Crypto tick data API: free archives, sizes and licenses

Short answer: Crypto tick data means individual trades, aggregated trades, top-of-book quotes or depth deltas, and each is a different dataset with its own source and size. Several exchanges publish trade files free in bulk: a Binance Vision BTCUSDT trades file for 3 November 2026 was 18.8 MB zipped with 2,723,726 rows. Free to fetch is not free to use, because Binance's dataset terms are non-commercial, and order book history is much patchier than trades.

Turn millisecond and microsecond timestamps into dates: Unix timestamp converter.

This guide downloads files from exchange archives, verifies them and states sizes, row counts and failure cases, on files fetched 6 November 2026. BTCUSDT is an example only. Binance figures come from files published by Binance Vision (data.binance.vision (opens in a new tab)), which does not sponsor or endorse this page, and no data rows are reproduced.

It is a data engineering guide: it makes no claim that tick data improves any result, ranks no vendor or exchange and carries no referral links. Rules depend on your jurisdiction and the platform's terms. Article 99/A of Capital Markets Law No. 6362 treats activity by foreign crypto-asset platforms directed at Turkish residents as unauthorized.

What is tick data? Four different datasets

Tick data means one record per market event rather than one per time bar, but the event differs by dataset, so ask which one before comparing sizes or prices.

That Spot day holds 3.75 fills per aggregated row, so a row count means little without its dataset. Binance's USD-M bookDepth files are something else again: 34,560 rows a day, depth in 12 percentage bands every 30 seconds, which is not tick-by-tick data. To keep a live book from depth deltas yourself, see the WebSocket order book guide.

Crypto tick data API sources: streams, REST and archives

Venues offer streams, REST history and archives; history limits make REST the weakest route for backfills.

Besides a page of download links (opens in a new tab), OKX's market-data-history call returns each file's URL and size; its date field arrived as dateTs, as in the response example; the field table says dataTs.

REST or bulk download? The arithmetic

For anything older than today, the archive wins: one measured day takes seconds as a file and from minutes to hours over REST.

The archive time is four downloads on 6 November 2026 at 5 to 11 MB/s; the REST times are arithmetic and leave nothing for other programs on the IP, as the Binance rate limit guide explains. Per Binance's README, daily files appear the next day and monthly files on the first Monday of the month; live collection fills the gap.

Crypto tick data download: tested Python with checksum and gap checks

Verify a file before loading it: compare the SHA-256, then walk the trade IDs and timestamps.

import csv, hashlib, io, sys, urllib.error, urllib.request, zipfile

BASE = "https://data.binance.vision/data/spot/daily/trades"  # USD-M: data/futures/um/daily/trades
SYMBOL, DAY = "BTCUSDT", "2026-11-03"
URL = f"{BASE}/{SYMBOL}/{SYMBOL}-trades-{DAY}.zip"


def fetch(url):
    req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0"})
    try:
        with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=120) as resp:
            return resp.read()
    except urllib.error.URLError as e:             # 404 if not published yet
        sys.exit(f"{e} for {url}")


body = fetch(URL)
expected = fetch(URL + ".CHECKSUM").decode().split()[:1]
if not [hashlib.sha256(body).hexdigest()] == expected:
    sys.exit("checksum missing or wrong: do not load this file")

rows = gaps = missing = repeats = backwards = 0
prev_id = prev_ts = None
digits = set()
with zipfile.ZipFile(io.BytesIO(body)) as z:
    if not len(z.namelist()) == 1:
        sys.exit(f"expected one CSV, found {z.namelist()}")
    for row in csv.reader(io.TextIOWrapper(z.open(z.namelist()[0]), "ascii", errors="replace")):
        if row[:1] == ["id"]:                      # USD-M header row
            continue
        if len(row) < 5 or not (row[0].isdigit() and row[4].isdigit()):
            sys.exit(f"bad row after {rows} rows: do not load this file")
        trade_id, ts = int(row[0]), int(row[4])
        if prev_id is not None:
            step = trade_id - prev_id
            gaps += step > 1
            missing += max(step - 1, 0)
            repeats += step < 1
            backwards += ts < prev_ts
        prev_id, prev_ts = trade_id, ts
        rows += 1
        digits.add(len(row[4]))

print("zip bytes", len(body), "| checksum ok")
print("rows", rows, "| gaps", gaps, "| missing ids", missing, "| repeats", repeats)
print("backwards timestamps", backwards, "| timestamp digits", sorted(digits))

Output on 6 November 2026 (Python 3.11.3, standard library, 15 to 18 seconds with the download):

zip bytes 18770715 | checksum ok
rows 2723726 | gaps 0 | missing ids 0 | repeats 0
backwards timestamps 0 | timestamp digits [16]

It exits with a message on a missing file, bad checksum, extra zip member or malformed row. Summing last minus first trade ID plus one over the same day's Spot aggTrades rows gives exactly 2,723,726.

