Head to head · Exchange derivatives · October 2026 research run

dYdX vs HTX trading API

dYdX scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against HTX trading API's 43.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do exchange derivatives.

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

Which one, for what

dYdX B

Best 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 38
  • Schema & documentation, 58 against 40
  • Security & auth, 78 against 51
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 15
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 57
  • Transparency & trust, 50 against 25

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

No official MCP server; the one registry entry is a third party's analytics server

HTX trading API E

Best for Spot and USDT-margined derivatives for agents that can hold an HTX key, with no MCP server and no testnet.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No official MCP server; the only one in the MCP registry is a third party's read-only ticker server

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.

Reliability dYdX +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.

HTX trading API 38

Read with the hosted lines. No status page found; status.htx.com does not resolve and nothing on htx.com was readable (0). No readable incident history (5). Rate limits documented per endpoint with numbers, 100 order calls per 2 seconds per UID and so on, with remaining-quota headers (15). No 429 or Retry-After behaviour is documented and the only limit error named is 1006 for conditional orders; a client-order-id unique within 8 hours and an idempotent withdrawal id give safe retries on writes (8 of 15). No SLA found (0). The spot and swap APIs are generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 8 + 0 + 10 = 38.

Payments & pricing dYdX +45

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.

HTX trading API 15

No machine payment protocol (0). The fee schedule at htx.com/fee is drawn by script and answered no text, so no price is recorded first-hand (0 of 20, unchecked). Public market data needs no key, card or account; trading needs a verified and funded account. Judgement call (15 of 20). A person must sign up in a browser and pass identity checks (0). 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 15.

Security & auth dYdX +27

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.

HTX trading API 51

HMAC-signed keys with Read, Trade and Withdraw permissions, sub-user keys without Withdraw, up to 20 bound IPs, revocation in the account and a 90-day expiry without IP binding. The AccessKeyId and the HMAC signature travel as query parameters; the secret does not, so no deduction for a secret in the URL (24 of 30). Read-only keys and withdraw-free keys exist; no server-side confirmation for orders or withdrawals (14 of 20). The API returns the exchange's own data, no untrusted content (10). No per-call log or key-use history found for the operator (3 of 15). No security.txt, disclosure policy or certification found on the pages that loaded (0 of 20). 24 + 14 + 10 + 3 + 0 = 51.

Maintenance & community dYdX +26

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.

HTX trading API 57

Read as a closed service. The readable changelog ends on 24 June 2022, but the official contract SDKs were pushed on 21 October 2026 and the spot SDKs in April and July 2026, so the API surface is still being maintained; judgement call (20 of 30). SDK pushes on 30 July, 23 August and 21 October 2026 are commits, not releases (10 of 20). A Telegram group for API support and a support centre, neither tested; GitHub issues not read (8 of 15). Official SDKs in five languages (15). No CI seen, dependencies not checked (4 of 10). 20 + 10 + 8 + 15 + 4 = 57.

Transparency & trust dYdX +25

dYdX 50

The editorial half. Clients AGPL-3.0 with a terms-bound use condition, the chain under a custom licence, two terms documents (dYdX Trading Inc.'s v4 terms of 12 March 2026 and dYdX International Ltd's of 6 June 2025) that are clear about who runs nothing (22 of 30). The privacy policy of 6 June 2025 names dYdX International Ltd, keeps technical data until no longer necessary with no periods, and names no subprocessors; nothing covers the unnamed indexer operator (12 of 30). Protocol upgrades and the WebSocket compression change were posted as dated maintenance notices, deprecated rate-limit fields are marked, but no deprecation policy or notice period is stated (10 of 20). The policy says data may be processed in the EEA and elsewhere, with no subprocessor list (6 of 20). Total 50.

