# Deribit vs dYdX (slim)

> dYdX scores 69.5 (B) to Deribit's 59 (C) for exchange derivatives. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deribit-vs-dydx.md (~5,200 tokens) · this version ~2,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deribit-vs-dydx.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deribit-vs-dydx
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-03
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

dYdX scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against Deribit's 59 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Deribit leads on schema & documentation and agent ergonomics. Both do exchange derivatives.

- Deribit: C 59, rank #650 of 1349 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deribit.min.md
- dYdX: B 69.5, rank #221 of 1349 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/dydx.min.md
- Deribit, good for An agent trading crypto options, dated futures and perpetuals for an institutional or retail Deribit account, and anyone migrated from Coinbase International Exchange. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 88 against 58; Agent ergonomics, 74 against 66.
- dYdX, good for An agent trading perpetuals from its own Cosmos wallet or through a permissioned key on an owner's account, outside the US, Canada and UK. Ahead on Reliability, 83 against 45; Security & auth, 78 against 62; Payments & pricing, 60 against 25; Maintenance & community, 83 against 65. Also Open source.

| Category | Deribit | dYdX |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 45 | 83 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 88 | 58 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 74 | 66 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 62 | 78 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 65 | 83 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 46 | 50 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Deribit | dYdX |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Deribit FZE | dYdX Trading Inc. |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted exchange. The API is documented under the Deribit docs with an OpenAPI 3.0 file; no official client library is published | The clients are AGPL-3.0 with a use condition tied to the v4 Terms of Use; the chain software (dydxprotocol/v4-chain) carries a custom licence GitHub cannot classify. The hosted indexer at indexer.dydx.trade and the front end are run by third parties, not dYdX Trading Inc. |
| Last release | 2026-10-13 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-13 | 2026-03-12 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-06-06 |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 119 stars, 86k npm/wk |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, dYdX +38: Deribit 45 (Read with the hosted lines on the JSON-RPC API. status.deribit.com did not resolve for our reader on 3 November 2026 and Coinbase's status page showed no Deribit component, so no status page is scored, with the unchecked line below (0). No readable history (5). Rate limits are documented with numbers, 50,000 credits per sub-account refilled at 10,000 a second, and matching-engine tiers of 5 to 30 requests a second by 7-day volume (15). Error 10028 ends the session and the errors page says to back off exponentially; 10040 means retry; the 6 May 2026 release added a `nonce` for idempotent orders (15). No SLA found (0). The API is generally available; only Starbase is limited to selected clients (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 15 + 0 + 10 = 45.); dYdX 83 (Read with the hosted lines on the indexer API and the chain endpoints the clients submit to. status.dydx.trade is an Atlassian Statuspage with Frontends, dYdX Chain, Indexer, Order Gateway and Client Libraries components and an RSS history (20). From 1 August to 3 November 2026 the feed has eight items, seven scheduled maintenance windows of 29 minutes to 2 hours (indexer on 9 September, 8 and 15 October, protocol v9.7 on 11 September and v9.8.0 on 12 October, WebSocket compression on 26 and 28 October) and one degraded instant-deposit path through an onboarding partner from 24 to 29 September, outside the trading API. Clean or trivial (30). Rate limits documented with numbers for the indexer, the block limits and the public nodes (15). No 429 shape or Retry-After for the indexer; short-term orders expire by `goodTilBlock` and client IDs let an agent find an order after a timeout (8 of 15). No SLA (0). Mainnet generally available; the Order Entry Gateway is marked testnet-only (10). 20 + 30 + 15 + 8 + 0 + 10 = 83.)
- Payments & pricing, dYdX +35: Deribit 25 (No machine payment protocol (0). The fee schedule is on support.deribit.com, which answered 403; Deribit's own posts give VIP4 to VIP7 taker fees and the 0 bps linear options maker fee, so partial prices are public but the lowest tier is unchecked (5 of 20). Public market data needs no key and the test environment is free, with no card anywhere (20). A person signs up in a browser with identity checks before any key exists (0). Total 25.); dYdX 60 (No machine payment protocol (0). Fees public per tier without login (20). Testnet with a faucet and no card anywhere (20). No signup; an agent with a funded wallet trades, subject to the geographic terms (20). Total 60.)
- Schema & documentation, Deribit +30: Deribit 88 (OpenAPI 3.0.0 for the whole JSON-RPC surface (Deribit API 2.1.1, about 1.4 million characters) plus AsyncAPI files for the WebSocket side (25). llms.txt with production and upcoming indexes, and a Markdown twin of every page (10). Each operation has a description such as "Places a buy order for an instrument." with parameter notes, and the articles say when to use WebSocket subscriptions over polling, but the reference seldom says when not to use a method (13 of 20). Parameters are typed with enums (order `type` has eight values, `time_in_force` four) and required flags, with `amount` or `contracts` as a documented either-or (13 of 15). Every reference page carries an example request and response, and the errors page lists about 159 codes with retry guidance, though most operations document only a 200 response and the smaller error tables disagree with the full one on two codes (12 of 15). A versioned path (/api/v2), a production and an upcoming docs branch, and a dated changelog of 64 entries since 21 January 2020 (15). Total 88.); dYdX 58 (No OpenAPI file found for the indexer; the docs publish a types reference of about 200 pages (OrderSide, TimeInForce, OrderStatus and the rest) and the chain's protobuf messages are in the clients (8 of 25). llms.txt and Markdown docs (10). Endpoint pages describe each call and the guides say when to use short-term against long-term orders and the indexer against the node, but descriptions are short (12 of 20). Enums and types on every field in the reference, with pagination and cursor parameters typed (11 of 15). Examples in Python, TypeScript and Rust for each step; errors are described by HTTP status (400 malformed, 404 not found) with no code list (9 of 15). A /v4 path, protocol releases dated on the status page, deprecated rate-limit fields marked, but no API changelog (8 of 15). Total 58.)
- Maintenance & community, dYdX +18: Deribit 65 (Read as a closed service. The JSON-RPC changelog's latest production entry is 13 October 2026 and an entry dated 5 November 2026 describes the next release; Deribit's posts of 14 October and 2 November 2026 change fees (30). Entries of 18 August, 15 September and 13 October 2026, three in 90 days (20). A public changelog and a support site; whether support answers wasn't tested and the support site refused our reader (10 of 15). No official SDK and no MCP registry entry (0). The OpenAPI and AsyncAPI files are maintained with the docs (5 of 10). Total 65.); dYdX 83 (Read on the clients and the chain. v4-clients was pushed on 29 October 2026 and protocol v9.8.0 shipped on 12 October (30). Protocol v9.7 on 11 September, v9.8.0 on 12 October, v4-client-js tags 3.5.0 and 3.6.0, three or more in 90 days (20). A Discord, a help centre and 36 open issues on v4-clients whose replies couldn't be read (12 of 25). Official SDKs current, the TypeScript client at 3.6.0 and the Python client at 1.1.6 from February 2026 (12 of 15). CI workflows for lint, test, publish and audit, with trusted publishing and provenance on npm (9 of 10). Total 83.)
- Security & auth, dYdX +16: Deribit 62 (Keys carry five scopes at read, read_write or none, `ip:ADDR` and `expires` limits, can be disabled, reset and removed by API, and self-generated Ed25519 or RSA keys keep the private half off Deribit. The HTTP `client_credentials` example passes `client_secret` in the query string, a documented option, so 10 off (20 of 30). `trade:read` and `wallet:none` give read-only and no-withdrawal keys and the 5 August 2025 release stopped `account:read` keys reading other keys' secrets; no per-order confirmation and the address allow-list article was unreadable (16 of 20). The API returns no untrusted content (10). `private/list_api_keys`, the transaction log and order history let an operator see what a key did, but no per-key call log was found (8 of 15). A HackerOne bug bounty per the support article title and HackerOne's customer story, neither page read first-hand (insights.deribit.com/bug-bounty answered 403), a VARA licence, and no security.txt on www.deribit.com (8 of 20). Total 62.); dYdX 78 (Orders are signed by the account key or by a permissioned key the owner adds as an authenticator, limited by message type, subaccount and market with AllOf or AnyOf, and revoked by `remove_authenticator`; no shared secret and nothing in a URL (28 of 30). A key can be confined to placing and cancelling orders on one subaccount with withdrawals and transfers excluded, though not to a position or order size, and the interface's default API wallet trades all cross-margin pairs (16 of 20). The API returns no untrusted content (10). Every action is a chain transaction and the indexer lists fills, orders and transfers per subaccount, and authenticators can be listed; no per-key log (10 of 15). A Cantina bug bounty up to $1,000,000 sponsored by dYdX Trading Inc. over the protocol, indexer, web client and SDKs, an Informal Systems audit; no security.txt and no certification (14 of 20). Total 78.)
- Agent ergonomics, Deribit +8: Deribit 74 (An API, read for response sizing. `public/get_order_book` takes `depth`, `get_instruments` filters by currency and kind, and history methods take `count` and `offset`, though `get_instruments` returns every instrument for a currency and costs 10,000 credits (18 of 25). Count and offset pagination, time ranges on trade and transaction logs, and WebSocket channels with interval and depth options (16 of 20). Numeric error codes with short names, a `wait` value on some errors, and sample code that branches on them (18 of 20). A `nonce` on orders since May 2026 returns the existing order on retry, a `label` lets an agent find its own orders, and 10040 marks the calls safe to retry; no MCP annotations apply (16 of 20). Few required parameters and sensible defaults (limit and good_til_cancelled), but no official SDK in any language, so every caller signs and frames JSON-RPC itself (6 of 15). Total 74.); dYdX 66 (An API, read for response sizing. `limit` on list endpoints, candles by resolution, sparklines by period; the order book comes whole (16 of 25). `limit`, `page` on fills, transfers and funding, and height or time cursors (16 of 20). Indexer errors are a status and a sentence; order rejections come back from the chain as transaction results the clients surface (8 of 20). Unique 32-bit client IDs, `goodTilBlock` expiry on short-term orders, cancel by order ID; no MCP annotations apply (14 of 20). Few required fields with market parameters fetched for unit conversion, and official clients in TypeScript, Python and Rust (12 of 15). Total 66.)