# Kaiko Market Data API

Tick history back to 2010, by REST, gRPC stream or cloud delivery.

*https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/kaiko · Crypto Market Data APIs*

## Facts

### At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | Kaiko |
| Category | Crypto Market Data APIs |
| Job | historical |
| Website | https://www.kaiko.com |
| Pricing model | subscription |
| Free tier | false |
| Open source | false |
| Licence | none |
| Self-hosted | false |
| KYC required | false |
| Tested hands-on | false |
| Last updated | 2026-09-19 |

### Pricing

| Tier | USD | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Enterprise data plan | on request | — |

### Coverage

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Asset classes | spot, perpetuals, futures, options, defi, stablecoins, indices |
| Chains | bitcoin, ethereum, solana |
| Venues | cex, dex, derivatives |
| Data latency | realtime |
| Platforms | web |
| AI features | none |

### Interfaces

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| API | true |
| Webhooks | false |
| Scripting | none |
| MCP server | false |
| Export | json, csv, api |

### Capabilities

Yes: onchain_data, derivatives_analytics

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

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

## What it is

Kaiko sells normalised crypto market data to institutions on an enterprise contract — tick
trades, order books, OHLCV, derivatives reference and risk data, fair-value pricing and regulated
benchmarks, delivered three ways: a REST API for history and snapshots, a gRPC stream for live
data, and a once-a-day drop into your own S3, Azure Blob, GCS, Snowflake or BigQuery. The company
was founded in 2014, says its indices arm is a BMR-registered benchmark administrator, and says
it serves 200+ enterprise clients.

The thing that makes it awkward to shop for is that "Kaiko" is not one subscription. The data
dictionary ties every dataset to a named product — Level 1 & Level 2 Data, Reference Data,
Derivatives Risk Indicators, Kaiko Fair Market Value, Market Explorer, Blockchain Monitoring,
Portfolio & Risk Management — and inside several of those, to a named tier. This card covers the
market-data side of that list. The indices business and the research desk are separate purchases.

Kaiko announced the acquisition of Amberdata on 2 June 2026. As of 19 September 2026 the two are
still sold as two products: separate sites, separate documentation hubs, separate API hosts and
separate contracts, and kaiko.com's product menu does not list an Amberdata product.

## Pricing

There is no published price and no self-serve path. The pricing page says plans are built per
client on "number of assets/instruments, data type, granularity, historical vs. live access, and
usage", and the only actions on it are requesting a quote, requesting a trial and reading the
standard licensing agreement. A trial exists; its length is not published anywhere we could find.

There is no free tier. The documentation is explicit that every request needs a key and that the
key comes from the Kaiko team against an active subscription — there is no form that hands you one
against an email address. Budget for a sales cycle before you can write a line of code against it.

## Data & coverage

Tick trades and OHLCV go back to **2010** on REST, for centralised spot, centralised derivative
and DeFi spot markets, at granularities from one second to one day. That depth is the product.

Order-book depth is where the marketing and the data dictionary part company, and it is worth
reading the table before signing:

- **Full order book** — not on REST at all. Live on the stream with 72 hours of replay, or a
  once-a-day CSV in cloud delivery with history from **August 2023**, centralised spot only.
- **Top of book** — cloud history from **December 2022**.
- **Derived metrics** (bid-ask spread, market depth, price slippage) — REST carries a **one-month
  rolling window** only. The raw snapshots those are computed from go back to 2015 in cloud
  delivery, varying by exchange. Depth is computed from a snapshot every 30 seconds.

Derivatives cover `future`, `perpetual-future` and `option` instrument classes, with funding rates
on perpetuals and open interest on all three. Contract details start July 2020, implied-volatility
surfaces and smiles April 2021 at one-minute granularity, and **liquidation events only from 8
January 2025**. Supply and market-cap metrics start mid-September 2025.

