What are Bitcoin and Blockchain APIs?

These Cryptocurrency APIs allow you to interact with Bitcoin in particular, as well as a multitude of other blockchain-based projects such as Ethereum or Dogecoin.

They encompass a variety of functions, from viewing wallet contents, tracking market prices, or even sending and receiving transactions. This makes these APIs extremely useful for nearly any project involving bitcoin or a blockchain.

Related: Best Currency Converter APIs

We’ve taken a look at quite a few crypto APIs, and have evaluated them based on the following features:

• Wallet Integration – we tried them to see if they could interface with bitcoin wallets and how they fared when faced with wallets for various other blockchain projects.
• Transaction Support – we examined whether or not each API was able to send and retrieve bitcoin transactions as well as transactions for various other blockchain projects.
• Price – we go over the cost of using the different APIs.
• Special Capabilities – a number of the APIs we’ve reviewed have special capabilities, which make them more appropriate for specific tasks such as tracking market history.

Related: What is the Difference between Bitcoin and Blockchain?

TL;DR – Summary of the top cryptocurrency API picks

Best Cryptocurrency APIs of 2018

• Digital Currency Tickers: Best for streaming price index tickets and getting current indexed prices for a specific currency.
• Crypto Market Intraday Reference Rates: Best for reference rate data and obtaining crypto symbols.
• CoinAPI: Best for getting latest & historial crypto trade data from all markets.
• ICOs: Best for getting detailed information of ICOs.
• Due Diligence: Best for exchange reports/scores, ICOs reports/scores, and tokens reports.
• Global Bitcoin Price Index: Best for getting current and historial currency rates.
• Coinbase: Best for tracking exchange rates, metadata, and payment methods.
• CoinMarketCap: Best for getting information on different cryptocurrencies.
• Nexchange: Best for exchanging blockchain pairs and getting currency data.
• GetBalance: Best for currency wallet balances.
• BitcoinAverage Historical Data: Best for historical crptocurrency data.
• Bitcointy: Best for chart data and currency conversions.
• Bitcoin ATMs: Best for integrating Bitcoin ATM Maps.

Best Bitcoin & Blockchain APIs

Here are some of the best cryptocurrency APIs we reviewed:

1. Digital Currency Tickers API by BraveNewCoin

Wallet Integration

Unfortunately, the Digital Currency Tickers API by BraveNewCoin does not have any Wallet Integration.

Transaction Support

This API does not support transactions but does provide accurate BNC indexed price for multiple digital currencies.

Price

This BraveNewCoin API is free to use on RapidAPI or Mashape.

Special Capabilities

• Convert between any of the digital or fiat currencies available from BraveNewCoin.
• Get current indexed prices for a specific digital currency in the form of multiple currencies.
• Stream price index tickers that are refreshed every 5 minutes.
• and more.

2. Crypto Market Intraday Reference Rates API by BraveNewCoin

This is another API by BraveNewCoin that provides reference rates for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and many others for over 3,000 cryptocurrency markets.

Wallet Integration

This API has no wallet integration.

Transaction Support

This API has no transaction support.

Price

The Intraday Reference Rates API is free to use up to 600 API requests per month. Following that, it will cost $0.0001 per extra API request.

Special Capabilities

• Reference rate data for crypto markets in a moving 200 day window, updated every 5 minutes. BNC tracks the markets at 200+ exchanges.
• Obtain a set of crypto asset symbols.
• Obtain a set of fiat currency symbols.
• Obtain a set of markets for each crypocurrency asset.

3. CoinAPI by CoinAPI.io

The CoinAPI (CoinAPI.io) is a REST API which allows you to retrieve all cryptocurrency exchanges through a single API on RapidAPI.

Wallet Integration

CoinAPI has no wallet integration.

Transaction Support

CoinAPI has no transaction support, but provides data on all exchanges and latest trade data.

CoinAPI Pricing – How much does the API Cost?

Special Capabilities

• Get the latest trades from all symbols up to the last minute.
• Get current and historical quotes for all symbols.
• Get current orderbook snapshots for all symbols.
• Get latest tweets related to cryptocurrency markets.
• and much more

4. ICOs API by Zloadr

The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) API (created by Zloadr), provides information on upcoming, past, and present token presales.

The API allows you to sort by:

• filters
• trends
• profile tickers
• and more.

Wallet Integration

This API has no wallet integration.

Transaction Support

This API has no wallet support.

Price

The ICOs API starts at $9.99 for 10,000 monthly API requests. There are also Pro, Ultra, and Mega plans available.

Special Capabilities

The ICOs API returns:

• detailed information of the ICO
• basic information about all the ICOs filters
• information about Trending ICOs

5. Due Diligence API

The Due Diligence API is another crypto API by zloadr. This API provides due diligence scores and reports for exchanges, ICOs and more.

Wallet Integration

This API has no wallet integration.

Transaction Support

This API has no transaction support.

Due Diligence API Pricing

Special Capabilities

Provides due diligence data on:

• Exchanges Reports
• Exchanges Scores
• ICOs Reports
• ICOs Scores
• Tokens Reports
• ICOs Scores

6. Global Bitcoin Price Index – GBX API by BitcoinAverage

This API created by BitcoinAverage.com was one of the first global price indexes in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry.

Wallet Integration

This API has no wallet integration.

Transaction Support

This API has no transaction support.

BitcoinAverage API Pricing

The API is free up to 5000 monthly API requests. There are also some paid plans available.