Gaps that are not missing data: Spot versus USD-M files

A gap check written for Spot fails on USD-M files, and the two products differ in format as well.

Binance's USD-M documents say insurance fund and ADL trades are not returned. That may explain the skipped IDs, but the files do not label them, so it is a reading, not a confirmed cause: alert on any Spot gap, not on every USD-M gap.

• Bybit derivatives files use a 36-character trdMatchID with no sequence, so check row counts, day boundaries and timestamp order instead; that column is seconds with a fraction. Spot files have a numeric id and millisecond timestamps.
• Days differ. OKX dates trade files in UTC+8: its 3 November 2026 BTC-USDT file starts at 16:00 UTC on 2 November, while the Binance and Bybit files start at midnight UTC.
• File names vary. Bybit uses BTCUSDT2026-11-03.csv.gz in trading/ but daily BTCUSDT_2026-11-04.csv.gz and monthly BTCUSDT-2026-10.csv.gz in spot/; Binance's USD-M monthly aggTrades folder holds one part-00000-... file. Match names strictly and report misses.
• Files can change. Binance's README says archived files may be updated and lists past replacements, so store each file's checksum and recheck before a rebuild.

Tick data bitcoin: how much storage to budget

One symbol's full trade history on Binance is tens of gigabytes zipped, and a raw CSV was about 11 times its zip in the Spot sample.

Monthly sizes swing widely: Spot's largest file, February 2023, was 3.25 GB, and the last 12 months average 0.84 GB. Zip ratios vary by dataset too, at 11.0 for Spot trades and 5.8 for Spot aggTrades. Loading such files into a queryable store is covered in the ClickHouse market data guide, and libraries that consume them in backtesting Python libraries.

Questions to ask a tick data vendor

Get every vendor's written answers to the same six questions, then test a free sample against them.

Tardis.dev's FAQ, read 6 November 2026 and named only as an example, says raw WebSocket-sourced data can have gaps and that gaps from outages or collection interruptions are permanent. Published prices are listed in the crypto price API guide; recheck them before budgeting. For integration work in general, see Fincode's exchange API integration page; naming Binance, Bybit, OKX or Hyperliquid here does not mean Fincode integrates them or has built on them.

Crypto tick data free: what the licenses allow

Bulk files are free to fetch and restricted in use, so read the terms before they reach a product.

Binance's README ends with a Licence heading that says MIT without saying what that covers, so do not read MIT as a license to the data.

Frequently asked questions

What is tick by tick data?

One record per market event instead of one per time bar. In crypto the event may be a fill, an aggregated trade, a best bid or ask change or a depth change, so check which one a source means.

Is there free crypto tick data?

Free to download, yes: Binance Vision, Bybit's public listing and OKX's files need no payment. Binance's and OKX's terms limit use to non-commercial purposes, so free does not mean usable in a product.

How big is Bitcoin tick data?

On Binance's listing of 6 November 2026, BTCUSDT Spot trades total 80.41 GB zipped from August 2017, and the latest 12 months are 10.08 GB. One day's CSV in the sample was 207.0 MB.

Why does my gap check fail on Binance futures files?

USD-M trade IDs skip values: on the tested day, 0.39% of the ID range, at most 4 IDs in a row. Binance says insurance fund and ADL trades are not returned, so treat small USD-M gaps differently from Spot gaps.

Sources

• Binance Public Data: README (file columns, checksums, microsecond Spot timestamps, updates) (opens in a new tab)
• Binance Vision Dataset Terms, version 1.0, updated 26 August 2026 (opens in a new tab)
• Binance Data Collection (Binance Vision) (opens in a new tab)
• Binance Spot API documentation: REST API (historicalTrades, aggTrades) (opens in a new tab)
• Binance Spot API documentation: WebSocket Streams (opens in a new tab)
• Binance USD-M Futures: Market data REST API (trade lists, weights, retention) (opens in a new tab)
• Bybit V5 API: Get Recent Public Trades (opens in a new tab)
• Bybit V5 API: Trade WebSocket stream (opens in a new tab)
• Bybit public data listing (directory of trading and spot files) (opens in a new tab)
• OKX API v5 documentation (trades, history-trades, historical market data) (opens in a new tab)
• Binance USD-M Futures: WebSocket market streams (stream list) (opens in a new tab)
• OKX API Agreement, Section 9.4, last updated 28 July 2026 (opens in a new tab)
• Hyperliquid Docs: Historical data (opens in a new tab)
• Tardis.dev: Data FAQ, read 6 November 2026 (opens in a new tab)
• Capital Markets Law No. 6362, consolidated text, Article 99/A (Turkish) (opens in a new tab)

This guide is general information about software and markets, not investment, legal or tax advice. Automated trading can lose money, past or backtested performance does not guarantee future results, and the rules that apply depend on your jurisdiction and your exchange's terms. Sources, checks and corrections: see the editorial policy.