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CoinGecko turns crypto market data into an onchain, pay‑per‑use utility with x402

February 10, 2026

By Kevin Leffew

TL;DR: Agents can now fetch token prices, liquidity, and trending pools on demand, paying per request in USDC with x402, without API keys or account setup.

CoinGecko has been one of crypto’s foundational data layers since 2014, aggregating and standardizing market data at internet scale. Today, CoinGecko lists over 20 million+ digital assets, including coins, NFTs, and onchain tokens, with market data made available via the CoinGecko API.

At Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP), we built x402 to make internet-native payments work the way APIs work: programmatically, in-band, and composably. x402 revives the HTTP 402 Payment Required status code so services can quote a price, accept stablecoin payment, and fulfill the request in the normal HTTP request/response flow.

As AI agents become primary consumers of APIs, traditional monetization models break down. Subscriptions and credit cards don't map cleanly to autonomous software, while API keys and accounts introduce human onboarding friction and complex secret management. Free tiers force agents into rate caps and reduced coverage precisely when reliability matters most. 

For agentic workflows (especially in trading, monitoring, and discovery), data access needs to be on-demand, machine-native, and pay-per-use rather than constrained by models designed for human users.

Machine-Native API Access via x402

“AI agents are quickly becoming active participants in crypto markets. By enabling x402, we’re making CoinGecko’s market and onchain data accessible in the most native way possible. This reflects our continued focus on supporting the AI ecosystem, as we continue building the core data infrastructure that enables AI-powered innovation in crypto.” — Bobby Ong, Co‑founder & CEO, CoinGecko 

CoinGecko enabled x402-powered access for a set of high-leverage endpoints, turning their API from “keyed SaaS” into a machine-to-machine data utility, leveraging the CDP Facilitator.

For developers building autonomous trading bots or monitoring agents, this eliminates the entire onboarding layer: agents can start consuming live price data and DEX liquidity in a single API call, paying only for what they use. And in turn, those agents can now discover, authenticate, and pay for data autonomously, with no human signup, no rate limits, no API key rotation. It's infrastructure built for software that pays for itself.

CoinGecko is currently pricing a flat $0.01 USDC per API request across the supported endpoints, with payments currently supported on Base and Solana (note: these endpoints are experimental and pricing/availability is subject to change.)

How it works

CoinGecko’s x402 flow follows the standard x402 handshake:

  1. An agent calls an x402-enabled endpoint.

  2. The server responds with 402 Payment Required and payment requirements.

  3. The agent signs/attaches the required USDC payment authorization and retries the request.

  4. The API returns the requested data, automatically.

Calling the CoinGecko x402 API via Payments MCP in Claude

Supported Endpoints

All x402 calls use CoinGecko’s x402 base path, and you can call supported endpoints by inserting /x402/ right after /v3/ in the URL:

https://pro-api.coingecko.com/api/v3/x402/...

CoinGecko explicitly notes no CoinGecko API key is required for these x402 endpoints.

CoinGecko’s initial x402 rollout targets the market data agents need most: price, discovery, liquidity, and trending onchain activity. The supported endpoints include:

CoinGecko market data

  • simple/price (Get price & market data of coins via symbol or unique coin ids)

Onchain (DEX) data

Results

With x402 enabled, CoinGecko unlocks a set of outcomes that are difficult, or impossible, to achieve with subscription-first APIs. The shift from gated access to pay-per-use fundamentally changes what kinds of agents you can build and how reliably they can operate.

Perks of this new way of getting data via agent are:

  • Pay only when you query: A predictable unit cost ($0.01 USDC/call) makes it easy to budget, throttle, and gate agent behavior.

  • No account or API-key distribution: Agents don’t need to store or rotate keys for these endpoints.

  • Long-tail token access: CoinGecko API provides onchain data coverage at the scale agents need, 28M+ tokens and pricing/market data for 18,000+ cryptocurrencies.

  • Massive network breadth: CoinGecko’s onchain network coverage spans 250+ networks, which matters for agents that can’t afford per-chain integration work.

What builders can do now

For builders, x402 turns data access into something agents can manage autonomously, eliminating the gap between what an agent can decide and what it can afford to execute. Here are a few “agent roles” that become much more practical when data is wallet-native and pay-per-use:

  • Autonomous arbitrage monitor: Scan for candidate spreads; only pay for deeper data pulls when triggers appear.

  • Onchain risk watchdog: Track liquidity and pool activity to detect sudden drops or anomalous behavior earlier.

  • Sentiment-to-trade validator: Cross-check “trending” pools against real liquidity/activity before executing.

Developers can start integrating today

Example call (token data by contract address) (Payment header/signature is produced by your x402 client; shown here as a placeholder.)

curl --request GET \

  --url 'https://pro-api.coingecko.com/api/v3/x402/onchain/networks/base/tokens/<token_address>?include=top_pools' \

  -H 'PAYMENT-SIGNATURE: <paymentSignature>'

With x402, CoinGecko market + onchain data becomes a true on-demand capability for agents: request → pay → retrieve Data, all inside standard HTTP.

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