4 Best APIs for Historical OHLCV data in Nigeria

NGX Market Data API v3 is the official real-time and historical market data API from the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGXGroup). The API provides live stock prices, market indices (NSE Index), trading volumes, bid-ask spreads, and historical OHLCV (Open, High, Low, Close, Volume) data for all listed securities on the NSE. Nigerian fintech developers, investment platforms, and trading applications use the NGX Market Data API to build real-time stock tickers, portfolio trackers, market analysis dashboards, and trading applications with official NSE data.

Finnhub is a financial market data API providing real-time and historical stock quotes, company fundamentals, earnings data, and alternative datasets (insider transactions, social sentiment, ESG scores) across global exchanges. It notably includes coverage of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) alongside major US, European, and Asian markets, making it one of the few widely-used international market data providers with any direct Nigerian equities coverage. The core REST API exposes endpoints for real-time quotes, historical OHLCV candles, company profiles, financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, cash flow), analyst estimates, and earnings calendars. A WebSocket feed streams live trade-level price updates for supported exchanges, useful for building live tickers or algorithmic trading signals. Authentication uses a simple API key passed as a query parameter or header. The free tier allows 60 API calls per minute with access to a meaningful subset of endpoints (real-time US quotes, basic fundamentals), which is enough for prototyping a portfolio tracker or market dashboard. Paid plans unlock full historical depth, additional exchanges including NGX, and higher rate limits. For Nigerian fintech and investment platforms building portfolio trackers, robo-advisors, or market research tools, Finnhub is a practical way to get both global and NGX-adjacent market data from a single integration rather than stitching together multiple region-specific providers.

CoinMarketCap is the most widely cited cryptocurrency market data platform in the world, providing real-time price data, market capitalisation rankings, trading volume, historical OHLCV (open, high, low, close, volume) charts, and comprehensive metadata for over 10,000 digital assets. Acquired by Binance in 2020 but operating independently, CoinMarketCap's API is the standard data source referenced by financial media, investment firms, academic research, and crypto applications globally. For Nigerian developers building crypto applications, CMC offers one of the most trusted and complete crypto data APIs with a usable free tier and affordable upgrades. Nigeria ranks among the top 10 countries globally for cryptocurrency adoption, driven by youth demographics, high smartphone penetration, and economic motivations including inflation hedging, cross-border payments, and investment diversification. Nigerian exchanges (Buycoins, Patricia, Roqqu, Breet), wallets, and fintech platforms all need reliable crypto price data. CoinMarketCap is the authoritative source for market cap rankings — which coin is #1, #10, #100 — and for current prices that Nigerian retail and institutional users expect to see when viewing their holdings. The /cryptocurrency/listings/latest endpoint returns paginated data for all cryptocurrencies ranked by market cap, with current price, 24-hour change, volume, and market cap in specified currencies. Passing convert=NGN returns all values denominated in Nigerian Naira, enabling Nigerian apps to display ₦-native pricing directly without requiring client-side conversion. The /cryptocurrency/quotes/latest endpoint returns real-time quotes for specific coins by symbol or ID — exactly what you need for a cryptocurrency price ticker component. The /cryptocurrency/ohlcv/historical endpoint provides daily OHLCV data for any asset over any historical range, the data foundation for rendering price charts. Combined with the /cryptocurrency/market-pairs/latest endpoint, developers can identify which exchanges are offering the best prices for a given asset and what trading pairs exist — valuable for arbitrage detection tools and smart order-routing systems. Global metrics endpoints return aggregate market data: total crypto market cap, Bitcoin dominance percentage, Ethereum dominance, active cryptocurrencies and exchanges, and DeFi-specific metrics. For Nigerian fintech dashboards and market research tools, these macro-level indicators provide the market context that sophisticated users expect. The Exchange endpoints cover hundreds of trading platforms, ranking them by volume, web traffic, and liquidity score. Nigerian crypto businesses can use exchange data to track competitor volumes, identify trending exchange platforms, and benchmark their own trading volumes against the broader market. CoinMarketCap's CMC200 index and CMC100 index data are available through the API, allowing Nigerian platforms to offer index-tracking investment products. The Trending endpoints surface the most-visited coin pages, fastest-rising coins, and most-watched coins — powering a "What's Trending" section in any Nigerian crypto app. The free Basic plan provides 333 API calls per day and 10,000 per month — sufficient for a low-traffic information site or prototype. The Hobbyist plan ($29/month) increases limits to 3,000 calls/day and enables more historical data endpoints. For production applications with significant traffic, the Startup ($79/month) and Standard ($299/month) plans provide the rate limits needed. Enterprise plans with custom limits are available for large Nigerian exchanges and financial institutions. A sandbox environment (sandbox-api.coinmarketcap.com) is available for all developers to test API integration without consuming production rate limits.

