CoinMarketCap API: pricing tiers and builder quickstart

CoinMarketCap API: pricing tiers and builder quickstart. CoinMarketCap sells the industry-default market data feed — listings, quotes, OHLCV, exchange metadata, global metrics, and a growing DEX surface — over REST (and WebSocket on higher tiers). This page captures the public pricing matrix and how Solana app builders should use it next to on-chain oracles.

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What you get

CMC is an off-chain market data vendor. For settlement, liquidations, or program-side pricing on Solana, prefer Pyth / Switchboard-class oracles. Use CMC for UI tickers, portfolio display, research, screening, and agent tools that need broad catalog coverage.

Pricing (list — re-check live)

Source: coinmarketcap.com/api/pricing. Marketing also shows yearly discounts and occasional coupon codes; numbers below are the monthly list tiers scraped from the pricing page (verify before purchase).

Keyless public/trial: CMC also exposes paths that need no key for evaluation (docs advertise /public-api and trial-style hosts). Limits are tight — fine for smoke tests, not production.

Auth and base URL

# Production REST
export CMC_API_KEY="your_key"
curl -sG "https://pro-api.coinmarketcap.com/v1/cryptocurrency/quotes/latest" \
  -H "X-CMC_PRO_API_KEY: $CMC_API_KEY" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  --data-urlencode "symbol=SOL,BTC" \
  --data-urlencode "convert=USD"

# Keyless-style evaluate (path may evolve — check docs)
curl -sG "https://pro-api.coinmarketcap.com/public-api/v1/simple/price" \
  --data-urlencode "ids=1,5426" \
  --data-urlencode "convert=USD"

Docs index (incl. llms.txt for agents): pro.coinmarketcap.com API documentation · llms.txt. CMC also markets MCP / agent hub / x402 surfaces on the API product pages — treat those as optional distribution channels on top of the same data core.

Thin PoC — listings + quotes

// Server-side only — never ship the Pro key to browsers
const BASE = "https://pro-api.coinmarketcap.com"

async function cmc<T>(path: string, query: Record<string, string>, key: string): Promise<T> {
  const url = new URL(path, BASE)
  for (const [k, v] of Object.entries(query)) url.searchParams.set(k, v)
  const res = await fetch(url, {
    headers: {
      "X-CMC_PRO_API_KEY": key,
      Accept: "application/json",
    },
  })
  if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`CMC ${res.status} ${await res.text()}`)
  return res.json() as Promise<T>
}

export async function topByMcap(key: string, limit = 50) {
  return cmc("/v1/cryptocurrency/listings/latest", {
    start: "1",
    limit: String(limit),
    convert: "USD",
  }, key)
}

export async function quoteSymbols(key: string, symbols: string[]) {
  return cmc("/v1/cryptocurrency/quotes/latest", {
    symbol: symbols.join(","),
    convert: "USD",
  }, key)
}

// Solana app pattern:
// 1) CMC for display mcap / USD labels in UI or bots
// 2) Pyth/Hermes (or pool TWAP) for any on-chain risk decision
// 3) Cache aggressively — credits are the bill

When Solana builders pick CMC vs not

Builder checklist

1. Open pricing and match credits to QPS × fan-out.
2. Create a free key; smoke-test quotes + listings.
3. Put the key only on a backend or edge worker.
4. Cache by symbol with TTL aligned to your tier's refresh.
5. Separate display prices (CMC) from risk prices (oracle).
6. Re-read license line items before shipping commercial products.

People and links

Resources

• CoinMarketCap API Pricing
• Developer documentation
• Pyth price layer · TopLedger