Compare · Crypto APIs
Crypto APIs alternative for Bitcoin data and fee estimates
Crypto APIs is a broad blockchain API suite: 35+ networks, HD wallets, webhooks and fee recommendations from $49 a month. If you run several chains, it is a sensible buy.
If Bitcoin is your whole book, you need fee rates checked against what blocks paid and balances to the satoshi. We measured both sides on 18 September 2026.
REST API · SQL · dashboards · address history since the 2009 genesis block
BTC
Balance trail
informational on-chain data · not financial advice
Crypto APIs leads on breadth across 35+ networks with wallets, signing and webhooks in one suite, while BitcoinDatabase indexes only Bitcoin, deeply, so you can check a fee quote or a balance against the chain itself over REST and SQL.
Side by side
Crypto APIs vs BitcoinDatabase, honestly
A fair look at what each does well. Both are capable tools. Here is where they differ.
| What matters | BitcoinDatabase | Crypto APIs |
|---|---|---|
| Chain coverage | Bitcoin only, by design | 35+ networks across UTXO, EVM, XRP, Solana and others |
| Entry paid plan | Developer, $49 a month, 500,000 API credits, REST API included | Starter, $49 a month or $40 billed annually, 30,000,000 credits |
| Mid and top plans | Growth $199 a month adds SQL, Scale $799 | Scale $299 ($249 annually), Pro $799 ($665 annually) |
| Free tier | No free plan, a one-time demo query on the site | Yes: 100,000 credits a month, one Blockchain Events subscription, no address history |
| Bitcoin fee recommendations | Live mempool state plus the fee and weight of every confirmed transaction | Mempool-based fast, standard and slow, returned as strings with unit BTC |
| Check a fee quote against what blocks paid | Yes, same index, one SQL query over any block range | You would pull block data and compute it yourself |
| Address history | One year on Developer; full history from the 2009 genesis block on Growth and Scale | Latest endpoints cover roughly 14 days; full history is a separate paid-only product |
| SQL over the chain | Yes, POST /v1/sql from Growth | Not offered; REST and WebSocket |
| HD wallets, signing, broadcast | Not offered | Yes, including an MIT-licensed offline signer |
| AML address screening | Entity labels as context for your own review | Verify Address product, included from Starter |
| Unauthenticated request | HTTP 401 | HTTP 401 with a clear missing_api_key code, in 0.06 to 0.14s |
| Best suited for | Bitcoin exchanges, wallets and analysts who need to audit fees and balances | Multi-chain products that want wallets, payments and data from one vendor |
Comparison reflects general, publicly understood positioning. Capabilities change, so check each product for the latest.
Why teams pick BitcoinDatabase
The fully indexed Bitcoin blockchain, queryable by REST, SQL and dashboards
What Crypto APIs costs, read from its pricing page
We read the pricing page on 18 September 2026. Four plans are listed. Free gives 100,000 credits a month with a soft throughput of 100 and a hard throughput of 1,000, one Blockchain Events subscription, and no HD wallets, address history, AML or x402. Starter is $49 a month, or $40 billed annually, with 30,000,000 credits. Scale is $299, or $249 annually, with 200,000,000. Pro is $799, or $665 annually, with 600,000,000. Overage is sold by the credit, roughly $1 per 291,545 credits on Starter and $1 per 318,522 on Scale, and the page itself points out that 600,000,000 credits cost $2,004 on Starter with overage against $799 on Pro. That is an honest page, and the arithmetic holds. The thing to price before you sign is not the plan, it is how many credits each Bitcoin call you make will burn, because that number decides which plan you are really on.
Their fee endpoint, and the unit you need to confirm
The UTXO fee reference, GET /blockchain-fees/utxo/{blockchain}/{network}/mempool, says its recommendations are built from mempool data and calculated live, which is the right approach. It returns three strings, fast, standard and slow, each described as a gas price calculated from unconfirmed transactions, with a unit field of BTC and example values of 0.000025, 0.000015 and 0.000010. The reference we read does not state the size denominator, per byte, per virtual byte or per kilobyte, while the separate smart-fee endpoint is documented as a fee per kilobyte. None of that is wrong, but a number of bitcoin with no size attached cannot go straight into a fee calculation. Call it once with a test key and convert it to sat/vB before it touches a withdrawal. We also found the developer llms.txt listing a different path, /blockchain-fees/{blockchain}/{network}/mempool/fees, and every path we tried returned 401 before routing, so the key is the only way to tell which is current.