HTX trading API 25

The editorial half. A closed service whose user agreement exists but couldn't be read (script-drawn pages), so the licence clarity is unknown rather than unclear (10 of 30). The privacy policy was not read (0 of 30, unchecked). The testnet shutdown and the 2022 changelog entries are dated, with no deprecation policy (5 of 20). No subprocessor or data-location statement read (0 of 20). 10 + 0 + 5 + 0 = 15.

Schema & documentation dYdX +18

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.

HTX trading API 40

No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract found in the docs or the GitHub accounts (0). No llms.txt on htx.com, and the readable reference is a static page (0). Each endpoint states its purpose and parameters, without when-to-use guidance (12 of 20). Parameter tables carry types, required flags and enums for order types and states (10 of 15). Request and response examples throughout and error-code tables with messages (11 of 15). Versions v1 and v2 are mixed in one reference whose last changelog entry is 24 June 2022, while HTX's newer docs on htx.com couldn't be read (7 of 15). 0 + 0 + 12 + 10 + 11 + 7 = 40.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this rundYdXHTX trading APIEdge
Reliability16%208338dYdX +45
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25840dYdX +18
Agent ergonomics13%16.26669HTX trading API +3
Security & auth14%17.57851dYdX +27
Payments & pricing10%12.56015dYdX +45
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88357dYdX +26
Transparency & trust7%8.85025dYdX +25
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 69.5/100E 43.3/100

Facts side by side

FactdYdXHTX trading API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendordYdX Trading Inc.HTX
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPay per usePay per use
x402nono
LicenceThe 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.none
Tools exposed00
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-292026-10-21
Terms last updated2026-03-12no date given
Privacy policy last updated2025-06-06no document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity119 stars, 86k npm/wk684 stars

Verdicts

dYdX

dYdX gives an agent keyless indexer reads, permissioned keys limited by message type, subaccount and market, a Statuspage with a clean 90 days, published fees and a testnet with a faucet. There is no official MCP server or OpenAPI file, orders are chain transactions signed by the clients, and no one entity operates the hosted endpoints.

HTX trading API

HTX's API has per-endpoint rate limits, read, trade and withdraw key permissions with IP binding, and SDKs in five languages. No official MCP server exists, the testnet is closed, the public reference is still Huobi's with a 2022 changelog, and the fee schedule, terms and restricted countries are on script-drawn pages we couldn't read.

Before you call either

dYdX

  1. Ask the account owner for an authenticator limited to /dydxprotocol.clob.MsgPlaceOrder and MsgCancelOrder on one subaccount, and keep its private key out of prompts
  2. Set a unique 32-bit clientId on every order and look it up on /v4/orders after a timeout; short-term orders expire with goodTilBlock (at most 20 blocks ahead)
  3. Stay under 2 stateful orders a block and 20 per 100 blocks; failed placements count, so use short-term orders for active trading
  4. Enable permessage-deflate on the indexer WebSocket; since 26 October 2026 connections without compression may be refused with 426
  5. Check /v4/geo and the compliance screen before trading for a person, since the terms exclude the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom

HTX trading API

  1. Ask the operator for a key with Read and Trade only and bound to your IP addresses; a key without IP binding expires after 90 days
  2. Send a fresh client-order-id of up to 64 characters with every order and reuse it only on retry; a repeat within 8 hours answers invalid.client.order.id
  3. Watch X-HB-RateLimit-Requests-Remain and pace at under 100 order calls per 2 seconds per UID; limits are shared by every key on the account
  4. There is no testnet; try order logic with the smallest size the market allows
  5. Confirm the person's country is served before trading; the restricted list in the user agreement couldn't be read here

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, dYdX or HTX trading API?

dYdX scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against HTX trading API's 43.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Do dYdX and HTX trading API need an API key?

dYdX takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. HTX trading API needs an API key.

Can an agent call dYdX and HTX trading API without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for dYdX. No hosted endpoint is listed for HTX trading API.

Are dYdX and HTX trading API open source?

dYdX is open source (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.). No open-source release is listed for HTX trading API.

Other comparisons with dYdX or HTX trading API

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