Luzia API

We've been building Luzia - a real-time crypto pricing API for developers building trading bots, portfolio trackers, and DeFi apps.

The market already has CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, CoinAPI, and dozens of others.

So why build another one? 🤔

Because they're all slow. Seriously. Most aggregators add 300-600ms of latency on top of exchange data. For a portfolio dashboard that's fine. For a trading bot making 100 calls per cycle, that's the difference between a 50-second loop and an 8-second loop.

I made speed the core differentiator. Luzia responds in 80-100ms - on a TypeScript stack running on Bun. No Go, no Rust, no exotic infrastructure. Just careful architecture.

I wrote up the engineering decisions behind it: WebSocket-first data ingestion, multi-level caching, atomic rate limiting, read/write separation. Nothing groundbreaking individually, but the combination gets us within striking distance of direct exchange API speeds while aggregating five exchanges through one endpoint.

A few takeaways for other indie builders:

• Performance can be a moat. Most SaaS competes on features. Competing on speed is harder to copy because it's an architectural choice, not a checkbox.

• Bun is production-ready. I was skeptical but it handles thousands of concurrent WebSocket connections and request throughput without issues. Saved me from maintaining two codebases.

• "Fast" is easy to demo. When a prospect runs one API call and sees the response time, the pitch is done. No slide deck needed.

Blog post with the full technical breakdown: https://luzia.dev/blog/fast-crypto-api-engineering

Would love to hear from others building developer tools as a solo founder. How do you think about differentiation when the market already has incumbents?

I've been building trading tools and crypto applications for years. Every single time, I hit the same wall: fragmented exchange APIs, inconsistent data formats, and the tedious work of maintaining connectors for each platform.

Today, I'm publicly releasing the beta version of Luzia — a unified cryptocurrency pricing and market data API built for developers who are tired of the same problems I faced.

Why I Built This

The crypto data space is dominated by expensive enterprise solutions or unreliable free tiers with aggressive rate limits. As an indie developer, I wanted something in between: affordable, fast, and simple to use service

Luzia aggregates real-time price data from multiple exchanges through a single, normalized API. One endpoint. One format. No more juggling five different authentication schemes or parsing inconsistent response structures.

What's in the Beta

This is an almost stable release. I'm building in public and shipping early to get real feedback from real developers.

Current features:

• Real-time ticker data from Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit and OKX.

• Unified REST API with consistent JSON responses

• WebSocket streaming for real-time price feeds

• API key authentication with tiered rate limits

• Circuit breaker pattern for fault tolerance when exchanges fail

• Developer portal for key management and usage monitoring

• Agentic Support - MCP Server Available to integratio on your favorite AI Agent (Claude Bot, OpenClawd,...)

The Technical Stack

For those who care about what's under the hood:

• Runtime: Bun (fast startup, native TypeScript)

• Framework: Hono (lightweight, ~15KB)

• Database: PostgreSQL with Drizzle ORM

• Auth: BetterAuth for session management

• Background jobs: BullMQ for reliable async processing

• Billing: Polar.sh for subscriptions

The architecture prioritizes latency.

What's Coming

The beta is limited but the roadmap is clear:

• More exchanges, More Markets, ...

• Orderbook Endpoints

• Historical data endpoints

• Webhook notifications for price alerts

Why Building in Public

I believe the best products are built with users, not for them. This beta is intentionally early. The API may change. There will be bugs. Documentation has gaps.

But I'd rather ship something useful now and iterate based on your feedback than polish in isolation for months.

If you're building a trading bot, portfolio tracker, or any crypto application — I want to hear what you need. What's missing? What's broken? What would make this actually useful for your project?

Give it a try

1. Sign up at portal.luzia.dev

2. Generate an API key

3. Make your first request:

curl -H "Authentication: Bearer lz_your_key" \ https://api.luzia.dev/v1/ticker/binance/BTC-USDT

The documentation is at docs.luzia.dev. It's incomplete but covers the basics.

Feedback Welcome

This is a beta in the true sense. I'm actively developing based on user feedback. Found a bug? Missing a feature? API design feels wrong?