What’s the best crypto API for a trading bot that runs 24/7?

I’ve recently started experimenting with agentic crypto trading and I’m trying to figure out which data API would make the most sense for an always-on setup.

Right now, I have a throwaway laptop running 24/7 with Claude code and a few other agent frameworks continuously monitoring the market and testing different strategies. It’s still fairly experimental, but I expect the API usage to become quite heavy, so I’ll probably need to move onto a paid plan at some point.

The actual trading side is mostly covered. I already have integrations and basic harnesses set up for popular CEXs and DEXs like Coinbase, Binance and Uniswap.

What I’m less sure about is the market data part. I’m looking for an API that can help the agent:

- Track coins, tokens and liquidity pools that are gaining interest

- Spot narratives and trends reasonably early

- Pull reliable pricing, volume and historical data

- Verify token contracts and flag obvious scam or security risks

- Cover both centralized exchanges and onchain markets

- Run continuously without becoming ridiculously expensive

I’m not trying to build an HFT, MEV or sniper bot where every millisecond matters. I’m assuming there will already be some delay from the AI reasoning process, so I’m more interested in medium-term strategies where the agent can research a trend, validate it and then decide whether to act.

I’m also not looking for anything overly complex or expensive at the blockchain-node level, like Bitquery or running my own infrastructure. That seems excessive for what I’m trying to build.

At the moment, I’m running on the free coingecko api plan and leaning towards paying for it because it seems fairly complete in terms of asset and network coverage, latency, onchain data and additional information such as news and token security indicators. Those extra signals seem useful for a mostly hands-off AI workflow.

That said, I haven’t committed to anything yet and I’m interested in hearing from people who have actually built something similar. Some alternatives I have in mind as well are cmc, coinpaprika, and finage api.

What API or combination of APIs are you guys using and actually worth paying for? Are there any major limitations I should know about before subscribing to any of these?