What Are the Best APIs for Bitcoin Development?

I need to ask, what's the best API for Bitcoin that’s geared toward developers?

Have you checked the built-in RPC API from Bitcoin Core? You don’t really need to look elsewhere unless you don’t wanna run your own full node.

Thanks for your input!

Just a heads up, even if running your own node isn’t an option, there are services like getnodes.io or getblock.io that provide Bitcoin Core API access.

Honestly, it also depends on what you're trying to do with it. Like, what’s the end goal? Different tasks might need different APIs.

Got what you mean, sorry if I wasn’t clear. I’m looking for an API specifically for creating a live Bitcoin price tracker for my site.

You might wanna check out what Bitcoinity.org has to offer for developers.

For a free API to just display prices, Coingecko is a good option, but it has some limitations. There are paid options that might be better.

Just an update, you can make charts too. I just checked out CoinCap’s API for that.

These online RPC API providers usually have a cap on calls per day. This makes it tough for building a transaction database, which needs way more calls.

Totally agree with what @aliveNFT said about Coingecko. If you’re just showing BTC price every few minutes, you should be fine with call limits.

Yeah, for the OP, free APIs should work just fine for displaying BTC values.

So, does anyone actually access getnodes.io? I’m having trouble with it. It’s being blocked by my antivirus.

You’re right, the links I shared earlier were more suited for blockchain devs, not for live price tracking. Coingecko is definitely the better choice for that.

I didn’t know what kind of data the OP needed when I replied earlier. And same here, I can’t reach getnodes.io either.

Was there a dependency missing? Maybe just install the package.json? Could be easy to use with its own UI.

Getnodes.io doesn’t even have an IP? Are you sure you’re not trying to access getblock.io? That one’s working fine for me.

Yeah, I meant getblock.io. Totally forgot it. Been a while since I checked it out.

I disagree with that. It doesn’t track balances on external addresses, which you’d likely need. The bcoin library does that.

You could set up a self-hosted block explorer or an Electrum server to manage that. But bcoin is really slow with updates right now.