Overview
CoinGecko is one of the two largest crypto market data websites, alongside CoinMarketCap. It shows prices, market capitalization, trading volume, supply and historical charts for more than 22,000 coins and over 1,500 exchanges, all for free.
It was founded in April 2014 by TM Lee (President) and Bobby Ong (CEO), and it describes itself as the world’s largest independent crypto data aggregator: it is not owned by an exchange. CoinGecko reports more than 10 million monthly users and over 10 billion API calls a month, which means a large part of the crypto industry (wallets, apps, websites) quietly runs on its data.
At Cryptensive, CoinGecko is one of the data sources behind our dashboards.
What you can do on CoinGecko
Prices and market data
The homepage ranks coins by market cap and shows the price, changes over 1 hour, 24 hours and 7 days, trading volume and a small 7-day chart. Each coin has its own page with:
- Price chart (from hours up to the coin’s full history)
- Market cap, fully diluted valuation (FDV), circulating, total and maximum supply
- All-time high and low, with dates
- A list of every exchange and trading pair where the coin trades
- Official links: website, block explorer, contract addresses, social accounts
- Short project description and category tags
The contract address list is particularly useful: it helps you check that a token you want to buy is the real one and not a copycat with the same name.
Categories, trending and gainers
Coins are grouped into categories such as Layer 1, DeFi, AI, meme coins, real-world assets or specific ecosystems (Solana, Base, Sui…). This makes it easy to see which sector is leading the market. Sections such as Trending, Top Gainers and New Coins show what is attracting attention, but should be treated as a starting point for research, not a buy list: many newly listed or fast-rising tokens are highly speculative.
Exchanges and Trust Score
CoinGecko ranks exchanges using its Trust Score. Spot exchanges are rated 1 to 10 based on liquidity, regulation, cybersecurity, past incidents and proof of reserves. Individual trading pairs get a green, yellow or red rating based on order book depth, spread and trade activity.
Trust Score was introduced in 2019 to fight fake trading volume, a long-standing problem in crypto where some exchanges inflate their numbers. In May 2026, an update (called “Basilisk”) replaced web traffic as a factor with direct measures of volume and order book depth and added a Regulation Score.
GeckoTerminal
GeckoTerminal, launched in 2021, is CoinGecko’s tool for decentralized exchanges. It shows live price charts and liquidity pools for tokens trading on DEXs across many blockchains, often before they are listed on CoinGecko itself. It is useful for following new tokens, but those markets are also where most scams and “rug pulls” happen.
Portfolio and watchlists
With a free account you can create watchlists and a portfolio tracker, entering your holdings manually to follow their total value. CoinGecko also has mobile apps (iOS and Android) with price alerts.
Research and learning
CoinGecko has published a quarterly crypto industry report since 2017, along with research articles, guides and a glossary. Its reports are frequently cited in the media and are a good free overview of each quarter’s market trends.
How the numbers are calculated
Understanding the methodology helps you read the numbers correctly. According to CoinGecko’s official methodology:
- Price is a volume-weighted average of the coin’s prices across the exchanges where it trades. CoinGecko starts with up to 600 of the most active trading pairs, removes abnormal ones (outliers), and averages the rest.
- Outliers are filtered with statistical bounds, and the operations team can exclude pairs that look wrong.
- Market cap = price × circulating supply.
- Circulating supply is provided by the project and verified by CoinGecko. Locked tokens (team, foundation, investor allocations) are deducted. If CoinGecko cannot verify the figure, it shows a dash.
This last point is important: for many tokens, the fully diluted valuation (FDV) is much higher than the market cap, because large amounts of tokens are still locked and will be released over time. Always compare the two numbers before investing.
Listing criteria
To be listed, a project needs a working website, a block explorer, clear disclosure of its circulating supply and a listing on at least one active exchange that CoinGecko tracks. A listing is not an endorsement: CoinGecko lists many small, risky tokens, and a coin’s presence on the site says nothing about its quality.
The CoinGecko API
CoinGecko’s data is also available through an API for developers, apps and websites. The prices below are from CoinGecko’s official API pricing page in October 2026.
| Plan | Price per month | Calls per month | Rate limit | Historical data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demo | Free | 10,000 | 100 / minute | 1 year |
| Basic | $35 ($29 billed yearly) | 100,000 | 300 / minute | 2 years |
| Analyst | $129 ($103.20 billed yearly) | 500,000 | 500 / minute | Since 2013 |
| Lite | $499 ($399.20 billed yearly) | 2 million | 500 / minute | Since 2013 |
| Pro | $999 ($799.20 billed yearly) | 5 million+ | 1,000 / minute | Since 2013 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
The free Demo plan requires no credit card but asks you to credit CoinGecko as the source. For regular users who just browse the website, everything is free; the API matters only if you build something.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Free, with very broad coverage (22,000+ coins, 1,500+ exchanges)
- Independent: not owned by an exchange
- Transparent, published methodology for prices and supply
- Trust Score helps spot exchanges with fake volume
- Official contract addresses help avoid fake tokens
- GeckoTerminal covers DEX tokens early
- Useful free research reports
Cons
- Listing many small tokens means a lot of noise and risky coins
- Circulating supply data depends partly on projects themselves
- Charts are basic compared to TradingView
- Ads and “sponsored” placements on the website
- Portfolio tracker requires manual entry
CoinGecko vs. CoinMarketCap
| CoinGecko | CoinMarketCap | |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2014 | 2013 |
| Ownership | Independent | Binance (since 2020) |
| Exchange rating | Trust Score (1–10) | Exchange Score |
| DEX tool | GeckoTerminal | DexScan |
| Free API | Demo: 10,000 calls/month | Basic: 15,000 credits/month |
| Paid API from | $35/month | $29/month |
Both sites are reliable for everyday price checks, and their numbers are usually very close. Many experienced users check both when a figure looks strange. CoinGecko’s main advantage is its independence: it has no exchange owner whose interests could, even in perception, influence rankings.
How we use it
On Cryptensive, we use CoinGecko to:
- Get current prices, market caps and supply figures for our reviews and dashboards.
- Check official contract addresses and links before writing about a project.
- Compare market cap with FDV to understand future token unlocks.
Our verdict
CoinGecko is one of the essential free tools in crypto. It is fast, broad, transparent about how it calculates its numbers and independent of any exchange. For beginners, it is the easiest place to look up a coin, check its supply and find its official links.
Use it as a data source, not a recommendation engine. Rankings, trending lists and gainers reflect market activity, not quality, and many listed tokens are extremely risky.
This review is for information only and is not financial advice.