Why no single fee estimate is safe to trust blind
On 17 September 2026 at block 967,354, mempool.space quoted 1 sat/vB for the next block, Blockstream Esplora 3.119 and BlockCypher 4.003, while the median fee rate actually paid over fifteen blocks was 0.348. mempool.space was the cheapest and closest. On 18 September at block 967,554, read at 13:03 UTC with all three reporting the same tip, the order flipped: mempool.space quoted 5 for its fastest tier, BlockCypher 2.856 and Esplora 1.069, against a median of 1.02 sat/vB across the thirty blocks 967,525 to 967,554. The estimator that was lowest one day was highest the next, by nearly five times the going rate. Any fee API, Crypto APIs included, is a model of a queue. The only defense is to measure what your own transactions paid against the blocks that confirmed them, and that is a data question rather than an estimation one.
Where Crypto APIs is the better buy
If you support Ethereum, Solana or XRP alongside Bitcoin, one integration across 35+ networks beats stitching vendors together, and nothing here replaces that. The same goes for HD wallet management by xPub, server-side transaction preparation, broadcast, and the MIT-licensed offline signer that builds and signs transactions locally without sending a private key anywhere. Their free tier is also a real one, useful for a prototype, which ours is not. BitcoinDatabase is the better fit when Bitcoin is the business and the job is to audit it: realized fee rates on your own withdrawals, balances at a past block height, full address history in one call, and SQL across the indexed chain for reconciliation and research.
Good questions
Crypto APIs vs BitcoinDatabase, answered
Explore the data
The Bitcoin data you can query here
Bitcoin fee estimation API
Quote Bitcoin fee rates from live mempool state, then audit what your withdrawals actually paid.
ExploreQuery the Bitcoin blockchain with SQL
Write plain SQL against the whole indexed chain, no node, no ETL.
ExploreBitcoin node API
JSON-RPC style access to blocks, transactions and balances, with no Bitcoin Core to run.
ExploreBitcoin address balance history API
What an address held on any past date, not just what it holds now.
ExploreMore comparisons
See how BitcoinDatabase compares
Glassnode alternative
Raw queryable Bitcoin data over REST, SQL and dashboards, not just curated charts.
vs DuneDune alternative
Bitcoin-only and fully-indexed, with a REST API too, not just cross-chain SQL.
vs BlockchairBlockchair alternative
Bitcoin-deep with every UTXO, entity labels, metrics, SQL and dashboards.
vs ChainalysisChainalysis alternative
Developer-first, self-serve on-chain data with compliance tooling to support your own review.
vs BlockCypherBlockCypher alternative
Bitcoin-native depth with SQL and dashboards, not just a multi-chain REST API.
vs ChainstackChainstack alternative
Indexed Bitcoin data over REST and SQL, not raw RPC nodes you still have to query.
vs Blockchain.comBlockchain.com API alternative
Production-grade indexed Bitcoin data over REST and SQL, not a rate-capped free explorer API.
vs Mempool.spaceMempool.space alternative
Indexed address, balance and history data over REST and SQL, alongside mempool and fees, on production plans.
vs CoinAPICoinAPI alternative
On-chain Bitcoin data: addresses, balances, UTXOs and labels, not cross-asset market prices.
vs TRM LabsTRM Labs alternative
Bitcoin-native on-chain data and screening signals over REST and SQL, not a full multi-chain investigations suite.
vs Whale AlertWhale Alert alternative
Query large bitcoin transactions on your own thresholds from the fully-indexed chain, not just a fixed real-time feed.
vs CoinGeckoCoinGecko alternative
Raw on-chain Bitcoin data over REST and SQL, not market prices across thousands of coins.
vs CoinMarketCapCoinMarketCap alternative
On-chain Bitcoin data over REST and SQL, where CoinMarketCap serves market prices.
vs BlockdaemonBlockdaemon alternative
A query-first indexed Bitcoin database over REST and SQL, not raw node RPC infrastructure.
vs XverseXverse alternative
Query indexed ordinals, inscriptions, BRC-20 and Runes data over REST and SQL, not just wallet and minting endpoints.
vs BigQueryBigQuery alternative
Balances, entity labels and fund flows already indexed, without per-terabyte scan billing.
vs BitqueryBitquery alternative
Bitcoin-only depth over REST and SQL, billed on calls rather than on points that move with query shape.
