Data Overview
Coin API gives you access to three types of historical cryptocurrency market data. Each entity focuses on a different level of market detail — from aggregated candles to tick-level trades and quotes.
Entities
OHLCV Historical Data
Price trend analysis, charting, backtesting strategies
Trades Historical Data
Execution analysis, volume profiling, microstructure research
Quotes Historical Data
Spread analysis, liquidity research, bid/ask dynamics
OHLCV Historical Data
Metrics
price_open
Opening price at the start of the period
price_high
Highest price during the period
price_low
Lowest price during the period
price_close
Closing price at the end of the period
volume_traded
Total volume of the base asset traded during the period
trades_count
Number of individual trades that occurred during the period
Dimensions
symbol_id
The trading pair identifier (e.g., BITSTAMP_SPOT_BTC_USD)
time_period_start
Start timestamp of the candle period
time_period_end
End timestamp of the candle period
time_open
Exact timestamp of the first trade in the period
time_close
Exact timestamp of the last trade in the period
Trades Historical Data
Metrics
price
Execution price of the trade
size
Volume of the base asset traded
Dimensions
symbol_id
The trading pair identifier
time_exchange
Timestamp reported by the exchange
time_coinapi
Timestamp recorded by Coin API
uuid
Unique identifier for the trade
taker_side
Side of the taker (buy or sell, where available)
Quotes Historical Data
Metrics
ask_price
Best ask (sell) price at the time of the quote
ask_size
Volume available at the ask price
bid_price
Best bid (buy) price at the time of the quote
bid_size
Volume available at the bid price
Dimensions
symbol_id
The trading pair identifier
time_exchange
Timestamp reported by the exchange
time_coinapi
Timestamp recorded by Coin API
Common metric combinations
OHLCV + volume_traded + trades_count — identify high-activity periods where price moved on large volume
Quotes: ask_price - bid_price — calculate spread over time to measure market liquidity
Trades: price + size — compute volume-weighted average price (VWAP) across a session
OHLCV across multiple symbols — use the Append transformation to combine candle data from different trading pairs for cross-asset comparison
Use cases by role
Pull OHLCV data for multiple symbols and use Append to build a unified price history table for backtesting
Calculate rolling volatility and Sharpe ratios directly in BigQuery or a connected spreadsheet
Use trades data to analyze execution slippage and fill quality
Track portfolio asset prices over custom date ranges and export to Excel or Google Sheets for reporting
Monitor bid/ask spreads from quotes data to assess liquidity risk for crypto holdings
Schedule daily OHLCV pulls to maintain an up-to-date price ledger
Pipe OHLCV or trades data into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to detect patterns and generate plain-language market summaries
Use Perplexity or OpenClaw to ask questions directly over your historical trade data
Combine multiple entities with Join to enrich trade records with contemporaneous quote data
Platform-specific notes
Symbol IDs are exchange-specific —
BITSTAMP_SPOT_BTC_USDandCOINBASE_SPOT_BTC_USDare different symbols even for the same asset pairThe time interval (period) parameter only applies to OHLCV data — trades and quotes return tick-level records
Leaving the end date empty will pull data up to the current time, which is useful for scheduled incremental flows
Very short time intervals (e.g., 1-second candles) over long date ranges can produce millions of rows — use the record limit parameter to control output size
Coin API's free tier has rate limits and a cap on historical data depth; paid plans unlock full historical coverage
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