What is the CoinGecko API?

The CoinGecko API is the data interface behind CoinGecko, one of the largest crypto market-data aggregators. It's what powers most of the market lookup in this app. In plain terms, it's a web service you can query (by sending HTTP requests) to get structured, live data about thousands of cryptocurrencies instead of scraping the website yourself.

What it returns: depending on the endpoint, you get things like:

• Market data — current price, 24h volume, market cap, 24h price change for any listed coin
• Historical data — past prices, charts, market cap over time
• Coin metadata — descriptions, websites, socials, contract addresses per chain, categories
• Lists & discovery — trending coins (ranked by search activity), coins by category, top gainers/losers
• Exchange data — listed exchanges, their fees, trust scores, which coins each one trades

Tiers:

• Free (Demo): works with a rate-limited key, enough for learning and light projects.
• Paid plans (Pro tiers): higher request limits, and unlocks heavier endpoints like all historical data. There's also a no-key public endpoint that's very rate-limited.

Common uses: price-tracking apps, portfolio trackers, trading bots, and sites that show market dashboards — basically anything that needs reliable, consistent price/cap/volume numbers across many coins at once.

Alternatives for context: CoinMarketCap's API, and for on-chain/DEX data specifically, DexScreener (which the newer-token lookups in this app use, since CoinGecko only covers coins listed on its exchange), plus DefiLlama for protocol TVL/fees.

Want me to pull live data to illustrate? I can show you the trending list right now, or a market snapshot for a specific coin like Bitcoin.

This is general information, not financial advice.