limited license, solely for you and/or the officers and employees of
your entity", for "personal or research purposes", and state that the data "may not be used to
build an application intended for use by end users other than for you or your officers/employees".

Absent prior express written consent you may not redistribute, display or disseminate the market
data "or any data, charts, analytics, research, or other works based on, referring to, or derived
from the Market Data ('Derived Works') — to any third party outside of your organization by
electronic means or otherwise". The Derived Works definition is what makes this broader than it
first reads: a chart you publish is covered, not only a feed you resell.

Two further prohibitions matter for anything quantitative. The data and Derived Works may not be
used to create "indexes, fixings, or other benchmarks", "generic or fair value prices" or
valuations of a financial product, nor used as a benchmark — which the document then defines at
length. And the version last updated 7 August 2026 adds a clause against using the data to train
artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models, drawn wider than OKX's, which is confined to
models intended for commercialisation or third-party availability.

### Bybit

The API Terms and Conditions last updated 16 January 2026 are drafted around the software but
defined over the data. Section 3.1 defines "Service Data" as "any data, or information within the
dataset and content that is given by using the API", and the restrictions then run against that
definition: section 6.7 forbids repackaging or reselling "the services, or any part thereof, API or
Service Data"; 6.9 forbids commercially exploiting the APIs; 6.6 forbids using the API "to monitor
the availability, performance, or functionality of any of the API, the Service Data, a service or
for any similar benchmarking purposes"; 6.5 forbids replicating Bybit's products or attempting to
compete with them.

The ambiguity here is worth naming rather than resolving. Section 2.3 — "Prior to Using an API, you
must verify your identity through an API Key" — reads as though the whole document were written for
keyed access. Section 1.1 scopes it to "our Application Programming Interface", without
qualification, and nothing in the seven pages carves out the unauthenticated endpoints the way OKX
deliberately rules them in. A caller with no Bybit account is in an unaddressed position, not a
permitted one.

### What none of the four addresses

**Retention.** None of these documents says how long you may keep what you pulled. That is an
absence, not a permission and not a prohibition — if a five-year local store of ticks is
load-bearing for you, it is a question to put in writing rather than an inference to draw.

**A price.** OKX names "a separate data licensing agreement", Binance Vision names "a separate,
written enterprise data license agreement", Coinbase publishes a contact form. Not one of them
publishes a figure, a tier or a rate card for the commercial licence. The cost of doing this
properly, directly with an exchange, is not a number anyone outside the negotiation can look up.

## Why the paid aggregator layer exists

Coinbase is the only one of the four that publishes the other end of the arrangement, and the list
is the most useful single artefact in this area. Its institutional market-data page names eleven
authorized redistribution partners: Amberdata, Architect, CCData, Coin Metrics, CoinRoutes, Digital
Asset Research, Kaiko, Lukka, NinjaTrader, Polygon.io and Tardis.dev.

That list is the answer to "why would I pay Kaiko when Binance gives me candles for free". These
firms are not selling access to numbers that are already public. They have bought, venue by venue,
the redistribution right the terms above reserve, and what a subscription buys you is a share of
that permission together with the normalisation work — one schema, one clock, one symbology across
venues whose own conventions agree about nothing.

Six of the eleven have cards in this catalogue, three of them under a name that has changed since
the partner list was written: [Amberdata](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/amberdata), [Coin Metrics](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coin-metrics)
(now sold by Talos), [Kaiko](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/kaiko), [Tardis.dev](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tardis-dev), Polygon.io (which now
publishes as [Massive](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/polygon-io-crypto)) and CCData (now
[CoinDesk Data](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coindesk-data)). The rename rate in that list is itself worth noticing
before you sign a multi-year contract with anyone in it.

The list also sets a ceiling on what a smaller vendor can be selling you. A firm that is not on an
exchange's redistributor list and is reselling that exchange's data has either a bilateral
agreement it has not advertised or a problem it has not told you about. It is a fair question to
ask, and the answer to it is the difference between a supplier and a single point of failure.

## What it costs

The raw access costs nothing and that is not the interesting half. OKX, Binance, Coinbase Exchange
and Bybit all answer market-data requests with no account and no key; the constraint on the free
path is the rate limit, and on all four it is per IP rather than per key, which means it is shared
with everyone behind your egress address.

What is priced is the licensed path, and only the redistributor tier of it is published at all:

- [Amberdata](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/amberdata) sells one exchange in one market — spot, futures or options — from
  a self-serve store at 600 USD a month, or 5,000 USD a year on the annual option, with 20 calls a
  second and 250,000 a day. It is the cheapest published entry into licensed data we have found.
- [Tardis.dev](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tardis-dev) publishes tiers from 350 USD a month for the academic plan, on
  quarterly or yearly billing only, up to 650 USD a month for all exchanges.
- [Massive](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/polygon-io-crypto) sells crypto only inside its Currencies plan, from 49 USD a
  month, alongside forex.
- [Kaiko](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/kaiko), [Coin Metrics](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coin-metrics) above its free community tier, and
  [CoinDesk Data](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coindesk-data) are all quote-only, with no self-serve checkout and no
  published figure.

Treat every one of those figures as the price of access, not the price of the right to republish.
Whether a given plan lets your output leave your organisation is a question about that vendor's own
licence, usually answered by a different and more expensive tier, and it is the question to ask
before the demo rather than after.

