# Kraken API (slim)

> Kraken's exchange APIs cover spot, tokenised US stocks, forex and futures over REST, WebSocket and FIX, with rate limits by client tier, a self-service futures demo and kraken-cli, an open-source CLI whose kraken-mcp binary is a local MCP server.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kraken.md (~9,500 tokens) · this version ~2,380 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kraken.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kraken
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-04 · pricing https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kraken#pricing · reviews https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kraken#reviews
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

**BB · 71/100 · rank #159 of 1349 · #2 in Crypto exchanges · agent-ready · confidence medium**


Assessment: 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.

## Facts

- Kind: HTTP API · vendor: Payward, Inc. · category: Crypto exchanges · legal entity: Payward, Inc. · provenance 94/100
- Local only (stdio)
- Auth: OAuth or key · pricing: Pay per use · x402: no · licence: Proprietary hosted service under Kraken's Global Terms of Service (30 October 2026). kraken-cli, which carries the kraken-mcp server, is MIT
- Probe metrics: not measured yet (probes haven't run)
- Surface listed: The spot REST API at api.kraken.com and WebSocket v2 at ws.kraken.com/v2, with the derivatives API at futures.kraken.com and FIX, read from docs.kraken.com, support.kraken.com, kraken.com, status.kraken.com and a shallow clone of krakenfx/kraken-cli on 3 November 2026. No account was made and no MCP session was opened
- MCP server: Official, local. kraken-mcp (stdio) ships with kraken-cli v0.5.1 and serves 152 tools in services (market 11, account 18, paper 17, workspace 20, futures-paper 17, feedback 1, trade 9, futures 39, earn 6, funding 10, subaccount 2, auth 2). Dangerous tools carry destructive_hint and ask for approval through MCP elicitation; clients without elicitation run them when the model sets acknowledged to true. Auth is the stored key or KRAKEN_API_KEY and KRAKEN_API_SECRET. Not in the official MCP registry
- Key permissions: Query Funds, Deposit Funds, Withdraw Funds, Query Open Orders & Trades, Query Closed Orders & Trades, Modify Orders, Cancel/Close Orders, Query Ledger Entries, Export Data; optional Key Expiration, IP Address Restriction, nonce window and WebSocket interface. No withdrawal address allow-list was found in the key article. The OAuth-made key has no withdrawal rights
- Rate limits: REST per key, Starter 15, Intermediate 20, Pro 20 counter points, decaying 0.33, 0.5 and 1 a second, ledger and trade history costing 2; matching engine per pair 60, 125 and 180 with 60, 80 and 225 open orders. Errors EAPI:Rate limit exceeded and EService:Throttled with a timestamp; no Retry-After header
- Sandbox: Derivatives demo at demo-futures.kraken.com, self-service. Spot UAT sandbox on request through an account manager. Paper trading in kraken-cli at live prices with no account
- Countries: Not served per the support page read on 3 November 2026 are Afghanistan, Belarus, Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Libya, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria, and the US states of Maine and New York. Derivatives are closed to UK retail and Canadian clients and xStocks to US, UK, Canadian and Australian clients
- Fees: Kraken Pro spot tier 1 (under $10,000 in 30 days) 0.40 per cent maker, 0.80 per cent taker; stablecoin, pegged token and FX pairs 0.20 per cent each; futures tier 1 0.02 per cent maker, 0.05 per cent taker
- FIX and WebSocket: FIX 4.4 for spot and derivatives with cancel-on-disconnect and Equinix London colocation. WebSocket v2 for spot at wss://ws.kraken.com/v2 and v1 for derivatives, with maintenance and incident advisories since 1 September 2026
- Terms on automated trading: The Global Terms of 30 October 2026 name API access as a way to place trades, and bar bots, robots, parsers, spiders and scripts on Kraken's content, web scraping, and third-party applications that interact with the content without written consent. California law; Payward Interactive, Inc. for US clients, Payward Ltd. for the UK, Bit Trade Pty Limited for Australia, Payward Trading Ltd elsewhere, with separate Canadian, EEA and Brazilian terms
- Agent skills: 61 skill folders in kraken-cli for DCA, grid trading, rebalancing and futures risk, with AGENTS.md, CONTEXT.md, llms.txt and an error catalogue with retry guidance
- SDKs: krakenfx/kraken-api-sdk (Rust, unified, pushed 9 October 2026), api-go (Go, pushed 13 January 2026), example clients in several languages; the docs' samples use the community krakenex and kraken-api libraries
- Status: status.kraken.com, a Statuspage site with REST, WebSocket, FIX, website, app and derivatives components and per-asset funding components
- Legal entity: Payward, Inc. (kraken.com), with the regional Payward contracting entities named in the terms
- Prices: Spot trade, maker, tier 1 0.4% percentage fee; Spot trade, taker, tier 1 0.8% percentage fee; Futures trade, maker, tier 1 0.02% percentage fee; Futures trade, taker, tier 1 0.05% percentage fee

