Where Coinalyze wins
- It is free. The API needs a free key, allows 40 calls a minute, and is free to use when credited if used publicly (API docs, checked October 1, 2026). Ours has a free plan too, with every metric for 2025 on BTC, ETH, SOL and 10 RWA perps, and paid plans from $199 a month billed yearly.
- Liquidations and positioning. It serves liquidations, long/short ratios and predicted funding alongside open interest and funding (same page). We have none of those three.
- Daily history. Daily bars are kept. If your model runs on daily data, the free API may be all you need.
Where Aperiodic is the better alternative
Intraday history that stays. Coinalyze's API docs say intraday history is deleted after 1,500 to 2,000 points (API docs, checked October 1, 2026). That is how far back each interval reaches, against Aperiodic Pro:
| Interval | Coinalyze API | Aperiodic Pro |
|---|---|---|
| 1 minute | 25 to 33 hours | 5 years |
| 5 minutes | 5.2 to 6.9 days | 5 years |
| 1 hour | 62 to 83 days | 5 years |
| Daily | Kept | 5 years |
The Coinalyze column is the stated point count times the interval. Prime keeps the full history, from 2020 on Binance and 2019 on OKX (pricing). A strategy that reacts to 1-minute funding or open interest cannot be tested on a day of it.
Bars on the clock you trade on. A Coinalyze bar carries one bar time, and its docs do not say which clock bars are built on (API docs, checked October 1, 2026). Aperiodic records the exchange time and the time each message reached our collectors closest to the exchange, and builds every metric on either. On local time, a 1-minute funding or open interest bar holds only what a live system could have seen by its close.
A month is one file. Here is a month of 5-minute open interest, pulled with no API key:
# Install the Aperiodic CLI into ~/.local/bin
mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aperiodic-io/cli/main/install.sh | INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/.local/bin" bash
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
aperiodic open_interest --preview --exchange binance-futures --symbol perpetual-BTC-USDT:USDT \
--interval 5m --timestamp exchange --start-date 2025-05-01 --end-date 2025-05-31 \
--output-dir ./data && echo "Saved to $PWD/data"One parquet file: 8,928 five-minute bars, all 31 days of May 2025, with 5 open-interest metrics per bar. A 5-minute Coinalyze series holds 1,500 to 2,000 bars at any time.
# pip install pandas pyarrow
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_parquet("data/2025-05.parquet")
print(len(df), df["time"].min(), df["time"].max()) # 8928 bars, all of May 2025Or have your agent run it and read the file for you:
Read https://aperiodic.io/start.md and follow it. Then pull the free `open_interest` preview and show me the biggest 5-minute moves in open interest.More than positioning. Aperiodic also ships order flow by trade size, slippage, price impact, L1 and L2 order book imbalance and depth (on Prime) and basis: 220 metrics across 19 datasets (catalog). Coinalyze has no order book, slippage or tick-level data. Every other vendor's entry price is on crypto market data pricing, vendor by vendor.
What every plan gives a backtest
- Every perpetual on Binance, OKX and Hyperliquid stays in the data after it is delisted, so a backtest sees the coins that were listed at the time, including the ones that later died.
- Published bars are never recalculated. A backtest you run next year reads the same history as one you run today.
- Every metric comes on exchange time or on local time (when the data reached us). On local time, a bar only holds what you could have seen by its close.
- Prime and above have no API rate limits, and Pro has high ones. The Python SDK downloads 10 files at a time by default.
Side by side
| Coinalyze | Aperiodic | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, with a key | Free for 2025 on BTC, ETH, SOL and 10 RWA perps; paid from $199/month billed yearly ($249 month to month) |
| Intraday history | 1,500 to 2,000 points per series, then deleted | 5 years at 1m to 1d on Pro; full history on Prime |
| Daily history | Kept | 5 years on Pro; full history on Prime |
| Access | REST API with a free key | Parquet files per date range; REST API and Python SDK |
| Series | OHLCV, open interest, funding, predicted funding, liquidations, long/short ratio | 220 metrics: order flow, slippage, L1 and L2 book, funding, open interest, basis and more |
| Timestamps | One bar time; clock not documented | Exchange and local timestamps; every metric built on either clock |
| Liquidations, long/short | Yes | No |
| Order book, slippage | No | Yes |
| Revisions | No revision policy published | None: published bars are never recalculated |
| Rate limits | 40 calls a minute per key | None on Prime and above, high on Pro; parallel downloads |
| Terms | Free if credited when used publicly | Personal licence on Pro and Prime; commercial on Prime Commercial |
Coinalyze facts checked October 1, 2026 against its API documentation. Terms change; check their docs before you build on them.
From Coinalyze series to Aperiodic datasets
| Coinalyze series | Aperiodic dataset |
|---|---|
| Open interest | open_interest: level, notional, change, volatility |
| Funding rate | funding: funding_rate and how often it updates |
| OHLCV with buy volume | ohlcv, and flow for taker buy and sell volume by trade size |
| Predicted funding | Not available |
| Liquidations | Not available. Keep Coinalyze for this. |
| Long/short ratio | Not available |
Which one to use
Choose Coinalyze for a free live feed of open interest, funding, liquidations and long/short ratios, or for daily history.
Choose Aperiodic when a backtest needs intraday history: years of 1-minute funding, open interest, basis and order flow, per exchange, as files.
They fit together: Coinalyze for liquidations and the live picture, Aperiodic for the years of intraday history a backtest needs.