Every time crypto prices swing hard, traders on social media share screenshots of a colorful chart. It shows where “liquidations” are piling up. That chart almost always comes from Coinglass. In May 2026, for example, about $930 million was liquidated as Bitcoin fell below $73K.
Price sites like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko focus on prices and market caps. Coinglass is different. It is a derivatives data platform. It shows what traders using borrowed money are doing behind the scenes:
- How much borrowed money is in the market
- Where forced sell-offs are likely to hit
- Whether the market is leaning long (betting up) or short (betting down)
If you want to know why crypto moves the way it does on wild days, Coinglass has become close to must-read.
Key Takeaways
- Coinglass is a free crypto derivatives data platform. It gathers liquidation, open interest, funding rate and order book data from 28 major exchanges, including Binance, OKX, Bybit and Deribit.
- The platform launched in 2019 as Bybt. It later rebranded to Coinglass as it grew beyond single-exchange data.
- In September 2026, CoinMarketCap bought Coinglass. Coinglass keeps its own brand, site, app and free tools.
- Its best-known tool, the Liquidation Heatmap, shows price zones where many leveraged trades may be forced to close.
- Liquidation levels are estimates built from open interest and assumed leverage. They are not confirmed exchange data. They show direction, not exact dollar amounts.
- Core metrics include Open Interest, Funding Rates and Long/Short Ratios.
- Most core data is free. A Pro plan adds real-time alerts, deeper history and API access.
- Coinglass adds to price charts. It does not replace them. It explains the leverage behind a price move, not the move itself.
What Is Coinglass
Coinglass is a crypto data platform. It focuses on the derivatives side of crypto trading. Derivatives are contracts that track the price of a coin without you owning the coin. They include futures, options and perpetual contracts, which are futures with no end date.
Coinglass launched in 2019 under the name Bybt. It later rebranded as it moved beyond single-exchange data to a view of the whole market. It now pulls data from 28 exchanges and more than 2,500 contracts into one dashboard.
On September 25, 2026, CoinMarketCap announced it had bought Coinglass for an undisclosed sum. Coinglass still runs under its own name, with the same team, website, app, free tools and pricing.
CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko answer the question “what is the price?” Coinglass answers a different one: how much leverage is in the system right now, and where is it most likely to break?
Core Coinglass Features
Liquidation Heatmap
The Liquidation Heatmap is the tool Coinglass is known for. A liquidation is when an exchange force-closes a trade because the trader can no longer cover their losses. The heatmap shows price levels where many leveraged trades would be forced to close.
It uses color to show this. Brighter zones mean more trades are likely to be liquidated if the price reaches that level.
Traders use the heatmap to find “liquidity magnets.” Large liquidation clusters can speed up a price move once they are hit, in either direction. The heatmap covers several timeframes, usually 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days. That helps traders tell short-term leverage build-ups from longer-term walls.
It is important to be clear about what this tool shows. These are estimates based on open interest and assumed leverage. They are not confirmed liquidation data pulled straight from exchanges.
The data is most reliable for high-volume pairs like BTC and ETH. It is much weaker for small altcoins, where there is too little open interest to form useful clusters.
Open Interest
Open interest is the total value of derivatives contracts that are still open. Coinglass tracks it across exchanges. It shows open interest as candlestick charts, as a ratio to market cap and as a breakdown by exchange.
- Rising open interest during a price move usually means new money is entering trades.
- Falling open interest during a move can mean the trend is driven by old trades closing, not by new conviction.
Funding Rates
Perpetual futures have no end date. To keep their price close to the real (spot) price, traders on each side pay each other small fees at set times. These fees are called funding rates.
Coinglass gathers funding rates from many exchanges. It flags when they become extreme:
- High positive funding for a long time suggests too many traders are betting on a rise.
- Deeply negative funding suggests too many traders are betting on a fall.
In the past, both cases have often come before sharp reversals.
Long/Short Ratio
This metric shows the balance between long and short trades on an exchange. It is split by taker volume. On some exchanges, it also shows data for top-trader accounts.
Traders use it to gauge mood. A very one-sided ratio is often read as a contrarian signal. In other words, it may hint at a move the other way, not confirm where the price is going.
Bitcoin Monthly Returns Heatmap and Derivatives Risk Index
Coinglass also offers two extra tools worth knowing.
