Overview
Dune is a platform for analyzing blockchain data. It collects the raw data from more than 100 blockchains, organizes it into tables, and lets anyone query it with SQL (the standard language for databases). The results can be turned into charts and dashboards and shared publicly.
Dune was founded in 2018 in Oslo, Norway, by Fredrik Haga and Mats Olsen. It started with a single customer, cleaning up Ethereum data, and grew into one of the best-known names in crypto analytics. According to its official About page, it has raised about $80 million and reached a “unicorn” valuation (over $1 billion) in 2022.
Dune’s best-known feature is its library of community dashboards: a large community of analysts has published dashboards on everything from Ethereum gas fees and NFT sales to stablecoin flows, airdrops and the users of individual DeFi apps. Many projects and research firms use Dune dashboards as their public source of truth.
How Dune works
The data
Dune indexes three layers of data, according to its official documentation:
- Raw data: blocks, transactions, logs and traces, taken directly from blockchain nodes.
- Decoded data: smart contract events and function calls translated into readable tables (for example, every swap on Uniswap with its tokens and amounts).
- Curated data: cleaned, standardized tables maintained by Dune and its community, such as all DEX trades across chains in one table, NFT trades, token prices and labeled addresses.
Coverage includes Ethereum and its layer-2 networks (Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and others), Solana, BNB Chain, Bitcoin, Move-based chains, and many more.
Queries and dashboards
You write a SQL query, run it on Dune’s servers, and get a table of results. From that table you can build charts (bars, lines, pie charts, counters) and combine several of them into a dashboard. Queries can be scheduled to refresh automatically, so dashboards stay current.
You do not have to start from zero. Every public query on Dune can be opened, copied (“forked”) and edited, which makes it one of the best places to learn on-chain analysis by example. Dune has also added AI tools that help write and explain queries in plain language.
For businesses
Beyond the website, Dune sells data to companies:
- Data API: run Dune queries from your own app.
- Datashare: deliver Dune data directly into a company’s own data warehouse (such as Snowflake or BigQuery).
- Enterprise plans with custom limits and support.
What you can learn from Dune
Dune dashboards answer questions that price sites cannot, for example:
- How many daily active users a DeFi app really has.
- How much a protocol earns in fees and who pays them.
- How many wallets hold a token and whether large holders are buying or selling.
- How an airdrop was distributed and how many recipients sold right away.
- Whether a chain’s activity is organic or driven by bots and incentives.
This makes Dune valuable for checking a project’s claims. If a team says its app is booming, a Dune dashboard can often confirm or contradict it.
The 2026 change to the free plan
In 2026, Dune changed its free plan, citing the high cost of running queries on huge blockchain datasets:
- The Free plan is now view-only: you can browse all public dashboards and queries, but you cannot run queries, and it includes no monthly credits or API access.
- Older free accounts, which used to receive 2,500 free credits a month, moved to view-only access from 10 September 2026, after a 14-day trial of the Plus plan.
- New accounts get Plus features and 2,500 trial credits for up to 14 days. Saved work stays available after the trial ends.
For most readers this changes little: viewing community dashboards is still free. It matters if you want to write your own queries.
Plans and pricing
Dune uses credits: each query uses credits according to the computing power it needs. Prices below are from Dune’s official documentation in October 2026.
| Plan | Monthly | Billed annually | Credits per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free (view-only) | – | 0 |
| Analyst | $75 / month | $65 / month ($780 / year) | 4,000 |
| Plus | $399 / month | $349 / month ($4,188 / year) | 25,000 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom |
A few practical points from the documentation:
- Simple queries cost few credits; heavy queries on large tables cost more. Dune shows the cost after a query runs, not before.
- You can choose a smaller or larger “engine”: larger is faster but uses credits faster.
- On paid plans you can buy extra credits and set a monthly spending cap and a cap per query, which helps avoid surprise bills.
- Unused credits do not roll over.
Who should use Dune
- Investors and readers: use the free view-only plan to browse dashboards about the projects you follow. Search Dune for a project’s name and you will usually find several dashboards.
- Analysts and researchers: the Analyst plan is the entry point for writing your own queries.
- Teams and companies: Plus, the API or Datashare.
A word of caution: anyone can publish a dashboard. A good dashboard links to its queries, explains its assumptions and is maintained over time. Check who made it, when it was last updated, and whether the numbers match other sources such as DeFiLlama.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Raw, decoded and curated data across 100+ blockchains
- Huge library of free community dashboards
- Every public query can be read and reused, so analysis is transparent
- Excellent place to learn on-chain analysis
- AI tools help write queries
- API and data delivery for businesses
Cons
- Free plan is now view-only; running queries requires a paid plan
- Paid plans are expensive for individuals
- Writing your own analysis requires SQL
- Credit costs are only known after a query runs
- Dashboard quality varies; some are abandoned or wrong
Dune vs. alternatives
| Dune | DeFiLlama | Block explorers (Etherscan, Solscan) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Custom, deep analysis | DeFi overview, TVL, fees | Single transactions and addresses |
| Skill needed | SQL (for own queries) | None | None |
| Free use | View dashboards | Full website | Full website |
| Custom questions | Yes, any question | Limited to its datasets | No |
Our verdict
Dune is the most powerful public tool for on-chain research. Its community dashboards let anyone check what is really happening on a blockchain, beyond prices and marketing. For analysts, the ability to query raw data and build on others’ work is unmatched.
The 2026 move to a view-only free plan makes it less accessible for hobbyists who want to write queries, but for most investors the free dashboards remain the main value. Use them as evidence to verify claims, and always check that a dashboard is maintained and consistent with other sources.
This review is for information only and is not financial advice.