Special Capabilities

Some features of their API include:

• Up to 1 second refresh rate
• Rates for 165+ currencies
• Daily rates at preferred lock in time or live rates
• Historic daily rates dating back to 2010
• JSON or CSV formats

7. COINBASE

via GIPHY

The Coinbase API makes bitcoin simple. Coinbase is one of the largest and most reputable digital wallet systems currently available, as well as one of the most popular transaction processing platforms. In addition to Bitcoin, they provide support for Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin.

Wallet Integration

Coinbase is one of the most robust wallet services available, with impressive portfolio management options and integrated wallet services.

The API reflects this, with endpoints for retrieving account balance, listing orders received and even creating new users.

Transaction Support

Coinbase provides strong transaction support, with the ability to create invoices, send bitcoins, complete transactions, get spot price, and total price for both buying and selling; plus, of course, purchasing bitcoin.

Price

The Coinbase API is free, with no paid plans. There is a rate limit of 10,000 requests per hour.

Special Capabilities

The Coinbase API supports:

• pagination,
• multiple payment methods,
• exchange rate tracking,
• and even order metadata.

Once you learn how to use the Coinbase API, it can be an incredibly powerful tool.

8. CoinMarketCap

CoinMarketCap is an incredibly popular service for tracking the current market cap, price per unit, recent volume, circulating supply and daily fluctuation of over 1,600 different crypto tokens, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Their API offers a simple and robust tie-in to this service.

Related: How to use the CoinMarketCap API

Related: CoinMarketCap API Alternatives

Wallet Integration

Unlike the Coinbase API, this API does not tie into wallets at all.

Transaction Support

This API does not support transactions but does provide information on current prices.

Price

This is a completely free cryptocurrency API.

Special Capabilities

While this API doesn’t offer any transaction or wallet services, it does offer detailed analytical services, which can be incredibly useful in conjunction with other crypto APIs.

There are only three available API endpoints, but they offer a lot of power:

1. The first endpoint allows you to get a list of cryptocurrencies sorted by market cap, from highest to lowest. You’re able to configure the starting point as well as the number of results returned.
2. The second endpoint allows you to get the information on a single crypto token.
3. The final endpoint allows you to get global cryptocurrency data.

9. Nexchange

Nexchange offers a powerful cryptocurrency exchange API service. It’s one of the easiest and fastest ways to exchange cryptocurrency and other blockchain assets, both for individuals and corporations. They offer access to a significant amount of market data as well.

Wallet Integration

There is barebones wallet integration. However, it serves little purpose aside from allowing the exchange services to access funds.

Transaction Support

Transactions are the primary purpose of Nexchange. Albeit transactions centered around the exchange of blockchain pairs rather than cash for crypto.

Price

Fees depend on the Transaction.

Special Capabilities

The special capabilities of Nexchange include the ability to easily exchange blockchain pairs. API endpoints allow you to accomplish that by creating orders and getting orders.

However, you can also get ticker history, referrals, supported pairs and supported currencies. This allows you to utilize the Nexchange API in order to create your own exchange services.

10. GetBalance

Sometimes you only need one thing. GetBalance gets the balance of a given wallet. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Wallet Integration

GetBalance is able to get the balance of a wallet via its only endpoint. The endpoint returns the balance of a given bitcoin wallet, both in bitcoin and in USD.

Price

GetBalance is free.

11. BitcoinAverage Historical Data

BitCoinAverage is an open-source project which provides an accurate weighted average of the Bitcoin price. It is equipped with numerous tools and utilizes numerous exchanges in order to aggregate price and volume data for its calculations. This API is perfect for analysts and market watchers.

Price

This API has a free plan, which is limited to 5,000 API requests per month, as well as three other plans with differing maximums. The most expensive plan offers unlimited requests, costing $75 per month.

Special Capabilities

This API is able to quickly and accurately track market rates with a 1-second update frequency on the enterprise plan, and a 15-second update frequency on the free plan.

There are numerous endpoints which provide useful analytical functions, including:

• Historical data endpoints with daily, hourly and per-minute frequencies.
• A ticker endpoint containing the current price, current and historical volume data.
• And even an endpoint that provides a list of exchanges currently excluded from the calculation, as well as reasons for their exclusion.

12. Bitcointy

Bitcointy is another API that’s seemingly a one-trick pony. In similar fashion to BitcoinAverage, it provides an average value for Bitcoin, based upon multiple sources. However, the sources, in this case, are much fewer in number.

In addition to making the USD value of Bitcoin available, it also supports other major currencies, including EUR, GBP, CAD, JPY, and CNY, among others.

Price

Bitcointy is free, with unlimited requests.

Special Capabilities

Bitcointy has a number of endpoints available, with the most useful being “get average price.”

There are also endpoints to get:

• Chart data,
• direct conversion of a certain amount of bitcoins into any currency,
• and the ability to get conversion rates for all sources or from a single source.

13. Bitcoin ATMs

Lastly, there is Bitcoin ATMs. This API provides a map of ATMs that allow you to exchange fiat currencies for Bitcoin or other blockchain assets.

Price

Price is determined on a per-client basis. But is generally a subscription of some sort.

Special Capabilities

This API allows you to integrate a Bitcoin ATM map on your own page, either as a full map of all crypto ATMs worldwide, or those of a single provider.

Summary: Best Cryptocurrency APIs

Related Crypto APIs

Feel free to test these Bitcoin APIs on RapidAPI.com to start building innovative apps!

Blockchain APIs on RapidAPI are available in the following API frameworks:

• NodeJS
• PHP
• Python
• Ruby
• Objective-C
• Java (Android)
• C# (.NET)
• cURL

What do you think is the best bitcoin API? Do you have any blockchain api tutorials or examples to share? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

via GIPHY