vs TimechainIndexTimechainIndex alternative
Bitcoin-only like TimechainIndex, with published pricing and a commercial REST API.
vs CryptoQuantCryptoQuant alternative
API access on the entry plan and the raw chain underneath, not day-resolution metrics.
vs AlchemyAlchemy alternative
An indexed Bitcoin database you query by address, not a Bitcoin Core JSON-RPC passthrough.
vs QuickNodeQuickNode alternative
An indexed Bitcoin database you query by address, not a managed Core node with the address-capable calls switched off.
vs HiroHiro alternative
Hiro retired its Bitcoin Layer 1 APIs. The endpoints now answer HTTP 410 Gone, and the migration link inside that answer is itself dead.
vs AmberdataAmberdata alternative
Amberdata belongs to Kaiko as of June 2026. Its pricing page loads but publishes no number, and its API answers a missing key three different ways.
vs EllipticElliptic alternative
Elliptic publishes no pricing and sells its screening API only on a negotiated contract. We measured its endpoints, and the OFAC list underneath it, on 4 September 2026.
vs Merkle ScienceMerkle Science alternative
Merkle Science publishes no pricing and gates every product behind a demo. We measured its site, its API documentation and its blockchain coverage on 6 September 2026.
vs Coin MetricsCoin Metrics alternative
Coin Metrics is now Talos and its pricing page is gone. We measured the redirects, the free community API and the exact metrics it withholds on 8 September 2026.
vs CoinGlassCoinGlass alternative
CoinGlass publishes exchange balances per wallet address, hourly and rounded, from $29 a month with no free tier. We measured its plans, its documented precision and its Bitcoin gaps on 10 September 2026.
vs TatumTatum alternative
Tatum covers 130+ blockchains from $49 a month. For Bitcoin history, balances at a past block and fee rates, we priced its plans and measured the Bitcoin side on 22 Sep 2026.
vs NOWNodesNOWNodes alternative
NOWNodes sells shared node and Blockbook access across 100+ networks from 20 euros a month. We read its price list and hit its Bitcoin endpoints on 26 Sep 2026.
vs GetBlockGetBlock alternative
GetBlock sells shared nodes on 130+ chains, priced in compute units, from $49 a month. We read its plan table and CU rules and probed its Bitcoin endpoints on 27 Sep 2026.
vs ArkhamArkham Intelligence alternative
Arkham names wallets across seven networks and grants its API by application. We read its access terms and probed its API on 28 Sep 2026.
vs SantimentSantiment alternative
Santiment sells 1,000+ metrics across 2,800 assets over GraphQL. We read its plans and tested its Bitcoin balance query against the chain on 29 Sep 2026.
vs NansenNansen alternative
Nansen labels wallets across 38 chains, and Bitcoin is one of them. We read its API docs, credit table and pay-per-call terms on 30 Sep 2026.
vs AlliumAllium alternative
Allium sells enterprise blockchain data across dozens of chains, Bitcoin included. We read its docs, unit tables and keyless pricing on 1 Oct 2026.
vs FlipsideFlipside alternative
Flipside sold its blockchain data business to SonarX in May 2026 and its old domain now redirects to an enterprise AI product. We checked what is left on 2 Oct 2026.
vs SonarXSonarX alternative
SonarX ships Bitcoin as Snowflake shares, file dumps and Kafka streams, and turns on Bitcoin balances and REST on request. We read its Bitcoin page and checked its pricing URL on 5 Oct 2026.
vs GoldRushGoldRush alternative
GoldRush, the API formerly sold as Covalent, covers 100 plus chains and gives Bitcoin three endpoints. We read its Bitcoin docs and pricing page on 6 Oct 2026.
vs ScorechainScorechain alternative
Scorechain is a Luxembourg blockchain analytics firm covering 25 plus chains. We read its site, its QuickNode add-on docs and pricing on 7 Oct 2026.
vs AMLBotAMLBot alternative
AMLBot sells wallet checks, KYT monitoring and KYC to crypto businesses across many chains. We read its site and plan guide on 8 Oct 2026.
Query the whole Bitcoin blockchain in one place
An address in, structured on-chain data out. BitcoinDatabase serves balances, UTXOs, transactions, entity labels and fund flows, with address history back to the 2009 genesis block over REST, and SQL and dashboards over the indexed chain. No node to run.
REST + SQL + dashboards · new blocks within seconds · informational on-chain data only