# dYdX vs Kraken API

> Kraken scores 71 (BB) to dYdX's 69.5 (B) for exchange derivatives. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-kraken
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-kraken.md (~4,650 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-03

Kraken API scores 71 (BB) on agent readiness against dYdX's 69.5 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. dYdX leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do exchange derivatives.

- dYdX: grade B, 69.5/100, rank #221 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/dydx.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/dydx.json
- Kraken API: grade BB, 71/100, rank #159 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kraken.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/kraken.json
- Best crypto exchange APIs and MCP servers for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/crypto-exchanges/index.md
- All 210 exchanges comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crypto-exchanges/index.md

## Which one, for what

### dYdX (B)

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 67
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40

Also in its favour:
- Open source

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

### Kraken API (BB)

Good for: An agent that trades spot, xStocks, forex or futures on a person's Kraken account from a local machine, with paper trading to test first and an approval gate on live orders.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 80 against 58
- Agent ergonomics, 79 against 66
- Transparency & trust, 65 against 50

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No self-service spot sandbox; the spot UAT environment is on request through an account manager, and paper trading lives in the CLI


## Why the edge

### Schema & documentation: Kraken API +22

- 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.
- Kraken API (80): No OpenAPI file was found for the REST API in the docs read; the CLI's agents/tool-catalog.json gives JSON Schema inputs for all 188 commands and the 152 MCP tools (15 of 25). The docs serve Markdown twins such as quickstart.md and the CLI ships llms.txt, AGENTS.md and CONTEXT.md (10). Endpoint pages and guides on order lifecycle, errors and rate limits say what each call does, with less on when not to use one (15 of 20). Enums for order types, time in force and flags, and enums and required fields in the tool catalogue (12 of 15). Python, Node.js and cURL examples, an errors guide and the CLI's error-catalog.json with retry guidance (13 of 15). A changelog of 120 dated entries with deprecations dated (15). 15 + 10 + 15 + 12 + 13 + 15 = 80.

### Payments & pricing: dYdX +20

- 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.
- Kraken API (40): No machine payment protocol (0). Maker and taker fees by tier published without login (20). Public market data, paper trading and the futures demo need no account or card (20). A person signs up, verifies and mints a key or approves the OAuth sign-in (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.

### Reliability: dYdX +16

- 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.
- Kraken API (67): Read with the hosted lines on the spot API. status.kraken.com is a Statuspage site with REST, WebSocket and FIX components (20). The incidents feed read covers 4 September to 3 November 2026. On 30 October spot and derivatives clients could not connect or submit orders across web, mobile, REST, WebSocket and FIX for 59 minutes 39 seconds, rated minor by Kraken; on 28 October some FIX clients were rejected on reconnection for 1 hour 59 minutes while other interfaces worked; the futures engine was degraded for 3 minutes on 13 October. A whole-exchange order outage 21 seconds short of an hour is read as one major (10 of 30). Numeric limits per key by tier and per pair for the matching engine (15). EAPI:Rate limit exceeded and EService:Throttled with a retry timestamp, a client order id and a validate flag on orders, but no Retry-After header (12 of 15). No SLA (0). Generally available (10). 20 + 10 + 15 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 67.

### Transparency & trust: Kraken API +15

- 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.
- Kraken API (65): The editorial half. A closed service with clear terms naming regional Payward entities under California law; the CLI is MIT (15 of 30). The privacy notice was not read (5 of 30). The changelog dates deprecations and the terms carry a last-updated date (16 of 20). No subprocessor or data-location statement read (0 of 20). 15 + 5 + 16 + 0 = 36.

### Agent ergonomics: Kraken API +13

- 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.
- Kraken API (79): The MCP server loads services with -s, defaults to no live trading, and its 152 tool definitions average about 520 characters; the REST API takes count, limit and pair filters but has no field selection (18 of 25). Cursor pagination on ledgers and trades since 30 September and 6 October 2026, with ofs deprecated (17 of 20). Prefixed error strings such as EOrder:Rate limit exceeded and EAPI:Invalid nonce, and the CLI's error catalogue says which to retry (17 of 20). cl_ord_id and validate on orders, destructive_hint and elicitation on dangerous MCP tools, no idempotency key on REST (16 of 20). An official Rust SDK at 5 stars, a Go module and example clients, HMAC-SHA512 signing with a strict nonce (11 of 15). 18 + 17 + 17 + 16 + 11 = 79.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | dYdX | Kraken API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 83 | 67 | dYdX +16 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 80 | Kraken API +22 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 79 | Kraken API +13 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 78 | 80 | Kraken API +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | dYdX +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 81 | dYdX +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 50 | 65 | Kraken API +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69.5 · B** | **71 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | dYdX | Kraken API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | dYdX Trading Inc. | Payward, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  | stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | 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. | Proprietary hosted service under Kraken's Global Terms of Service (30 October 2026). kraken-cli, which carries the kraken-mcp server, is MIT |
| Tools exposed | 0 | 152 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-12 | 2026-10-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-06-06 | 2026-10-21 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 119 stars, 86k npm/wk | 795 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.

