# Dune

SQL over 100+ indexed chains, with the API on every plan including the free one.

*https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/dune · On-chain Analytics Platforms*

## Facts

### At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | Dune |
| Category | On-chain Analytics Platforms |
| Job | onchain_query |
| Website | https://dune.com |
| Pricing model | subscription |
| Free tier | true |
| Open source | false |
| Licence | none |
| Self-hosted | false |
| KYC required | false |
| Tested hands-on | false |
| Last updated | 2026-09-21 |

### Pricing

| Tier | USD | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free | 0 USD | month |
| Analyst | 75 USD | month |
| Plus | 399 USD | month |
| Enterprise | on request | — |

### Coverage

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Asset classes | spot, perpetuals, defi, nft, stablecoins |
| Chains | ethereum, solana, bitcoin, base, arbitrum, polygon, bnb, multi |
| Venues | dex, derivatives |
| Data latency | delayed |
| Platforms | web |
| AI features | assistive |

### Interfaces

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| API | true |
| Webhooks | true |
| Scripting | SQL |
| MCP server | true |
| Export | csv, json, api |

### Capabilities

Yes: charting, alerts, onchain_data, derivatives_analytics

No: screening, backtesting, automation, live_trading, paper_trading, portfolio_tracking, exchange_import, tax_reporting, news, wallet_tracking

*Verified: pricing 2026-09-19; coverage 2026-09-19.*

## What it is

A SQL editor and dashboard tool sitting on a warehouse of blockchain data that Dune indexes and
decodes for you. You write the query; what you are paying for is the indexing, the decoded schema
and the execution engine behind it. The catalogue covers 100+ chains and, by Dune's own count, 3+
petabytes, organised into raw tables, ABI-decoded tables and curated cross-protocol tables such as
`dex.trades` and `nft.trades`.

The corollary of buying a query engine rather than a metric set is that nothing is answered for
you. There is no supplied definition of "active address" to accept or reject, no entity label
turning an address into an exchange name, and no dashboard you did not build or borrow. The
ceiling is your SQL and your willingness to learn a schema with a thousand tables in it.

## Pricing

Four plans, all metered in one unit. **Free** gives 2,500 credits a month, **Analyst** $75 a month
(or $65 billed annually, $780 a year) for 4,000, **Plus** $399 a month ($349 billed annually,
$4,188 a year) for 25,000, and Enterprise is quoted. Legacy Premium, which had the cheapest credits
on the board at $0.999 per 100, is closed to new subscriptions.

**The API is included on every plan, the free one included.** That is unusual in this category,
where programmatic access is normally a separate and dearer product than the dashboard, and it is
the main reason to look at Dune before the rest of the shelf. Dune's pricing FAQ says it plainly:
all teams and users, including those on Free, can call the API to trigger executions and export
data. Free-plan API keys get 15 requests a minute on write-heavy endpoints and 40 on read-heavy
ones, which combine, so 55 a minute in practice.

What the free plan does *not* include is free execution. The free engine is
query-editor only — "automated executions (API, scheduling, refreshing) are not available" — so
every API call is a metered execution against those 2,500 credits. And the credit rate is where
the plan price actually lands: past the allowance, Free pays **$5.00 per 100 credits**, Analyst
$1.875 and Plus $1.596. The same query costs a free account about 2.7 times what it costs an
Analyst account. Work out your monthly credits before reading the plan prices, because the gap
between the rates is larger than the gap between the plans.

Credits reflect compute — CPU, bytes scanned, engine time — and Dune publishes no per-query
formula, stating outright that costs appear after execution. Unused credits do not roll over, they
cannot be bought in bulk, and the defences against a runaway bill are a per-execution cost cap and
a monthly spend limit you set yourself. On exports, a credit returns 1,000 data points on Free and
Analyst and 5,000 on Plus, where a data point is `max(rows * columns, ceil(total_bytes / 100))`.

One wrinkle for individuals: paid tiers are sold to teams, so a single user who wants Analyst has
to create a team of one.

## Data & coverage

Depth is uneven by design, and the differences are the reason to read the catalogue before
committing. On EVM chains you get the full stack: raw `transactions`, `logs`, `traces`,
`creation_traces`, `blocks` and `withdrawals`; ABI-decoded `logs_decoded` and `traces_decoded` plus
per-contract call and event tables, which is contract-call level and not merely balances; and
curated tables that span protocols, including `dex.trades`, `dex_aggregator.trades`, sandwich
tables, NFT trades and a multichain stablecoin set with transfers and enriched balances for EVM,
Solana and Tron.

Solana is a first-class citizen with its own shape — `instruction_calls`, `account_activity`,
vote-transaction separation, IDL decoding submissions, `dex_solana.trades` and Jupiter aggregator
swaps. Bitcoin is the other end of the range: `blocks`, `inputs`, `outputs` and `transactions`,
with no decoded layer, because there is nothing to decode. Between them sit Aptos, Cardano (down to
governance proposals and votes), Sui, Stellar, XRPL, Tron and Fuel, most of them raw plus token
transfers rather than a full decoded stack.

Derivatives coverage is essentially Hyperliquid: raw, decoded and curated HyperCore data, with
`hyperliquid.market_data` carrying order-book snapshots, funding rates, open interest and trade
history. Third-party datasets ride along in the same catalogue — Flashbots' mempool dumpster,
Farcaster via Neynar, Lens, Reservoir's NFT trading data.

