Crypto Price Scraper — CoinGecko Public API, Top-1000 Coins or Specific IDs

Pull cryptocurrency price + market data from the free CoinGecko public API. No API key required. Three modes: top-N by market cap, specific coin lookups, currently-trending.

Built for: portfolio tracker dashboards, price alerting pipelines, daily mark-to-market reports for crypto-native treasuries, research datasets.

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What this actor does (honest scope, verified against src/main.js)

Calls these CoinGecko endpoints under the hood:

Mode	Trigger	Endpoint	Records
Top-N	topN > 0 AND coins=[] AND categories=[]	/coins/markets (paginated 250/page)	Up to topN (max 1000)
Specific coins	coins=[…]	/coins/{id} per coin	One per coin
Trending	includeTrending=true	/search/trending	~15 coins (CoinGecko's published trending list size)

Inserts a 1500ms delay between requests to stay under CoinGecko's free-tier rate limit. CoinGecko's published unauthenticated limit is 5-15 calls/min — at 1500ms/call = 40 req/min, the actor can drift over the limit on bursty multi-coin runs and rely on the 429 fallback. On HTTP 429 it sleeps 60s and recursively retries the same call — see "Operational caveats" for the no-max-depth disclosure.

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Honest disclosure on inputs and behavior

• ⚠️ DEAD INPUT — categories. The destructured categories array (src/main.js line 9) is read from input but its values are NEVER passed to any CoinGecko endpoint. The only place it's referenced is the top-N gate (topN > 0 && coins.length === 0 && categories.length === 0). If you supply categories: ["defi"], you'll silently skip the top-N branch AND get zero category-filtered records — the actor will simply emit nothing (unless you also set coins, includeTrending, etc.). This is a known shortcoming. Use coins=[…] with explicit IDs instead, or request a custom build that actually wires category= into /coins/markets.
• ⚠️ Recursive 429 retry has NO max-depth cap (fetchJson lines 30-34). If CoinGecko sustains a 429 (e.g. their free-tier ceiling is exhausted from another caller), the actor will keep sleeping 60s and re-calling itself indefinitely until JavaScript's call stack overflows or you cancel the run. Set a wall-clock budget on Apify-run if this matters.
• ⚠️ Outer try/catch wraps the entire run (lines 44-189). Top-N mode has NO inner try; a non-429 HTTP error inside /coins/markets kills the whole run mid-page. Per-coin mode has its own inner try (line 108-157) so individual bad IDs don't kill peers. Trending mode has its own inner try (line 164-184).
• No proxy. Single fetch() per URL. CoinGecko's free tier blocks based on IP — heavy parallel runs from the same Apify worker may hit a soft block.
• vsCurrency is server-validated, not client-validated. Schema accepts any string; CoinGecko throws 400 on unknown currencies, which surfaces as a fatal error in top-N mode (kills the run) or per-coin error in specific-coin mode.

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What this actor does NOT do

• ❌ No historical OHLCV — CoinGecko's free tier doesn't expose granular OHLCV via this actor's endpoints. Only current snapshot + percentage-change windows (1h/24h/7d/30d).
• ❌ No multi-exchange order book / per-pair data — single source: CoinGecko aggregate.
• ❌ No CoinMarketCap, Binance, Coinbase, Kraken direct calls — CoinGecko only.
• ❌ No real-time streaming — snapshot-on-run model. Schedule via Apify cron for periodic pulls.
• ❌ No symbol-to-id resolution — input must be CoinGecko coin IDs (e.g. bitcoin, not BTC). Get the IDs from https://api.coingecko.com/api/v3/coins/list.
• ❌ No category-aware top-N — see DEAD INPUT note above.

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Input parameters

Field	Type	Default	Description
coins	array of strings	[]	CoinGecko coin IDs (e.g. ["bitcoin","ethereum","solana"])
topN	integer	100	Top N coins by market cap, used when coins=[] AND categories=[] (1-1000)
vsCurrency	string	"usd"	Reference currency (usd, eur, gbp, jpy, etc.)
includeMarketData	boolean	true	For specific coins: include market data (price, supply, ATH/ATL)
includeTrending	boolean	false	Also fetch CoinGecko's currently-trending list (~15 coins)

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Output schemas (different per mode)

Top-N mode (27 fields, market-cap-ranked)

{
  "id": "bitcoin",
  "symbol": "btc",
  "name": "Bitcoin",
  "image": "https://assets.coingecko.com/coins/images/1/large/bitcoin.png",
  "currentPrice": 62841.32,
  "marketCap": 1238400000000,
  "marketCapRank": 1,
  "fullyDilutedValuation": 1320000000000,
  "totalVolume": 28400000000,
  "high24h": 63100,
  "low24h": 62100,
  "priceChange24h": 740.50,
  "priceChangePercentage24h": 1.18,
  "priceChangePercentage1h": 0.12,
  "priceChangePercentage7d": -1.23,
  "priceChangePercentage30d": 8.45,
  "circulatingSupply": 19680000,
  "totalSupply": 21000000,
  "maxSupply": 21000000,
  "ath": 73850,
  "athChangePercentage": -14.91,
  "athDate": "2024-03-14T07:10:36.635Z",
  "atl": 67.81,
  "atlDate": "2013-07-06T00:00:00.000Z",
  "lastUpdated": "2026-04-29T12:00:00Z",
  "vsCurrency": "usd",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-29T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Specific-coin mode (16 base fields + up to 13 market-data fields with includeMarketData=true)