- Scores: Reliability 67, Performance pending, Schema & documentation 80, Agent ergonomics 79, Security & auth 80, Payments & pricing 40, Task success pending, Maintenance & community 81, Transparency & trust 65 · total over the 7 assessed categories
- Why: Reliability, Read with the hosted lines on the spot API. · Schema & documentation, 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 command… · Agent ergonomics, The MCP server loads services with -s, defaults to no live trading, and its 152 tool definitions average about 520 characters; the REST API… · Security & auth, Keys with nine named permissions, optional expiry, IP restriction and nonce window, plus an OAuth sign-in from the CLI (authorisation code w… · Payments & pricing, No machine payment protocol (0). · Maintenance & community, Read as a closed service with an open-source client. · Transparency & trust, The editorial half.
- Sources: 21, open questions: 7, both in the full twin
- Capabilities: exchange.spot-trading, exchange.market-data, exchange.derivatives, exchange.balances, exchange.transfers, exchange.staking, market.crypto
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/kraken.json
- Verify (for the vendor): the badge `https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/kraken.svg` or a link to https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kraken from a page on kraken.com or one of its subdomains, or the README at the root of github.com/krakenfx/kraken-cli, then `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` `{"slug", "url"}` or `verify_listing` at /mcp; re-checked weekly, no effect on the grade. Snippets in the full twin.
- Support: api@kraken.com; https://support.kraken.com/; https://docs.kraken.com/api/; more in the full twin

## Before you call it

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

## Connect

```bash
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/krakenfx/kraken-cli/releases/latest/download/kraken-cli-installer.sh | sh
```

```bash
curl https://api.kraken.com/0/public/Ticker?pair=XBTUSD
```

```bash
claude mcp add --scope user kraken -- kraken-mcp -s market,paper,feedback
```
Full config and headless snippets are in the full page. Through letme (picks today, calling later): https://letme.dev/kraken

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| Tool | Grade | Score | Shared capabilities | Slim |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Gemini Exchange API | BB | 74.6 | exchange.market-data, exchange.spot-trading, exchange.derivatives, exchange.balances, exchange.transfers, exchange.staking, market.crypto | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gemini-exchange.min.md |
| OKX API | B | 64.3 | exchange.spot-trading, exchange.market-data, exchange.derivatives, exchange.balances, exchange.transfers, exchange.staking, market.crypto | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/okx.min.md |
| Binance API | B | 63.2 | exchange.spot-trading, exchange.market-data, exchange.derivatives, exchange.balances, exchange.transfers, exchange.staking, market.crypto | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/binance.min.md |
| Bitfinex API | C | 58.4 | exchange.market-data, exchange.spot-trading, exchange.derivatives, exchange.balances, exchange.transfers, exchange.staking, market.crypto | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bitfinex.min.md |
| Bybit | C | 57.3 | exchange.market-data, exchange.spot-trading, exchange.derivatives, exchange.balances, exchange.transfers, exchange.staking, market.crypto | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bybit.min.md |


## Panel reviews (0, desk reviews from public material, no calls made)