What it costs to get a coin listed on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap

Search an aggregator for a token and one of three things happens: a full page with a rank, a page with a price and a warning, or nothing. Which of the three you get was decided by a review queue, and both of the large aggregators now sell a faster place in that queue. This page sets out what each one decides, what the fee buys, and what it explicitly does not, so that a listing can be read for what it is.

How it works

An aggregator does not see a coin until two things are true: the coin trades on a venue the aggregator already reads, and somebody at the aggregator has created and mapped the coin's page. The first is plumbing; the second is an editorial decision.

CoinGecko. Its methodology page, read on 23 October 2026, lists criteria a token must meet to be considered: a functional website owned by the project, a working block explorer, a listing "on at least one (1) active exchanges where CoinGecko is integrated with", and clearly stated circulating supply. It then adds that meeting them "does not automatically guarantee a listing as CoinGecko also evaluates many other factors". A support article names some of those — liquidity, team presence, project maturity — "as well as several other evaluation factors that are undisclosed", and says a token not listed two weeks after applying probably failed the review.

CoinMarketCap. Its Listings Criteria, updated on 29 September 2026, sort pages into tiers rather than a yes or no:

• Unverified listings — DEX pair pages created automatically from on-chain data through DEXScan, which CoinMarketCap says now tracks "52M+ cryptoassets". Nobody at CoinMarketCap has reviewed them.
• Preview or untracked listings — projects that do not meet the market-data guidelines but show strengths in the evaluation framework below. No market data is tracked and there is no rank.
• Tracked listings — the only tier that "Will have a CMC Rank" and "Appears in the CMC Pro API".
• Inactive listings — pages set inactive for lack of market data on a supported exchange or because the project stopped; reactivation needs material volume on at least two supported exchanges.

Above the tiers it applies an eight-factor evaluation — volume and market pairs, community, traction, team, product fit and others — benchmarked "against others in the cohort". A verified page, in its words, "does not guarantee project quality".

What the paid lanes buy

CoinGecko Fast Pass

CoinGecko's methodology says "Getting your token or exchange listed on CoinGecko is free and no CoinGecko representative will ever ask you for any form of listing fees". The paid service sits beside that free route, not in place of it. When a project submits the listing form it chooses a review speed: Regular Pass, "which takes up to 5 days", or Fast Pass, reviewed within 24 hours.

• Price. $1,000 per request for a coin listing, a tag update or a contract migration; $200 per request for a coin update. One pass covers one request, and passes are not refundable.
• What it buys. Speed. The FAQ answers its own question — does Fast Pass guarantee a listing? — with "No, Fast Pass does not guarantee approval. It only ensures a faster response time within 24 hours." The terms page adds that it "does not influence or guarantee the outcome".
• What a coin update covers. A fixed list of fields: logo, name or symbol, website and community links, description, new contract addresses, and "New Listing on Exchanges / New Market Addition (Market Mapping)" — that is, adding a venue's market to the coin's page.

GeckoTerminal, CoinGecko's on-chain DEX product, sells its own Fast Pass at $199 per request, excluding tax, for a token information update, with "a free CoinGecko listing evaluation" included. It too "guarantees a faster response, not approval".

CMC Priority

CoinMarketCap's fast-track service, CMC Priority, was last updated on 23 July 2026. The free tier remains, with turnaround the vendor calls "highly variable" — "from days to months/years depending on industry interest/trends". The paid tiers, as quoted on that page:

• Coin update or listing: $5,000, with a target of about 24 hours counted in business days after payment, for the items on its list — websites, explorers, contract addresses, social links, documentation, maximum and total supply. The asset must already trade on a CoinMarketCap exchange that feeds it data. Circulating supply is excluded: the page marks it "NO" and says the free form is "the only channel".
• Exchange update or listing: $50,000, about 14 business days, of which "$30K covers integration, while $20K covers the recurring annual maintenance fee for 1 year", with up to 50 markets. CoinMarketCap adds that it "cannot guarantee a 'good' rank or immunity from our outlier exclusion algorithms".
• Custom work, from $5,000, including a "Homepage trending category" at $200,000 for 10 days, a category page at $10,000, a smart-contract audit badge at $50,000 a year, and Proof of Reserves pages priced by complexity.

The page states the boundary in one line: "To avoid pay-2-win, we do not accept payment for rank-related updates (e.g. circulating supply or exchange rankings)." It also says CMC Priority "will only apply to attributes (e.g. socials, website, logos) that do not affect rank", and that an invoice is issued only after CoinMarketCap has judged the job feasible.

What this means for a reader of the data

Absence is not a verdict. A token missing from either aggregator may have failed the review, may still be in a free queue measured in months, or may trade only on venues the aggregator does not read. None of those is a statement about the token.

Presence is not a vetting either. CoinMarketCap says so about its verified pages in as many words, and its unverified tier is created by software. CoinGecko lists against criteria about documentation, venues and supply disclosure, not quality.

The API and the website can disagree. CoinGecko's support pages say a newly preview-listed token "may temporarily source preliminary, on-chain price data directly from GeckoTerminal", that GeckoTerminal data "is strictly displayed on the web interface", and that the price reaches the app and the API only after the page is upgraded and its exchanges are mapped. On CoinMarketCap, only a tracked listing appears in the Pro API. A coin a person can see on a page may not exist for a script calling the CoinGecko API or the CoinMarketCap API.

Market mapping decides which prices are averaged. Adding a venue's market to a coin's page is one of the updates both aggregators review, and both sell a faster lane for it: CoinGecko as a $200 coin update, CoinMarketCap inside its exchange tier, which includes up to 50 markets. Which venues are mapped feeds the aggregate price and volume, which is part of why two sites report different volume for the same coin.

Circulating supply sits outside the paid lane at CoinMarketCap. That is the input to market cap and therefore to rank, and the vendor routes it through its free form only. How the figures are built and why they disagree between vendors is covered in reconciling supply and market cap.

What it costs

For the projects, on the vendors' own pages: CoinGecko's review is free, Fast Pass $1,000 a listing request or $200 a coin update, GeckoTerminal Fast Pass $199. CoinMarketCap's free tier is open; CMC Priority is $5,000 for a coin, $50,000 for an exchange including the first year's maintenance, and custom items above that.

For a reader, nothing: every page above is public. The cost is in what a listing omits — a new token's first days are often visible only on DEX tools, before either aggregator has mapped it.

What you can do about it

Read a listing as "this aggregator reads this coin", nothing more. Neither vendor claims that a page is an endorsement, and CoinMarketCap says plainly that it is not.

For a token too new for the aggregators, go to the pool. CoinMarketCap's unverified pages and CoinGecko's preview prices both come from on-chain DEX data. Read it from a DEX tool directly — GeckoTerminal or DEX Screener — and note which pool the price is from; getting a DEX pair price covers the method.

Before you rely on an aggregator ID in code, confirm the coin exists in the API you call, not on the website. A preview-mode coin on CoinGecko and an untracked page on CoinMarketCap can both have a URL and no API presence. Mapping a ticker to one coin covers keeping that table honest.

Treat a sudden new market on a coin's page as a data change. If the aggregate price or volume of a small coin jumps, check whether a market was added or removed before reading anything into the number.

If you are on the project side, budget for time, not outcome. Both vendors sell a faster answer. CoinGecko says on the page that sells it that the answer can still be no; CoinMarketCap makes its service subject to its own admissibility criteria and methodology. Neither refunds the fee.