On-chain, Kaiko Blockchain Monitoring covers Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana — native transfers,
token transfers, staking deposits and withdrawals, gas — back to each chain's genesis, with one
exception that matters: **Solana ships 30 days of rolling history in a standard package**, and
inception-to-date is a custom deal. The BigQuery copy of this data runs roughly 15 minutes behind
live, deliberately, so that reorgs do not land in your warehouse.

The stream is gRPC, with live data plus 72 hours of replay. It is a live channel, not a history
channel, and the docs say so.

## Integrations

REST authenticates with an `X-Api-Key` header and is limited to **6,000 requests per minute per
API key**; past that it returns 429. The limit is per key, not per IP.

Kaiko publishes stream SDK examples on GitHub for C++, C#, Go, Java, Node, Python, Rust and Scala,
linked from its own quick-start page. Cloud delivery writes gzipped CSV once a day to AWS S3,
Azure Blob or Google Cloud Storage; Snowflake and BigQuery are offered as a daily refresh or in
near real time. There is no MCP server — the term appears nowhere in the documentation index.

## Limitations

**Nothing about this product is self-serve.** No price, no free tier, no key against an email
address. If you are evaluating four providers in an afternoon, three of them will have answered
before Kaiko has replied to the form.

**The stream is not an archive.** Seventy-two hours of replay is a reconnection buffer, not a
backfill. Anything older comes from REST or from a cloud drop, and for full order-book depth it
comes only from the cloud drop.

**Order-book history is much younger than trade history.** Trades to 2010 sits on the same page as
a full book from August 2023 and a one-month rolling window on the REST spread and depth
endpoints. If your research needs depth across the 2021 cycle, the answer is the 2015-onward
snapshot archive in cloud delivery, not the API.

**Solana is 30 days deep unless you pay for more**, which is the kind of detail that only appears
in a footnote on the coverage page.

**The documentation publishes no exchange count.** The coverage pages hand you an instrument
explorer and a reference-data endpoint instead of a number. That is more honest than most, but it
means you cannot compare Kaiko against a competitor's "200+ exchanges" without doing the count
yourself — and you need access to do it.

**Coverage claims are tier claims.** Almost every row in the data dictionary names the
subscription and tier it belongs to. A dataset being listed under Kaiko does not mean it is on the
plan you were quoted.

## Alternatives

Amberdata is the closest comparison in this catalogue on data breadth, and since June 2026 it is
also owned by Kaiko — but it is still sold separately, and it is the one of the two that will
sell you a single exchange's feed online with a credit card. If what you need is one venue's spot
tape rather than a normalised cross-venue product, start there. If what you need is a benchmark
administrator's fair value, or tick data from before 2013, this is the one.

## FAQ

### Is there a free tier or a free API key for Kaiko?

No. The documentation states that a key is issued by the Kaiko team against an active subscription, and the pricing page offers a quote request and a trial request rather than a signup form. No trial length is published.

### How far back does Kaiko's tick data actually go?

Trades and OHLCV go back to 2010 on the REST API and in cloud delivery. Full order-book data does not — it is live-only on the stream with 72 hours of replay, and the once-a-day CSV archive of it starts in August 2023.

### What is Kaiko's REST rate limit?

6,000 requests per minute per API key on the standard REST API, after which the endpoint returns 429. The limit is per key rather than per IP, so running across several containers does not multiply or divide it.

## Also worth comparing

- [CoinDesk Data API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coindesk-data.md) — The old CryptoCompare API, renamed, re-hosted and no longer free.
- [Massive Crypto API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/polygon-io-crypto.md) — Crypto trades, bars and websockets, sold in one plan together with forex.
- [Tardis.dev](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tardis-dev.md) — Tick-by-tick order books, trades and options chains from 64 exchange feeds since 2019.
- [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.
- [Coin Metrics](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coin-metrics.md) — Institutional reference rates, exchange market data and network metrics behind one API.
- [CoinGecko API](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/coingecko-api.md) — Prices, market data and onchain DEX data for 18,000+ coins, via REST, websocket or MCP.

## Named as a replacement for

- [Nomics](https://cryptomarkets.tools/alternatives/nomics.md)