Base fields: id, symbol, name, description (truncated to first 1000 chars), image, categories (array — output field, distinct from the dead INPUT param), genesisDate, homepageUrl (FIRST URL only — links.homepage[0]), blockchainSite (FIRST URL only), subreddit, githubUrl (FIRST URL only — links.repos_url.github[0]), sentimentUpPercentage, sentimentDownPercentage, marketCapRank, source: "coin:<id>", scrapedAt. Multiple homepages / blockchain explorers / GitHub repos are silently dropped — only the first of each is emitted.

With includeMarketData=true: adds currentPrice, marketCap, totalVolume, high24h, low24h, priceChangePercentage24h, priceChangePercentage7d, priceChangePercentage30d, circulatingSupply, totalSupply, maxSupply, ath, athDate. No priceChange24h (raw), no athChangePercentage, no atl/atlDate in this mode (asymmetric vs top-N output). No vsCurrency field carried in this mode either — top-N records carry vsCurrency, specific-coin records do not. Normalize explicitly if you join.

Trending mode (9 fields, lightweight)

{
  "id": "fartcoin",
  "symbol": "fartcoin",
  "name": "Fartcoin",
  "image": "https://assets.coingecko.com/coins/images/...",
  "marketCapRank": 142,
  "priceBtc": 0.0000045,
  "score": 0,
  "_type": "TRENDING",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-29T12:00:00.000Z"
}

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Compute cost (transparent estimate, NOT a billing guarantee)

A single run pulling top-100 coins on Apify free tier consumes roughly $0.005-0.02 in compute (1.5s delay × 1 page = 2-3 sec runtime). Top-1000 = 4 pages = ~6-8 sec runtime, ~$0.02-0.05. Specific-coin mode is slower (1.5s per coin = ~$0.03 for 10 coins). 429-retry pauses (60s sleeps) extend wall-clock and may inflate the bill on rate-limit-pressured days.

These are estimates from observed runtimes — your actual Apify bill is the source of truth, not this README.

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When this stops being enough

• Need historical OHLCV? → CoinGecko Pro API ($129/mo) or use Binance/Kraken/Coinbase direct REST (separate actor).
• Need order-book depth, multi-exchange spreads? → Use exchange APIs directly. Different actor, different cost.
• Need real-time streaming? → Crypto exchanges' WebSocket feeds. Apify Actors aren't the right tool.
• Need DEX prices (Uniswap, Curve, Aave)? → On-chain RPC + The Graph subgraphs. Different stack.
• Need category-filtered top-N? → Custom build: wire category= into /coins/markets. The current categories input does nothing.

If you need any of the above as a custom build → email below.

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Custom builds — pilot tiers

This actor is free to run on your Apify account. If you want a custom variant — category-filtered top-N (the input bug fixed), retry with max-depth + circuit-breaker, scheduled runs, Slack alerts on price thresholds, multi-exchange aggregation, OHLCV history — three tiers:

• Pilot — $97 · 1 actor, basic config, 7-day support
• Standard — $297 · custom actor + Slack/email alerts, 30-day support
• Premium — $797 · custom actor + dashboard + 90-day support + 1 modification round

Email: spinov001@gmail.com — drop the schema and the trigger conditions; quote within 48h.

Proof of work: 31 published Apify scrapers (78 total in portfolio) — Trustpilot 949 runs, Reddit 80+, Google News 43, Glassdoor 37, Email Extractor 36+. Recently delivered a paid 3-article series for a client in the proxy industry ($150).

More tips: t.me/scraping_ai · blog.spinov.online

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Related scrapers

Source	Actor	Data
CoinGecko (this)	Crypto prices + market data	Crypto
Exchange Rate Scraper	Fiat FX rates	Currency
Hacker News Scraper	Tech/crypto discussion	Discourse
GitHub Trending Scraper	Trending repos	OSS

All 31 published actors free to inspect on Apify Store.

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Disclaimer

Scrapes the publicly accessible CoinGecko API endpoints. Respects polite delays (1500ms between requests) and falls back to a 60s sleep on HTTP 429. Not affiliated with CoinGecko, Inc.

Honest disclosure: top-N 27 fields, specific-coin 16 base + up to 13 market-data fields, trending 9 fields. categories INPUT is a dead parameter — destructured but never queried. 429 retry has NO max-depth (potential infinite loop on persistent rate-limit). Outer try/catch — top-N HTTP error kills the entire run; per-coin and trending have inner try/catch protection. homepageUrl/blockchainSite/githubUrl emit only the first URL each. Specific-coin mode does NOT include vsCurrency field (asymmetric vs top-N).