🟧 BitMEX Instruments Scraper

🚀 Export every active BitMEX instrument in seconds. Pull perpetual swaps, dated futures, options, and spot pairs with last price, mark price, open interest, funding rate, 24h volume, and bid/ask depth. No API key, no signup.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-13 · 📊 30+ fields per record · 🟧 Perps + futures + options + spot · 💵 USD / USDT quote currencies · 🏆 The original crypto perp venue

The BitMEX Instruments Scraper queries the BitMEX /api/v1/instrument/active endpoint and returns one rich record per active instrument. Each record can carry up to 30+ fields, including the canonical symbol, root symbol, instrument state, instrument type (typ), underlying asset, quote and settlement currencies, expiry and listing timestamps, last price, mark price, indicative settle, open interest, open value, funding rate (with a computed daily figure), 24h volume and turnover, VWAP, high, low, prior close, percent change, top-of-book bid/ask, midprice, and a liquidity flag.

BitMEX pioneered the perpetual swap contract in 2016 and remains a central venue for crypto derivatives. This Actor classifies every record into one of perpetual, futures, spot, or other, so you can slice the dataset by structure without parsing internal type codes.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Derivatives quants, market-making teams, crypto research desks, structured-product builders, treasury and risk teams, journalists	Perp funding monitoring, open-interest tracking, basis trades, calendar spreads, volatility surfaces, exchange research

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📋 What the BitMEX Scraper does

Four built-in workflows in a single run:

• 🌍 Full instrument export. Every active BitMEX instrument in one pull.
• 🟧 Type filter. Restrict to perpetual swaps, dated futures, or spot pairs.
• 💵 Quote-currency filter. Restrict to USD or USDT quoted markets.
• 📊 Server-side sort. Order by 24h volume, open interest, last price, or symbol.

Each record exposes the raw exchange fields plus a classification label and a fundingRateDaily value (per-period rate scaled to 24h), so you can drop the dataset into BI tools without further normalization.

💡 Why it matters: BitMEX is the original venue for crypto perpetual swaps and remains a key venue for institutional-grade derivatives data. Open interest, funding rate, and 24h volume on BitMEX feed every serious perp dashboard, basis-spread engine, and volatility-surface tool.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough from signup to a downloaded BitMEX dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
instrumentType	string	""	One of perpetual, futures, spot, or empty for all types.
quoteCurrency	string	""	One of USD, USDT, or empty for any quote.
sortBy	string	"volume24h"	One of volume24h, openInterest, lastPrice, symbol.

Example: top 20 perpetual swaps by 24h volume.

{
    "maxItems": 20,
    "instrumentType": "perpetual",
    "quoteCurrency": "USDT",
    "sortBy": "volume24h"
}

Example: dated futures sorted by open interest.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "instrumentType": "futures",
    "sortBy": "openInterest"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: the BitMEX typ codes encode the structural family: FFWCSX is a perpetual swap, IFXXXP is spot, and FF-prefixed codes generally indicate dated futures. This Actor exposes both the raw typ and a friendly classification so you can pivot either way.

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📊 Output

Each instrument record can contain up to 30+ fields. Null fields are dropped, so spot rows are leaner than perp rows. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🏷️ symbol	string	"PEPEUSDT"
🔗 url	string	"https://www.bitmex.com/app/trade/PEPEUSDT"
🟧 classification	string	"perpetual"
🌱 rootSymbol	string	"PEPE"
🟢 state	string	"Open"
🔣 typ	string	"FFWCSX"
🪙 underlying	string	"PEPE"
💵 quoteCurrency	string	"USDT"
💼 settlCurrency	string	"USDt"
🗓️ listing	ISO 8601	"2023-05-03T04:00:00.000Z"
🗓️ front	ISO 8601	"2023-05-03T04:00:00.000Z"
🗓️ expiry	ISO 8601 | null	null
🎯 optionStrikePrice	number | null	null
💰 lastPrice	number	0.000004026
🎚️ markPrice	number	0.000004039
💵 indicativeSettlePrice	number	0.000004039
📦 openInterest	number	137780500000
💼 openValue	number	556495439500
💸 fundingRate	number	0.0001
📈 fundingRateDaily	number	0.0003
💸 indicativeFundingRate	number	0.0001
📊 volume24h	number	14079510000
📊 turnover24h	number	57568503460
🕔 prevPrice24h	number	0.000004168
📐 vwap	number	0.0000040889
🔼 highPrice	number	0.000004261
🔽 lowPrice	number	0.000003984
📈 lastChangePcnt	number	-3.36
📥 bidPrice	number	0.000004032
📤 askPrice	number	0.000004038
⚖️ midPrice	number	0.000004035
💧 hasLiquidity	boolean	true
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-13T22:25:00.441Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🟧	The original perpetual venue. BitMEX pioneered the perp swap in 2016 and is a benchmark for institutional crypto derivatives.
📦	Full derivatives stack. Perpetual swaps, dated futures, options, and spot, all classified for you.
💸	Funding rate built in. Both the raw period rate and a daily-scaled figure.
🔍	30+ rich fields. Open interest, open value, VWAP, mark, indicative settle, top-of-book bid/ask, and more.
📊	Server-side sort and filter. Type and quote-currency filters, four sort modes, no post-processing required.
⚡	Fast. All active instruments in a single API call, typically under 5 seconds.
🚫	No authentication. Pulls from the public /instrument/active endpoint. No API key, no IP allowlist.