CoinGecko is the world's largest independent cryptocurrency data aggregator, providing comprehensive market data for over 10,000 cryptocurrencies, 600+ exchanges, and 1,000+ NFT collections through a well-documented REST API. Founded in 2014 and trusted by millions of users and thousands of applications globally, CoinGecko aggregates price data from centralized and decentralized exchanges to provide reliable, manipulation-resistant market data for the entire crypto ecosystem. For Nigerian developers and businesses building crypto-related applications, CoinGecko is the most accessible and comprehensive source of crypto market data with a genuinely useful free tier. Nigeria has one of the highest per-capita cryptocurrency adoption rates in the world, driven by use cases including cross-border remittances, inflation hedging, e-commerce payments, and speculative trading. Nigerian crypto users trade a wide variety of assets — Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, USDT, USDC, and hundreds of altcoins — creating demand for portfolio trackers, price displays, trading tools, and crypto news aggregators that need reliable price data. CoinGecko covers all assets that Nigerian users are likely to hold or trade, including stablecoins critical for Nigerian users managing foreign exchange risk. The /simple/price endpoint is the most commonly used API for Nigerian applications — it returns current prices for specified coins in specified currencies including NGN (Nigerian Naira). Displaying portfolio values in naira is important for Nigerian users who think about their crypto holdings in the context of their domestic purchasing power. With NGN price conversion, a Nigerian portfolio tracker can show "Your Bitcoin is worth ₦28,400,000" rather than requiring users to mentally convert from USD. Historical price data via the /coins/{id}/market_chart endpoint provides time-series price, market cap, and volume data for any coin over any time period. This is the foundation for rendering price charts — giving Nigerian crypto apps the data needed for day charts, week charts, month charts, and custom timeframe views. OHLCV (open, high, low, close, volume) data is available for candlestick chart rendering. Market data endpoints return global market overview — total market cap, Bitcoin dominance, DeFi market cap, and trending metrics. Exchange data shows 24-hour trading volumes for hundreds of exchanges, including data for exchanges popular with Nigerian traders. Trending coins endpoint returns the top 7 most searched coins on CoinGecko over the past 24 hours — a useful signal for Nigerian crypto community features showing what the market is focused on. NFT floor price data from CoinGecko covers major NFT collections, providing floor prices in ETH and USD. Nigerian NFT collectors and marketplace operators can use this data to display current floor prices for popular collections without needing separate NFT-specific data providers for pricing. The free Demo API key provides 30 requests per minute and 10,000 requests per month — sufficient for small-to-medium Nigerian applications. The key is obtained after account registration on coingecko.com. For applications requiring higher throughput, Pro plans start at $129/month with 500 requests per minute and priority support. Pro API also unlocks additional endpoints including historical OHLCV with more granularity, on-chain DEX data, and advanced exchange analytics. CoinGecko's data quality is generally considered reliable and manipulation-resistant because it aggregates from many sources and applies algorithms to detect and exclude wash trading. For Nigerian developers needing trustworthy price data for portfolio displays, educational platforms, and analytics tools (rather than trading execution), CoinGecko's methodology is appropriate. For trading applications requiring institutional-grade data with SLA commitments, professional data providers with formal agreements may be more suitable.