Quickstart

The Cardano Price API provides comprehensive access to historical and real-time Cardano token data following the TradingView Brokerage Integration specification. With it, you can query endpoints for price history, symbol information, current prices, and streaming data across 17,000+ Cardano tokens from all major DEXs.

In most production environments, you will rarely manually construct HTTP requests and parse JSON responses as demonstrated here. Instead, you would typically integrate our API endpoints into your existing TradingView-compatible applications or build custom solutions using the standardized format.

By following the manual steps below, you will gain an understanding of how the Cardano Price API works and how to integrate Cardano token data into your applications.

Authenticate Your Request

Before you can access Cardano Price data, you need your unique API key.

Obtaining Your API Key

Sign up or log in to your Charli3 account. If you don’t have a subscription yet choose the plan.
Visit your Dashboard to find your API key.
Keep your API key secure and do not share it publicly.

You can include your API key using the Authorization header:

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

Note: Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual API key from your dashboard.

Making Your First API Request

Let’s start by discovering what DEXs and token pairs are available. At your terminal, make a simple request using the curl command to the /groups endpoint to list available DEXs.

curl "https://api.charli3.io/api/v1/groups" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

This command retrieves all available DEX groups (protocols) like MinswapV2, SundaeSwap, and the special “Aggregate” group that provides combined data across all DEXs.

Getting Symbol Information

Once you know the available groups, you can get symbol information for a specific DEX. Let’s get the available trading pairs for MinswapV2:

curl "https://api.charli3.io/api/v1/symbol_info?group=MinswapV2" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

This returns detailed information about all trading pairs available on MinswapV2, including:

Symbol names and descriptions
Base and quote currencies (policy IDs)
Exchange information
Price scale and formatting details
Unique ticker identifiers for data requests

Fetching Historical Price Data

Now let’s get historical price data for a specific token pair. Using a ticker from the previous response:

curl "https://api.charli3.io/api/v1/history?symbol=TICKER_ID&resolution=60min&from=1735689600&to=1735776000" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Parameters:

symbol: The unique ticker ID from the symbol_info response
resolution: Time interval (1min, 5min, 15min, 60min, 1d)
from: Start time as Unix timestamp
to: End time as Unix timestamp
include_tvl: Optional boolean to include Total Value Locked data

Getting Current Token Prices

For real-time pricing, use the current price endpoint with a token’s policy ID and name:

curl "https://api.charli3.io/api/v1/tokens/current?policy=279c909f348e533da5808898f87f9a14bb2c3dfbbacccd631d927a3f534e454b" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

This returns the current price & stats for the specified token (SNEK in this example).

Understanding the API Response

All Cardano Price API endpoints return data in a structured JSON format consistent with TradingView standards:

Groups Response

{
  "s": "ok",
  "d": {
    "groups": [
      {"id": "MinswapV2"},
      {"id": "SundaeSwap"},
      {"id": "Aggregate"}
    ]
  }
}

Historical Data Response

{
  "s": "ok",
  "t": [1735689600, 1735693200, 1735696800],
  "o": [0.004056, 0.004012, 0.003998],
  "h": [0.004089, 0.004056, 0.004023],
  "l": [0.003995, 0.003987, 0.003976],
  "c": [0.004012, 0.003998, 0.004001],
  "v": [1250.5, 987.3, 1456.7]
}

Where:

s: Status (“ok” or “error”)
t: Timestamps (Unix time)
o: Open prices
h: High prices
l: Low prices
c: Close prices
v: Volume
tvl: Total Value Locked (if requested)

Understanding Aggregate Data

The “Aggregate” group provides special functionality by combining data across all DEXs for more accurate pricing:

Token reserves from all pools of a given pair are summed together
Acts like a “weighted average” across the entire Cardano ecosystem
More representative of global token pricing
Reduces single-DEX volatility and discrepancies

Available Resolutions

The API supports multiple time intervals for historical data:

1min: 1-minute bars
5min: 5-minute bars
15min: 15-minute bars
60min: 1-hour bars
1d: Daily bars

Full API spec

Rate Limits and Best Practices

Use appropriate time ranges to avoid large payloads
Leverage the group parameter to filter symbol_info requests
Use aggregate data for general pricing, specific DEX data for detailed analysis
Monitor streaming connections for health check pings every 20 seconds
Cache symbol information to reduce API calls

Next Steps

With your first successful API requests and an understanding of the TradingView-compatible JSON format, you are prepared to:

Integrate with TradingView: Use the API as a data source for TradingView charts and analysis
Build Custom Applications: Create DeFi dashboards, trading bots, or portfolio trackers
Historical Analysis: Analyze price trends and volume patterns across Cardano DEXs
Real-time Monitoring: Set up live price alerts and streaming data feeds

Check out our detailed API documentation for additional parameters, advanced filtering options, and comprehensive endpoint specifications. The consistent TradingView format makes it easy to integrate with existing financial applications and charting libraries.

Common Use Cases

DeFi Applications

Portfolio tracking across multiple DEXs
Arbitrage opportunity detection
Liquidity pool analysis

Trading and Analytics

Technical analysis with OHLCV data
Multi-DEX price comparison
Volume trend analysis

Integration Projects

TradingView chart integration
Mobile app price feeds
Custom dashboard development

Introduction Get Trading Pairs