📊 BitMEX open interest and funding are reference signals for the entire crypto-derivatives ecosystem.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ BitMEX Instruments Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	All active BitMEX instruments	Live per run	type, quote, sort, max items	⚡ 2 min
Aggregator APIs (Coinglass, CoinGecko)	Free tier + paid plans	Many venues, less granular	Minutes	API-specific	⏳ Hours
Direct BitMEX SDKs	Free	Same upstream, but you maintain code	On-demand	Build your own	🛠️ Days
Manual page scraping	Free	Fragile, captcha-prone	Variable	None	🐢 Brittle

Pick this Actor when you want a clean, classified feed of BitMEX derivatives with zero maintenance.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the BitMEX Instruments Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick an instrument type (or leave empty for all), choose a quote currency and sort, and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor pull live instruments from BitMEX.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results from the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to a downloaded instrument dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

🤖 Trading & Market Making Perp funding monitoring for delta-neutral strategies Open-interest tracking for sentiment signals Basis trades between spot and futures legs Cross-venue spread monitoring against Deribit, Binance Futures, OKX	📊 Research & Analytics Open-interest history for derivatives reports Volume share comparisons across venues Volatility surface inputs from option strikes Calendar spread analysis from listing and expiry dates
💼 Treasury & Risk Mark-to-market on derivatives positions Funding cost projections via daily-scaled rate Exposure reports filtered by underlying asset Halt detection via the state and hasLiquidity fields	🏗️ Product & Data Platforms Reference universes for crypto-derivatives apps Symbol catalogs for trading dashboards Backfill feeds for analytics platforms Onboarding seeds for new structured products

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🔌 Automating BitMEX Instruments Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Funding cycles update every 8 hours, so hourly pulls capture every regime change for downstream analytics.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

The same structured derivatives data fuels more than commercial workflows.

🎓 Research and academia Perpetual-swap microstructure studies Coursework on funding rates and basis arbitrage Reproducible academic papers with versioned pulls Open-data exercises on crypto derivatives	🎨 Personal and creative Personal derivatives dashboards Side projects and indie funding-rate trackers Content pieces on perpetual-swap mechanics Hobbyist trading bots that need a clean live feed
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency dashboards for crypto-savvy NGOs Journalism on derivatives flows and leverage Open-data feeds for civic-tech communities Policy research on derivatives regulation	🧪 Experimentation Train forecasting models on funding regimes Prototype basis-trade agents with paper-trading data Test alerting pipelines on open-interest spikes Validate hypotheses on perp vs spot lead-lag

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

The Actor hits a single public BitMEX endpoint (/api/v1/instrument/active) and classifies every record. It maps the raw typ code to one of perpetual, futures, spot, or other, applies your filters and sort server-side, caps to maxItems, and writes a clean record per instrument.

💸 What is fundingRateDaily?

BitMEX perpetuals pay funding three times a day (every 8 hours). The raw fundingRate field is the rate per funding period. fundingRateDaily is that rate multiplied by 3 to give you a quick read on the per-day cost or yield. Use the raw fundingRate for precise period-level math.

🔁 How often is the data refreshed?

Every run pulls the latest snapshot of active instruments directly from BitMEX. Numbers like last price, open interest, and funding rate update on the exchange continuously, so a freshly triggered run is as live as the BitMEX API.

🟧 Does it cover options?

Yes. BitMEX option instruments are returned as part of the active set and are classified as futures family by structural prefix; the optionStrikePrice field is populated for option rows. Use instrumentType: "" and filter downstream on optionStrikePrice != null if you only want option contracts.

🔐 Do I need an API key?

No. The endpoints used here are entirely public. No login, no API key, no IP allowlist.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to trigger this Actor on any cron cadence. Hourly pulls capture funding-cycle changes, daily pulls keep BI warehouses in sync.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

BitMEX publishes instrument data through public endpoints. Review the venue terms of service for your specific commercial use, but raw market-data feeds are generally accepted for analytical and trading workflows.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

Yes. Public exchange instrument data is broadly usable for commercial analytics. Confirm your downstream license obligations for any redistribution to third parties.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to use this Actor?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts that limit and unlocks scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails or gets interrupted?

Apify automatically retries transient errors. The Actor also retries 429 and 503 responses internally with exponential backoff. Partial datasets from failed runs are preserved, so you never lose progress.

🛬 What if I need order-book depth or trade history?

This Actor returns instrument-level state. For full depth, trade history, or candle data, use the BitMEX REST or WebSocket endpoints directly, or reach out via the contact form for a companion scraper.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

BitMEX Instruments Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe instrument data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh funding rates into your product backend, or alert your team in Slack when open interest spikes.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by BitMEX or HDR Global Trading Limited. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available instrument data is collected.