What is not published anywhere in the documentation is a freshness figure. There is no stated lag
between the chain tip and the catalogue tables, and no SLA for it outside an Enterprise agreement,
so treat this as a warehouse rather than a feed and measure the lag yourself on the chain you care
about.

## Integrations

Official remote MCP server at `api.dune.com/mcp/v1`, authenticating by OAuth or an
`x-dune-api-key` header, with tools for dataset discovery, query creation and execution,
visualisations and dashboards. First-party SDKs the docs themselves name: `dune-client` for
Python, `@duneanalytics/client` for TypeScript and `duneapi-client-go` for Go. Beyond the REST API
there is a Trino connector for BI tools (the docs name Hex, Metabase and DBeaver) and a dbt
connector with write access to DuneSQL. Scheduled queries can fire email or webhook notifications,
which is the extent of alerting. The query editor has AI tools for generating, editing and
debugging SQL.

## Limitations

- **The free tier's real constraint is the credit rate, not the credit count.** At $5.00 per 100
  credits past the allowance, free-plan overage is 2.7 times the Analyst rate and over three
  times Plus. Pay-as-you-go without upgrading is offered and is the expensive way to do it.
- **Free executions do not exist over the API.** The free engine is manual-editor only,
  so a free account automating anything is spending credits on every run.
- **The Small engine times out at 120 seconds** and allows three concurrent executions with no
  performance guarantee, which rules out the analysis you most want to run for free.
- **No cost estimate before a query runs.** Dune states there is no single per-query formula and
  that you see the cost after execution, so the only controls are the per-execution cap and the
  monthly spend limit.
- **Credits expire monthly.** No rollover, and no bulk purchase once the quota is gone.
- **No entity labels.** There is no first-party attribution layer turning an address into a named
  exchange or fund. Community-maintained tables exist inside the catalogue, but that is other
  users' work, not a maintained product with a revision date.
- **No published data freshness.** Nothing in the documentation states how far behind the chain
  the tables run.
- **Results are capped at 32GB** and are silently truncated past that unless you pass
  `allow_partial_results=true`, which turns the failure into a partial answer.
- **Public dashboard URLs always carry a watermark**, including for Enterprise teams.
- **Every self-serve plan is internal use only.** The vendor's own plan-comparison table has a
  "Data licensing and redistribution" row, and it reads *Internal use only* on Free, Analyst and
  Plus alike, with *Custom commercial license* reserved for Enterprise (read 2026-09-19). Price is
  not what separates the tiers here — the right to put the numbers in front of anybody outside your
  own organisation is, and it is not on sale at any published figure. Anything customer-facing built
  on a Plus plan is a sales conversation you have not had yet.

## Alternatives

Within the same shape — a SQL editor over somebody else's index — Allium is the institutional
counterpart: no free tier, no published price, but a first-party label set of 400M+ addresses and
a stated freshness figure. The trade is the usual one at this end of the market. Dune is the only
one of the two you can evaluate this afternoon without talking to anybody; Allium is the one with
an answer when the question is *who* rather than *what*.

[Footprint Analytics](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/footprint-analytics) is the free alternative for people who would
rather drag and drop than write SQL, over its own indexed warehouse — with a weaker public pulse
and published coverage that contradicts itself, both of which that card documents.

## FAQ

### Is the Dune API really included in the free plan?

Yes. Dune's pricing FAQ states that the API is included in all plans and that free-plan users can trigger executions and export data. The free plan's 2,500 monthly credits are the whole budget, and API executions draw on them like any other query.

### What does a Dune credit buy?

Compute, not calls. Dune bills credits in proportion to the CPU, data scanned and engine time a query uses, and publishes no per-query formula — you see the cost after execution. For exports, one credit returns 1,000 data points on Free and Analyst and 5,000 on Plus.

### Why is the free plan's overage rate so much higher than a paid plan's?

Because the plan price is buying the credit rate, not just the allowance. Free pays $5.00 per 100 extra credits, Analyst $1.875 and Plus $1.596 — so about 2.7 times the Analyst unit cost for the same query, and over three times the Plus one, which is the actual break-even to work out before upgrading.

### Can I query Dune without an account at all?

Yes, through its Machine Payment Protocol integration, which answers requests with an HTTP 402 challenge and takes per-request crypto payment with no account, API key or credit card. Dune does not publish what a request costs on that route.

## Also worth comparing

- [Allium](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/allium.md) — Institutional SQL over 85+ indexed chains, with labels and no published price.
- [Bitquery](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bitquery.md) — GraphQL over indexed chains — self-service plans are a real-time window, not history.
- [Footprint Analytics](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/footprint-analytics.md) — Drag-and-drop charts or SQL over an indexed warehouse, free — with a slowing pulse.
- [Artemis](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/artemis.md) — Chain and protocol fundamentals — fees, revenue, users — one definition everywhere.
- [CryptoQuant](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/cryptoquant.md) — Exchange reserves, miner flows and MVRV for four chains, as charts, alerts and an API.
- [DefiLlama](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/defillama.md) — DeFi's default metric set, with the TVL definition written down in public.

## Named as a replacement for

- [Flipside](https://cryptomarkets.tools/alternatives/flipside.md)
- [Parsec](https://cryptomarkets.tools/alternatives/parsec.md)