**Kraken API.** Kraken pairs a documented REST, WebSocket and FIX API with the open-source kraken-cli, whose kraken-mcp server gates 33 dangerous tools behind approval and signs in by OAuth with a no-withdrawal key. Spot has no self-service sandbox, no OpenAPI file was found, and a 59-minute connectivity outage hit every interface on 30 October 2026.

## 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

### Kraken API

1. Start kraken-mcp with -s market,paper,feedback or the default services; add trade only with a least-privilege key, and never pass --allow-dangerous on an agent that reads untrusted input
2. Ask the person to run kraken auth login in their own terminal; it needs a browser and saves a no-withdrawal key that expires in 90 days at most
3. Send a fresh --cl-ord-id on each order and run it with --validate first; after a network error look the order up before sending it again
4. Keep the nonce strictly increasing per key and stay under the tier's counter, since EAPI:Rate limit exceeded has no Retry-After header
5. Test strategies in a paper workspace, which fills at live prices with no account, before a live workspace

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, dYdX or Kraken API?

Kraken API scores 71 (BB) on agent readiness against dYdX's 69.5 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. dYdX leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

### Do dYdX and Kraken API need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call dYdX and Kraken API without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for dYdX. Kraken API runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

### Are dYdX and Kraken 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 Kraken API.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-kraken.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-kraken.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "dydx", "b": "kraken"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare dydx kraken`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/dydx.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/kraken.json

## Other comparisons with dYdX or Kraken API

- [Bitfinex API vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bitfinex-vs-dydx.md)
- [Bitfinex API vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bitfinex-vs-kraken.md)
- [Bitget vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bitget-vs-dydx.md)
- [Bitget vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bitget-vs-kraken.md)
- [Bithumb Open API vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bithumb-vs-dydx.md)
- [Bithumb Open API vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bithumb-vs-kraken.md)
- [Bitstamp API vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bitstamp-vs-dydx.md)
- [Bitstamp API vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bitstamp-vs-kraken.md)
- [Bybit vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bybit-vs-dydx.md)
- [Bybit vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bybit-vs-kraken.md)
- [Crypto.com Exchange API vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crypto-com-exchange-vs-dydx.md)
- [Crypto.com Exchange API vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crypto-com-exchange-vs-kraken.md)
- [dYdX vs Uniswap Trading API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-uniswap.md)
- [dYdX vs Upbit Open API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-upbit.md)
- [Gate vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gate-io-vs-kraken.md)
- [Gemini Exchange API vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-exchange-vs-kraken.md)
- [HTX trading API vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/htx-vs-kraken.md)
- [Binance API vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/binance-vs-kraken.md)
- [Coinbase Advanced Trade API vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coinbase-advanced-trade-vs-kraken.md)
- [Coinbase MCP server (Coinbase for Agents) vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coinbase-mcp-vs-kraken.md)
- [Kraken API vs KuCoin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kraken-vs-kucoin.md)
- [Kraken API vs MEXC API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kraken-vs-mexc.md)
- [Kraken API vs OKX API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kraken-vs-okx.md)
- [Kraken API vs Uniswap Trading API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kraken-vs-uniswap.md)
- [Kraken API vs Upbit Open API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kraken-vs-upbit.md)
- [Binance API vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/binance-vs-dydx.md)
- [Coinbase Advanced Trade API vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coinbase-advanced-trade-vs-dydx.md)
- [Deribit vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deribit-vs-dydx.md)
- [Deribit vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deribit-vs-kraken.md)
- [dYdX vs Gate](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-gate-io.md)
- [dYdX vs Gemini Exchange API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-gemini-exchange.md)
- [dYdX vs HTX trading API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-htx.md)
- [dYdX vs Hyperliquid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-hyperliquid.md)
- [dYdX vs KuCoin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-kucoin.md)
- [dYdX vs MEXC API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-mexc.md)
- [dYdX vs OKX API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dydx-vs-okx.md)
- [Hyperliquid vs Kraken API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hyperliquid-vs-kraken.md)
- [Coinbase MCP server (Coinbase for Agents) vs dYdX](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/coinbase-mcp-vs-dydx.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp