CoinGecko is a platform that tracks the price development of blockchain-related assets like cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), indices, and more.
The company, which is headquartered in Singapore, was founded in 2014 by Bobby Ong as well as TM Lee.
Over 13,400 coins are currently listed and tracked via CoinGecko. The platform, furthermore, connects to around 530 exchanges that consistently supply it with data.
The prices that you see on CoinGecko are then calculated using a global volume-weighted average price formula. However, CoinGecko doesn’t just use a price provided by the exchange but averages out the price of hundreds of pairings such as BTC/USD or ETH/USDT.
CoinGecko, apart from the price, also supplies traders with additional data points such as the coin’s total supply, market cap, trading volumes (1h, 24h, 7d), all-time lows and highs, and more.
The platform has even developed its own set of metrics such as the Trust Score. The metric, given the volatility and regulatory uncertainty of the crypto industry, gives users an indication of how likely a project is to stay around and not defraud its users.
Interestingly, CoinGecko has since expanded into a variety of other verticals. For example, it organizes annual events (dubbed GeckoCon), has a dedicated learning section boasting podcasts, videos, and more, a widget to display trading data, and even sells industry-related books.
Nonetheless, CoinGecko’s bread and butter remains the data it collects, which it monetizes via an API that supplies other businesses with aggregated data. Customers include MetaMask, DappRadar, and hundreds more.
Today, CoinGecko records over 200 million monthly page views coming from 10+ million unique users. Its app, which was launched in July 2018, has been downloaded over a million times alone.
This feat is even more impressive considering that the firm’s founders, Bobby Ong and TM Lee, have built CoinGecko without taking on one dollar in venture capital funding.
CoinGecko even uses the data it collects as a baseline for investing in other crypto startups, which entail Axie Infinity publisher Sky Mavis among others.
The methodology with which competitors of CoinGecko are ranked is based on publicly available data. Information such as the number of supported coins and exchanges, funding raised and valuation, the number of users, and anything else in between will be considered.
This analysis is solely focused on CoinGecko’s portfolio tracking competitors. Companies in its other business lines, for example, event organization or book publishing, will be excluded.
Additionally, due to CoinGecko’s global footprint, we will take available competitors across the world into account.
It has to be noted that this analysis should not be seen as an endorsement of either service. It is merely a summary of the competition that CoinGecko currently faces.
So, without further ado, let’s take a closer look at the top 6 competitors of CoinGecko.
1. CoinMarketCap
Headquarters: Dover, Delaware Founder(s): Brandon Chez Year Founded: 2013
CoinMarketCap is not only the biggest competitor to CoinGecko but likely the biggest player in the space. Over 20,000 crypto-related assets, such as coins and NFTs, from close to 500 exchanges are tracked via the platform.
Users on CoinMarketCap can check almost any data point imaginable including trading volumes, total supply, market cap, follow related news, and even post their own opinion on the platform’s own news feed.
Interestingly, CoinMarketCap has grown into its size without revealing much about the identity of its founder Brandon Chez. What is known about him is that he launched and built the business next to his software engineering job.
Chez, in the past, also stirred up some controversies. In January 2018, during the first major crypto bull run, CoinMarketCap excluded data from Korean exchanges after users complained that they were artificially inflating prices. The removal of Korean exchange pricing data sent shockwaves across the crypto market, leading to sudden price declines of more than 20 percent.
At the time, CoinMarketCap was already one of the 200 most popular websites in the world. This led Binance, which itself is widely considered to be the biggest crypto exchange in the world, to acquire CoinMarketCap for $400 million back in April 2020.
And although Chez has departed from the business, CoinMarketCap remains as popular as ever. In 2021 alone, it recorded 13.2 billion page views. The platform has since expanded into becoming a full-fledged media company with a YouTube channel (boasting close to 400,000 subscribers), a podcast, as well as its own editorial team that consistently publishes content.
It has to be noted that CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap share many similarities when it comes to features and product offerings. In May 2022, for example, CoinMarketCap unveiled The Capital, a virtually-held conference featuring renowned figures such as Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao or MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor.
Similarly, CoinMarketCap’s primary method of monetizing its platform is via an API that provides customers with aggregated pricing data.
Source: CoinDesk, CoinMarketCap, Cointelegraph
2. CoinStats
Headquarters: Yerevan, Armenia Founder(s): Narek Gevorgyan Year Founded: 2017
CoinStats is primarily being accessed by its native Android and iOS app but has since also developed widgets for Chrome, Mozilla, MacOS, and even Apple TV. Its wide availability has allowed CoinStats to record more than 1.5 million downloads thus far.
Additionally, users have transacted over 500 million times on its various apps thus far. Their portfolios currently accumulate over $100 billion in crypto holdings. Making sense of those holdings is what moved founder Gevorgyan to start the business in the first place.
Back in 2017, he was organizing his various crypto holdings in Excel spreadsheets, which proved to be too cumbersome. He figured that traders would want to have something more convenient to make sense of the crypto they own.
Gevorgyan, to fulfill his vision, has raised $4.4 million in funding for CoinStats thus far. Today, users can track the performance of more than 8,000 tokens that are sourced from around 400 crypto exchanges.