## What you can do about it

**Work out which document binds you before reading any of them.** If you took the data from a REST
endpoint, the market-data licence applies. If you downloaded a flat-file dump, the archive terms
apply and are probably stricter. If all you did was create a key, the key agreement is the one
document that does not answer your question.

**Nothing here stops personal or internal use, and that is the threshold that matters.** A single
trader pulling candles into a notebook, backtesting a strategy and trading their own account is
inside the grant in all four documents; OKX names strategy development explicitly. If your output
never leaves your organisation and is not itself a product, you can stop reading.

**Know the tripwires by name.** Each of these is named directly in at least one of the four: a
public chart or dashboard; a free API that proxies the exchange's responses; a bot posting prices
into a channel other people can read; an advertising-funded or referral-funded price page; an index,
fixing, benchmark or "fair value" price; a model you train and then ship. The last two are the newer
ones and the easiest to walk into while believing the work is derived enough to be yours.

**Treat a derived dataset as still covered.** Coinbase's Derived Works definition reaches charts,
analytics and research "based on, referring to, or derived from" the data. Binance Vision's
ShareAlike clause attaches CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 to anything you redistribute. Resampling, cleaning and
aggregating do not launder the licence.

**Ask in writing, and ask a narrow question.** Written consent is the mechanism all four documents
name, which means there is a channel and a decision at the end of it. Cite the clause number,
describe the specific use in two sentences, ask whether it needs consent, and keep the reply — it
is the only artefact that will be worth anything later. Bybit's public-endpoint ambiguity in
particular is not something you can resolve by reading harder.

**Price the licensed path before you design around the free one.** If the product you are building
requires redistribution, the architecture question is settled at the start: you need a licensed
source, and the cheapest published entry into one is a few hundred dollars a month for a narrow
slice, not the zero you were planning around. Discovering that after the free endpoints are wired
in is what makes it expensive.

**Ask a prospective vendor which exchanges it is licensed for, venue by venue.** Being on one
exchange's published redistributor list says nothing about the other forty in the coverage table.
The answer is either a list or an evasion, and both are informative.

## Tools this bears on

- [OKX Market Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/okx-api.md) — Public v5 endpoints for spot, swaps, futures and options — open, and tightly licensed.
- [Binance Market Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/binance-api.md) — One venue's own tape — prices, books, trades and funding, free and unkeyed.
- [Coinbase Exchange API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coinbase-exchange-api.md) — Free keyless spot data down to the order-by-order book — with a redistribution ban.
- [Bybit Market Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bybit-api.md) — Venue-direct spot, perps and options data with no key — if your IP is not in the US.
- [Kaiko Market Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/kaiko.md) — Tick history back to 2010, by REST, gRPC stream or cloud delivery.
- [Amberdata Market Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/amberdata.md) — Spot, futures and options data — and one exchange's feed you can buy with a card.

## FAQ

### If an endpoint needs no API key, am I bound by anything?

OKX answers that directly: section 9.4 of its API Agreement ends with a sentence extending the whole clause to market data accessed through public endpoints as well as authenticated ones. The Binance Vision Dataset Terms bind you on downloading, caching or querying. Bybit's API Terms neither exclude nor mention unauthenticated callers, which is an ambiguity rather than a permission.

### Can I train a model on exchange market data?

Not on OKX or Coinbase data without written consent. OKX section 9.4 prohibits using its market data to train, fine-tune or evaluate any machine learning model or AI system intended to be commercialised or made available to third parties. Coinbase's Market Data Terms, last updated 7 August 2026, carry a broader clause covering AI and machine-learning training outright.

### Why pay a data vendor when the exchange gives prices away free?

Because access and permission are priced separately. The exchange publishes the numbers for nothing and reserves the right to redistribute them, then licenses that right commercially without publishing a figure. A vendor on an exchange's authorized redistributor list has bought that right, across many venues, and normalised the results — which is the product.

### Does any of this stop me backtesting on my own machine?

No. Personal, internal, non-commercial research is the one use all four documents grant outright — OKX names developing your own trading strategy explicitly in its historical-data terms. The restrictions begin where the data, or something derived from it, leaves your organisation.

## Sources

1. [OKX API Agreement, sections 9.1 and 9.4](https://www.okx.com/help/okx-api-agreement) — OKX, 2026-07-28
2. [Historical Data Terms and Conditions](https://www.okx.com/en-us/help/historicaldata-terms-and-conditions) — OKX, read 2026-09-19
3. [Binance Vision Dataset Terms of Use, version 1.0](https://data.binance.vision/Binance_Vision-Terms_of_Use.pdf) — Binance, 2026-08-26
4. [Terms of Use, section III.1.b Restrictions (Internet Archive capture of 4 February 2023)](https://web.archive.org/web/20230204015424id_/https://www.binance.com/en/terms) — Binance, read through the Internet Archive, read 2026-09-19
5. [Market Data Terms of Use](https://www.coinbase.com/legal/market_data) — Coinbase, 2026-08-07
6. [Institutional market data and authorized redistribution partners](https://www.coinbase.com/institutional/market-data) — Coinbase, read 2026-09-19
7. [API Terms and Conditions, sections 3.1, 5.1 and 6.5 to 6.9](https://www.bybit.com/common-static/compliance/legal/BYBIT/df1923006718fbba8ba70d7d762b9866.pdf) — Bybit, 2026-01-16

*Last updated 2026-09-19. A reference page, corrected in place — not a dated post.*