Flat Files

Flat files are large, structured data files used to store historical cryptocurrency market data such as trades, quotes, OHLCV candles, and order books.
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Flat files are large, structured data files stored in formats such as CSV, JSON, or Parquet. In the context of crypto, flat files are commonly used to store bulk market data, including trades, quotes, OHLCV candles, and order books - for research, backtesting, and regulatory reporting. Unlike APIs, which deliver data in smaller chunks or real-time streams, flat files give direct access to entire datasets at once.

Trading firms, quant researchers, and analysts need more than live data feeds — they need years of accurate history for backtesting and strategy validation. APIs alone are often too slow or too limited for these large-scale queries. Flat files solve this problem by letting teams download complete datasets in bulk, making large-scale analytics and machine learning pipelines feasible.

  • Bulk history access: CoinAPI provides terabytes of market data in flat file form, covering trades, quotes, OHLCV, and order books from 380+ exchanges.
  • S3 compatibility: Files are hosted on an S3-compatible interface, so developers can integrate them easily with AWS or cloud data pipelines.
  • Flexible formats: Data can be delivered in CSV, JSON, or Parquet depending on your storage and processing needs.
  • Daily updates: Flat files are refreshed daily, ensuring your historical datasets stay current.
  • Massive coverage: access historical tick-level and order book data without overloading an API.
  • Performance: reduce latency in backtesting or ML training by working with local datasets.
  • Flexibility: integrate files with cloud storage, data warehouses, or Python/R research stacks.
  • Reliability: avoid API limits and downtime by using offline-ready bulk files.

CoinAPI’s Flat Files service is designed for teams that need raw historical data at scale:

  • Perfect for quant backtesting and machine learning models.
  • Provides tick-level order books, trades, and OHLCV for long look-back periods.
  • Offers secure authentication and permissions, integrated with CoinAPI’s broader API ecosystem.
  • Works alongside CoinAPI’s Market Data API and WebSocket feeds, giving you both history and live data in one workflow.
  • Flat files = bulk data: best for history, not live trading.
  • CoinAPI’s files are normalized: data from 380+ exchanges follows one schema.
  • Ideal for research and compliance: backtesting, anomaly detection, and audit reporting.
  • Works with your stack: AWS, Google Cloud, on-prem — S3 integration makes it easy.

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