The CoinSpectrum API

curl https://coin-spectrum.com/api/v1/assets/xrp.json

Design

Every endpoint is a plain JSON file. There are no query parameters and no auth on the free tier. Download the file, filter in the client. That is deliberate: it keeps the free tier truly free, and it keeps the surface small enough that a version bump is a real event.

Base URL

https://coin-spectrum.com/api/v1/

Versioned from day one. Adding a field is a minor change and lands silently; renaming, removing, or changing a shape opens v2/, and v1/ is frozen for at least twelve months.

Endpoints

• GET /meta.json Try it ↗

  Schema version, counts, license, endpoint list. A one-shot health check for a consumer starting up.

• GET /global.json Try it ↗

  Total market cap, per-category counts, chains, and the fiat exchange rates the site uses for currency conversion.

• GET /assets.json Try it ↗

  Every asset in one file — around 1.3 MB. Pull once, filter in memory; cheaper than one call per asset.

• GET /assets/{slug}.json Try xrp ↗

  A single asset by its CoinSpectrum slug — e.g. bitcoin, xrp, digibyte. The slug matches the page URL at /assets/{slug}/.

• GET /categories/cryptocurrencies.json Try it ↗

  The ranking — assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus mechanism. Nothing else.

• GET /categories/stablecoins.json Try it ↗

  Fiat-pegged tokens. Listed on the site but never added to the cryptocurrency total.

• GET /categories/wrapped.json Try it ↗

  Wrapped, staked and pegged representations of assets that are already counted somewhere else.

• GET /categories/tokens.json Try it ↗

  Non-crypto tokens — utility, governance, and the long tail of things issued on someone else's chain.

• GET /categories/memecoins.json Try it ↗

  Memecoins. Same shape, kept separate because they deserve their own bucket and their own explanation.

• GET /sorted/mcap.json Try it ↗

  Slug + market cap only, pre-sorted descending. Small enough to be the ranking's cheapest paint.

A worked example

Chain jq for a pure Bash pipeline that names every SHA-256 chain in the ranking:

curl -s https://coin-spectrum.com/api/v1/categories/cryptocurrencies.json \
  | jq -r '.assets[] | select(.consensus == "SHA-256") | .name'

Asset schema

Every asset — cryptocurrency, stablecoin, wrapped, token, memecoin — uses the same shape. Fields that don't apply stay null, never omitted.

{
  "slug":            "bitcoin",
  "symbol":          "BTC",
  "name":            "Bitcoin",
  "category":        "cryptocurrency",
  "consensus":       "SHA-256",
  "hashrate":        8.9e20,
  "price_usd":       77401,
  "market_cap_usd":  1553734997147,
  "rank":            1,
  "supply": { "circulating": 20076428, "max": 21000000 },
  "ledger":          "overlay",
  "nature":          "commodity",
  "nature_basis":    "Named a digital commodity in the joint SEC-CFTC interpretation.",
  "nature_tags":     ["commodity"],
  "chains":          null,
  "image":           "https://..."
}

Update cadence

Rebuilt roughly every ten minutes. Every response includes a generated_at ISO-8601 timestamp; a caller who wants the freshest snapshot should read that field rather than trust HTTP dates. The CDN serves cached copies for 60 s at the edge and 300 s upstream, with a one-hour stale-while-revalidate window.

Rate limits

The free tier has no per-key limit — every response is a static file behind a CDN, so throughput is effectively bounded by the CDN itself. Please cache. Aggressive polling of a file that only changes every ten minutes is wasteful for both sides.

Paid tiers preview

For higher throughput, historical snapshots, webhooks and per-key identification, a paid API lives at api.coin-spectrum.com. Prices are quoted in USD and invoices settle in Bitcoin Cash only, locked at the spot rate for fifteen minutes.

Annual plans pay ten monthly invoices in one BCH transaction and get two months free. No card processor, no chargebacks, no KYC — payment is a single on-chain transaction and the API key activates on the first confirmation.

Attribution

Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Use the data anywhere, commercial use included. In return, please link back to coin-spectrum.com — a footer credit or a note in your project's README is enough. The API exists to be reused; a link is how it stays sustainable.

No warranty

The data is derived from public sources — see methodology. It is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. If you use it to decide whether to spend money, that is entirely your call and entirely your risk.

Contact

Questions, bug reports, or a request for an endpoint that isn't here yet: open an issue or write to api@coin-spectrum.com.

Common questions