CoinStats offers many of the same data points that CoinGecko has in its repertoire including market cap, circulating and total supplies, current news, and many more. The app itself is primarily monetized via premium packages that extend the number of connected portfolios and transactions, among other premium features.
One key distinction of CoinStats is its native wallet, which enables traders to connect themselves to DeFi exchanges such as Uniswap. They can then earn up to 20 percent in annual yield on their crypto holdings.
Source: CoinStats, Crunchbase, HackerNoon
3. Blockfolio (now FTX Signal)
Headquarters: Sant Monica, California Founder(s): Charlie Mason, Edward Moncada, Peter Lau Year Founded: 2014
Blockfolio, in July 2021, was renamed into FTX Signal after the namesake crypto exchange acquired the tracking app for $150 million a year prior.
FTX’s goal with the acquisition was to build a simpler trading experience for retail customers. This is because FTX was (and still largely is) aimed at sophisticated and professional traders who need advanced charting tools and more to conduct their work.
With the Blockfolio acquisition as well as its extensive advertising investments (which involve purchasing the naming rights to arenas and national TV campaigns, among others), FTX aims to capture a wider audience that isn’t particularly familiar with crypto.
Today, FTX Signal counts over six million users in 200+ countries. The app, apart from featuring direct updates from project teams as well as general news, shows the latest price (and other related data) for more than 10,000 cryptocurrencies.
However, it can be assumed that at least the user numbers are slightly outdated given that they haven’t changed since the acquisition. But since every regular FTX user also has access to Signal, it is quite likely that the user count has increased substantially ever since.
Additionally, FTX Signal is working together with over 500 exchanges that provide its app with the necessary trading data.
Another key feature of the FTX Signal app is the collaboration it has with developer teams. 500+ projects, including Monero, DASH, NEO, Ethereum Classic, and more, post regular updates on the app’s feed.
Source: Cointelegraph, Crunchbase, FTX Signal, TechCrunch
4. CoinCodex
Headquarters: Ljubljana, Slovenia Founder(s): David Černuta Year Founded: 2017
CoinCodex tracks the performance of close to 19,000 tokens originating from the 400+ exchanges it is connected with.
The site offers many of the same features CoinGecko has become known for such as the tracking of various data points (price, market cap, trading volumes, etc.), decentralized exchange performance, a customizable widget, guides on crypto-related topics, and many more.
CoinCodex, furthermore, compares and rates various products on its site including crypto credit cards, Bitcoin casinos, loans, hardware wallets, and such. It even lists upcoming token sales as well as the project’s respective stage.
Its prices are also calculated by taking a global average of all the exchange rates that it fetches from the partnering trading platforms.
Source: CoinCodex
5. CoinTracker
Headquarters: San Francisco, California Founder(s): Chandan Lodha, Jon Lerner Year Founded: 2017
CoinTracker does not only offer portfolio tracking capabilities but combines those with allowing traders to remain tax compliant. Over one million users have synced their wallets to the service thus far.
The firm works together with partners such as TurboTax or H&R Block that natively integrate into its solution. Traders only have to subscribe to one of the firm’s paid plans to be able to automatically file their taxes accordingly.
CoinTracker currently provides full support for the United States, India (since April 2022), the United Kingdom, Canada, as well as Australia. It even offers separate tax compliance and filing products for other exchanges and accountants, respectively.
However, its portfolio tracking capabilities are nothing to scoff at either. They support over 10,000 tokens and are connected to 300+ exchanges. CoinTracker’s users collectively hold $50 billion in assets, which is equal to about 3 percent of all crypto holdings.
Your portfolio is, therefore, automatically synced and updated in near real-time. CoinTracker’s portfolio tracker, which is also available for free or by paying a subscription fee, offers daily updates, the ability to track performance over time and by asset, allocation overviews, and much more.
Founders Lodha and Lerner got the business off the ground after participating in Y Combinator, the world’s most prestigious startup accelerator. They then went on to raise over $100 million in funding while their business is currently being valued at $1.3 billion.
The majority of the funding that they raised is now being used to expand CoinTracker into as many countries as possible.
Source: CoinTracker, Crunchbase
6. Delta
Headquarters: Ghent, Belgium Founder(s): Lorenz Bogaert Year Founded: 2017
Delta labels itself as the “world’s highest-rated investment tracing app,” allowing users to not only monitor their crypto and NFT asset performance but also that of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), bonds, mutual funds, futures, options, as well as stocks.
However, Delta’s first established itself as a crypto portfolio tracker. It still features over 7,000 tokens and is connected to 300+ exchanges. Users can create multiple portfolios, sync their holdings across various devices, get detailed insights about their holdings, receive ‘smart’ notifications, and much more.
While Delta is primarily accessed via its app, which has been downloaded over three million times, it also offers a browser view that rivals CoinGecko. One of Delta’s key differentiators is the scoring it assigns (powered by TokenInsights) to each project.
Delta was ultimately acquired by trading platform eToro back in November 2019 for an alleged $5 million. eToro has been running the app ever since but ensured that it remains a separate entity.
Download and user numbers have doubled since the acquisition. Today, Delta is being used in 115 countries across the globe.
Source: Delta, TechCrunch