The Bitcoin Monthly Returns Heatmap shows how BTC performed in each month of each year. Traders use it to spot seasonal patterns and compare today’s price action with past cycles at a glance.
The CoinGlass Derivatives Risk Index (CDRI) is the platform’s own risk score, rated from 0 to 100. It blends seven factors: open interest, funding rate, average leverage, long/short imbalance, implied volatility, 24-hour liquidation volume and changes in trading activity.
| CDRI score | What it means |
|---|---|
| 0 to 30 | Low risk |
| 30 to 60 | Neutral |
| 60 to 80 | High risk |
| 80 to 100 | Extreme risk, overheated market |
A high score signals an overheated, fragile market, even if the price is still rising. The index is built to warn of risk before the price reacts. That sets it apart from mood-only tools like the Fear and Greed Index.
How to Read the Coinglass Liquidation Heatmap
Start by reading the heatmap in relative terms, not absolute ones. Compare how bright clusters are against each other. Don’t read any single zone on its own.
Keep these limits in mind:
- Hedged trades skew the picture. A trader may hold a long perpetual and a short future on the same coin. Both show up as open interest, but the trader’s net bet is close to zero. The heatmap can’t tell this apart from a real one-way bet.
- Whales can create fake clusters. If one large trader holds a big share of open interest at one price, what looks like a broad cluster may be a single position with special terms.
- Data can lag. During extreme swings or exchange maintenance, open interest data can have gaps or delays. That can create clusters that don’t match real-time positions.
For these reasons, most experienced users treat the heatmap as one input among several. It helps explain why a price move happened or where it might speed up. It is not a trading signal on its own.
Coinglass vs. Coinalyze
Coinalyze is the closest rival to Coinglass. It offers similar derivatives data, such as open interest, funding rates and liquidations, in a similar dashboard.
The two cover mostly the same exchanges. The choice often comes down to which layout and charting tools a trader likes, not a real gap in data quality. Coinglass has more users and a bigger name. One reason is that its liquidation heatmap has become the default screenshot shared on crypto social media during wild sessions.
Who Uses Coinglass
Coinglass is used by traders at all levels. Retail traders use it to understand why a sudden spike or crash happened. Professional and institutional traders use its positioning data in rules-based strategies.
Its data is also often cited in crypto news. That includes here at blockchainreporter. We have used Coinglass liquidation data in recent Bitcoin News Today, Ethereum News Today and XRP News Today coverage during volatile sessions. It gives a standard, cross-exchange view that single exchange dashboards don’t offer.
For the full market picture on any given day, see Crypto Market Today or the broader Crypto News Today roundup.
Related Crypto Data Tools
For more on the platforms behind crypto market data, see our explainers on what DefiLlama tracks and what RWA.xyz measures in tokenized real-world assets.
About the author
Max delves deep into the cryptocurrency realm, with a passion for altcoins and NFTs. Convinced of crypto's transformative potential, he envisions a decentralized financial future. Max's background in the financial sector grants him unique insights into global monetary systems. In his leisure, Max embraces the thrill of adventures and is an avid sports enthusiast, finding balance and rejuvenation away from work.
View all articles by Max Clark
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Coinglass?
Coinglass is a free crypto derivatives analytics platform that aggregates liquidation, open interest, and funding rate data from more than 30 exchanges, giving traders visibility into leverage and positioning rather than just spot prices.
How do you read the Coinglass liquidation heatmap?
Compare the brightness of clusters relative to each other rather than reading any single zone in isolation, and treat it as one input alongside price charts — hedged positions, whale concentration, and data gaps during extreme volatility can all distort what looks like a clean liquidation cluster.
Is Coinglass free to use?
Yes. Most core features, including the liquidation heatmap, open interest data, and long/short ratios, are accessible for free. A Pro subscription adds real-time alerts, deeper historical data, and API access for more advanced use cases.
Is Coinglass a price tracker like CoinMarketCap?
No. Coinglass does display basic price and market cap data, but its core focus is derivatives market data — liquidations, open interest, and funding rates — rather than spot price tracking.
How accurate is the Coinglass liquidation heatmap?
It's directionally useful but not dollar-precise. Liquidation levels are modeled estimates based on open interest and assumed leverage distributions, not confirmed data pulled directly from exchange liquidation engines, and can break down during black swan events or when a single large holder dominates open interest at a given level.
