Head to head · Exchange market data · October 2026 research run

dYdX vs Uniswap Trading API

dYdX scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against Uniswap Trading API's 63.3 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Uniswap Trading API leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do exchange market data.

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 42
  • Security & auth, 78 against 63
  • 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

Uniswap Trading API B

Best for An agent swapping or bridging tokens from its own wallet on 21 EVM chains, or managing liquidity positions, with routing done for it.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 58
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 66
  • Maintenance & community, 88 against 83
  • Transparency & trust, 55 against 50

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No official MCP server; the registry's Uniswap entries are third parties

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 +41

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.

Uniswap Trading API 42

Read with the hosted lines on the Trading API. status.uniswap.org redirects to the swap app and the docs link no status page (0). No readable history (5). Rate limit documented as 6 requests a second per key (15). The errors page says to pause all requests from the key on 429, retry 500 and 503 with backoff and refresh quotes after 30 seconds; swaps are signed transactions, so idempotency rests on the chain nonce (12 of 15). No SLA (0). The API is generally available; Guidestar routing is a beta notice (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 42.

Schema & documentation Uniswap Trading API +32

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.

Uniswap Trading API 90

OpenAPI 3.0 file (Token Trading 1.0.0) for the Trading and LP APIs, about 33 paths with x-internal markers on the margin and 4337 operations (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown twin of every docs page (10). Operation summaries are one line, but the guides say which routing types go to /swap, /order and /plan, when UniswapX quotes are returned and when a 404 means change the request (14 of 20). Enums for routing types, urgency and position statuses, required fields and bounded integers such as limit 1 to 20 (12 of 15). Examples on every guide page and error schemas for 400, 401, 404 and 429 with a stable errorCode enum and per-code retry advice (14 of 15). A /v1 path, a changelog with posted and effective dates and a 30-day minimum sunset policy (15). Total 90.

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.

Uniswap Trading API 40

No machine payment protocol on the API's endpoints; the pay-with-any-token skill lets an agent pay other services' 402 challenges by swapping, which earns nothing here (0). The API is free, stated in the FAQ and the 16 April 2026 post, and integrator fees are capped at 500 bips (20). No card and no plan (20). A person creates an account in the dashboard to get a key (0). Total 40.

Security & auth dYdX +15

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.

Uniswap Trading API 63

A single x-api-key header, no scopes, no IP allow-list; revocation and rotation happen in a dashboard robots.txt disallows, so unchecked; nothing in a URL (18 of 30). The API never holds keys or funds, every value transfer needs the caller's signature on permitData and the transaction, and the swapper sets slippage (16 of 20). The API returns routes and token lists, not untrusted content (10). The dashboard presumably shows key usage; not read, and no per-call log is documented (5 of 15). security.txt on app.uniswap.org with a Cantina bounty and security@uniswap.org, protocol audits in the docs; no SOC 2 or disclosure timeline read (14 of 20). Total 63.

Agent ergonomics Uniswap Trading API +6

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.

Uniswap Trading API 72

An API, read for response sizing. Quotes and calldata are compact and /tokens takes a limit; the quote can carry the swap calldata to save a call (20 of 25). GET /orders and GET /swaps poll status by id, /swappable_tokens and /tokens filter by chain and sort, with little pagination elsewhere (12 of 20). Stable errorCode values with a detail string and a requestId, and the docs say which codes to retry (18 of 20). No idempotency key; a swap is a signed transaction whose nonce prevents a double spend, and the docs warn about nonce collisions with pending transactions (12 of 20). Few required fields on /quote, defaults for slippage and urgency, but no official client library for the API and signing needs ethers.js, viem or web3.js (10 of 15). Total 72.

Maintenance & community Uniswap Trading API +5

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.

Uniswap Trading API 88

Read as a closed hosted service. The newest changelog notice is dated 22 October 2026 (30). Notices of 20 August, 21 September and 22 October 2026, three in 90 days (20). A help form for developer support that says it won't debug integrators' code, and uniswap-ai with 6 open issues and a push on 26 October (14 of 25). Official TypeScript SDKs current (@uniswap/v4-sdk 2.4.4 with provenance) and the uniswap-ai skills, though no client for the API itself; no MCP registry entry (15). Trusted publishing with provenance on npm, CI and lint hooks on uniswap-ai (9 of 10). Total 88.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this rundYdXUniswap Trading APIEdge
Reliability16%208342dYdX +41
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25890Uniswap Trading API +32
Agent ergonomics13%16.26672Uniswap Trading API +6
Security & auth14%17.57863dYdX +15
Payments & pricing10%12.56040dYdX +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88388Uniswap Trading API +5
Transparency & trust7%8.85055Uniswap Trading API +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 69.5/100B 63.3/100

Facts side by side

FactdYdXUniswap Trading API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendordYdX Trading Inc.Uniswap Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPay per useFree
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.The Trading API is a proprietary hosted service under Uniswap Labs' API Terms of Use, which we couldn't read; the SDKs and the uniswap-ai skills are MIT. Swaps execute on the open-source Uniswap protocol contracts on chain
Tools exposed00
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-292026-10-22
Terms last updated2026-03-12couldn't be read
Privacy policy last updated2025-06-06no document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticeyescouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waiveryescouldn't be read
Popularity119 stars, 86k npm/wk236 stars, 154k npm/wk

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.

Uniswap Trading API

The Trading API is free, documented by an OpenAPI file with stable error codes, holds no keys since the caller signs every swap, and posts sunset notices 30 days ahead. There is no official MCP server, status page or sandbox, the key is a plain header secret at 6 requests a second, and the API terms refused our reader.

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

Uniswap Trading API

  1. Call /check_approval first, then /quote; if permitData is non-null sign it as EIP-712 and send signature and permitData together to /swap or /order, never one without the other
  2. Route on the quote's routing: CLASSIC, WRAP, UNWRAP and BRIDGE go to /swap, DUTCH_V2, DUTCH_V3 and PRIORITY to /order, CHAINED to /plan
  3. Refresh any quote older than 30 seconds before broadcasting, and on 429 pause every request from the key before retrying
  4. Retry unchanged only on UpstreamTimeoutError; NoRouteFoundError and QuoteAmountTooLowError need a different amount, token or protocols list
  5. Send X-Agent-Info with decision_origin: autonomous and keep x-api-key server-side

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, dYdX or Uniswap Trading API?

dYdX scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against Uniswap Trading API's 63.3 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Uniswap Trading API leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Do dYdX and Uniswap Trading API need an API key?

dYdX takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Uniswap Trading API needs an API key.

Can an agent call dYdX and Uniswap Trading API without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for dYdX. No hosted endpoint is listed for Uniswap Trading API.

Are dYdX and Uniswap 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 Uniswap Trading API.

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