Head to head · Exchange derivatives · October 2026 research run

Deribit vs Hyperliquid

Deribit scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Hyperliquid's 50 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Hyperliquid leads on payments & pricing. Both do exchange derivatives.

Best crypto exchange APIs and MCP servers for AI agents · All 210 exchanges comparisons

Which one, for what

Deribit C

Best 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

  • Reliability, 45 against 40
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 42
  • Maintenance & community, 65 against 39
  • Transparency & trust, 46 against 26

Watch for

No official MCP server, and the GitHub organisation has no public repositories, so no official SDK in any language

Hyperliquid D

Best for An agent trading perpetuals or spot on chain from its own wallet with no account, or acting for a master account through an approved API wallet.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 25

Watch for

No official MCP server; the 23 registry entries are all third parties, several selling data by x402

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Schema & documentation Deribit +46

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.

Hyperliquid 42

No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract; request and response shapes are tables and JSON examples in the docs (0 of 25). llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page by appending .md (10). Each info type and exchange action has a short description of what it does, and the signing page lists common mistakes, but little says when to use one call over another (12 of 20). Fields are one-letter keys (a, b, p, s, r, t, c) with numbers as strings, enums such as tif Alo, Ioc or Gtc, and required fields marked in tables (9 of 15). An example for every call and a list of order and cancel error strings, with no HTTP error table (11 of 15). No API version, no changelog and no dated release notes; deprecated actions such as userDexAbstraction are marked in place (0 of 15). Total 42.

Payments & pricing Hyperliquid +30

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.

Hyperliquid 55

No machine payment protocol (0). Fees published per tier without login (20). No card anywhere; public info endpoints are free and the testnet faucet gives 1,000 mock USDC, though only to an address that has deposited on mainnet (15 of 20). No signup; an agent with a funded EVM wallet deposits USDC on a bridged chain and trades, subject to the unread terms (20). Total 55.

Maintenance & community Deribit +26

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.

Hyperliquid 39

Read as a closed hosted service with open SDKs. The API has no dated changelog, so the last dated change is the Python SDK's 0.24.0 on 4 June 2026, 152 days before this check; the node repository was pushed on 10 August 2026 and the docs describe newer actions (HIP-4 outcome markets, borrow and lend) without dates. Judgement call (10 of 30). No three dated releases in 90 days (0). Support through Discord and the docs' FAQ, 112 open issues on the SDK whose replies couldn't be read (8 of 25). Official Python and Rust SDKs, the Rust one last pushed 21 October 2025; no MCP registry entry (15). CI on Python 3.9 and 3.13 with Poetry, Dependabot badge, a lock file (6 of 10). Total 39.

Transparency & trust Deribit +20

Deribit 46

The editorial half. A closed service whose terms (Deribit FZE membership terms and DRB Panama Inc. terms) sit on a support site that answered 403, with the entity confirmed on VARA's register (12 of 30). The privacy policy was not read, and nothing in the docs states retention (0 of 30). The changelog marks deprecations and the upcoming docs branch previews the next release, but removals such as public/get_index on 25 November 2025 carry no notice period (10 of 20). No subprocessor or data-location statement found (0 of 20). Total 22.

Hyperliquid 26

The editorial half. The SDKs are MIT and the node repository Apache-2.0 with a Dockerfile around a binary; the API servers and front end are closed and the terms were unreadable (12 of 30). No privacy policy read and nothing in the docs on data handling (0 of 30). Deprecated actions are marked in the docs without dates or a policy (8 of 20). No subprocessors or data locations (0 of 20). Total 20.

Reliability Deribit +5

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.

Hyperliquid 40

Read with the hosted lines on the REST API at api.hyperliquid.xyz, the surface an agent calls; the chain behind it is noted under details. No status page found in the docs, on hyperliquid.xyz or at status.hyperliquid.xyz, which did not resolve (0). No readable history (5). Rate limits documented with numbers per IP, per address and per WebSocket connection (15). When limited, an address gets one request every 10 seconds; no 429 shape or Retry-After is documented, but cloid, per-signer nonces, expiresAfter and noop make retries safe (10 of 15). No SLA (0). Mainnet is generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 40.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeribitHyperliquidEdge
Reliability16%204540Deribit +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28842Deribit +46
Agent ergonomics13%16.27470Deribit +4
Security & auth14%17.56264Hyperliquid +2
Payments & pricing10%12.52555Hyperliquid +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86539Deribit +26
Transparency & trust7%8.84626Deribit +20
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59/100D 50/100

Facts side by side

FactDeribitHyperliquid
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDeribit FZEHyperliquid Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per usePay per use
x402nono
LicenceProprietary hosted exchange. The API is documented under the Deribit docs with an OpenAPI 3.0 file; no official client library is publishedThe exchange runs on the Hyperliquid chain (HyperCore), whose node is distributed as a binary under an Apache-2.0 repository; the Python and Rust SDKs are MIT. The API servers and front end are closed
Tools exposed00
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-132026-06-04
Terms last updated2026-08-13couldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accessyescouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textcouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textcouldn't be read
Popularitynone1.9k stars, 167k PyPI/wk

Verdicts

Deribit

Deribit's JSON-RPC API has scoped keys with IP and expiry limits, asymmetric signing, an OpenAPI file, numeric rate limits and a 64-entry changelog. There is no official MCP server or client library, the fee schedule, terms and privacy policy sit on a support site that refused our reader, and the status page did not resolve.

Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid's API needs no signup or key, an approved API wallet can trade but not withdraw, fees and rate limits are published with numbers, and a testnet mirrors mainnet. There is no official MCP server, OpenAPI file, status page, changelog or readable terms, and signing uses two schemes the docs say to leave to an SDK.

Before you call either

Deribit

  1. Create the key with trade:read_write and wallet:none, an ip: limit and an expires value; keep account:read unless the task edits subaccounts
  2. Authenticate with client_signature or an Ed25519 key over WebSocket rather than client_credentials over HTTP, which puts the secret in the URL
  3. Watch the limits field of private/get_account_summary and back off on error 10028; a session that runs out of credits is closed and must reconnect
  4. Send a nonce with orders so a retry after a timeout does not place a second order, and treat order_not_found on cancel as a possible fill
  5. Develop against https://test.deribit.com/api/v2 first; production and test need separate accounts and keys

Hyperliquid

  1. Generate a fresh API wallet, approve it with approveAgent with a name and expiry, sign with it, and query with the master address, never the agent address
  2. Use the Python SDK's sign_l1_action and sign_user_signed_action; mixing the two, field order in msgpack or an uppercase address gives "User or API Wallet ... does not exist"
  3. Set a cloid on every order and read the per-order statuses array; one batch-level error rejects the whole batch
  4. Budget address limits by volume (one action per 1 USDC traded after 10,000); batch orders to lower IP weight, and use WebSocket for data
  5. Arm scheduleCancel before unattended trading so open orders are cancelled if the agent stops

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Deribit or Hyperliquid?

Deribit scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Hyperliquid's 50 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Hyperliquid leads on payments & pricing.

Do Deribit and Hyperliquid need an API key?

Deribit needs an API key. Hyperliquid takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Deribit and Hyperliquid without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Deribit. No hosted endpoint is listed for Hyperliquid.

Other comparisons with Deribit or Hyperliquid

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