The crypto startup API: endpoints for stealth signals, teams, and raises

A developer guide to the Recent Funding API for crypto startups. Find companies Frontrun flagged early, sort by team size and GitHub activity, pull sourced funding rounds, and filter by accelerator, with curl examples and real responses.

Recent Funding's API is free, read-only, and needs no key. This guide covers the requests that matter for crypto: stealth signals from Frontrun VC, team and developer counts, funding rounds with their sources, and accelerator filters. Every example below returned HTTP 200 from the live API when this post was built, and the build checks them again whenever the data is refreshed. The JSON excerpts come from real responses, trimmed to the relevant fields.

In the snapshot of September 26, 2026, 553 of the 1575 companies on Recent Funding are crypto companies. The general API guide covers paging and errors in more depth.

The four endpoints

The base URL is https://recentfunding.com. Responses are JSON, CORS is open, and list pages include next_offset (null on the last page).

Stealth signals: who Frontrun flagged early

sort=days_early puts the companies Frontrun VC flagged longest before their raise was public at the top:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&sort=days_early&limit=10"

{
  "slug": "sapiom",
  "name": "Sapiom",
  "flagged_at": "2026-02-06",
  "days_early": 180,
  "smart_follows": 51,
  "new_follows_7d": null,
  "trending_rank": null
}

sort=smart_follows ranks by how many of the investors and founders Frontrun tracks follow the company on X:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&sort=smart_follows&limit=10"

Crypto coverage of these fields is small: 4 crypto companies have days_early and 13 have smart_follows. Across all sectors, the figures are 112 and 742. So drop crypto=true to see the whole list:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?sort=days_early&limit=200"

These sorts put companies without a value last, and there is no filter for "has a value", so stop reading at the first null. Frontrun stealth builders explains each field and lists every company.

Teams and developers

sort=team_size ranks by the people listed on the company's own team page. sort=active_devs ranks by distinct GitHub commit authors in the last 90 days.

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&sort=team_size&limit=20"
curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&sort=active_devs&limit=20"

{"slug": "spoutfi", "team_size": 19, "team_source_url": "https://www.spout.finance/about/", "active_devs_90d": null, "github_org": null}
{"slug": "blockrunai", "team_size": null, "team_source_url": null, "active_devs_90d": 14, "github_org": "BlockRunAI"}

team_source_url is the page that was counted. github_org is the account whose repos were read, at https://github.com/{github_org}. 48 crypto companies have a team count and 101 have developer activity. Team size and developer activity at crypto startups explains how both are measured and what they miss.

Raises, with sources

The rounds feed lists crypto rounds that have an amount, newest first. since takes a date:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/rounds?crypto=true&since=2026-09-01"

{
  "slug": "functionspace",
  "name": "functionSPACE",
  "industry": "trading-markets",
  "crypto": true,
  "stage": "pre-seed",
  "amount_usd": "1700000.00",
  "announced_at": "2026-09-25T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source_url": "https://news.google.com/rss/articles/…",
  "source_publisher": "CryptoRank",
  "source_provider": "google-news",
  "investors": []
}

amount_usd is a decimal string. source_url is where the amount came from, and source_provider says how it was found (scan, google-news, website, or agent-review). Add min_amount for larger rounds only:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/rounds?crypto=true&min_amount=10000000&limit=50"

For the latest round per company instead, sort companies by size. min_raise applies to the latest round:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&min_raise=10000000&sort=raise"

A company's full history, with a source on every round:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies/sapiom"

{
  "company": {"slug": "sapiom", "name": "Sapiom", "stage": "series-a", "days_early": 180, "active_devs_90d": 6, "github_org": "sapiom"},
  "rounds": [
    {"stage": "series-a", "amount_usd": "35000000.00", "announced_at": "2026-08-05T00:00:00.000Z", "source_url": "https://x.com/frontrunvc/status/2085122430373155063", "source_provider": "scan"}
  ]
}

That is Sapiom's $35M round.

Accelerators, sectors, and search

accelerator matches the same rules as the app: an investor name, or a tag like "YC W26" in the name or description. The keys include yc, speedrun (a16z speedrun), yzi (YZi Labs, formerly Binance Labs), alliance, csx (a16z CSX), colosseum, and any:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&accelerator=yzi"
curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&accelerator=any"

Crypto companies per accelerator in this snapshot:

industry narrows to a sector, and q searches names, descriptions, sectors, and investors:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&industry=defi&stage=seed&sort=raise"
curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?crypto=true&q=stablecoin"

Crypto companies by industry in this snapshot:

Counts

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/stats"

{"companies": 1224, "with_amount": 527, "crypto": 197, "by_source": [{"key": "frontrun-startupdb", "count": 742}, {"key": "dropstab", "count": 197}, {"key": "pipeline", "count": 188}]}

by_industry lists every industry slug you can pass to industry.

When a request is wrong

An unknown sort or parameter returns a 400 with the allowed values instead of silently ignoring it. For example, sort=trending_rank is not a sort:

{"error": {"status": 400, "code": "invalid_parameter", "message": "\"sort\" must be one of: newest, oldest, raise, announced, name, team_size, active_devs, smart_follows, days_early.", "param": "sort"}}

trending_rank and new_follows_7d are returned on every company, but you can't sort by them.

Using the data

Link every amount to its raise_source_url or source_url, every team count to its team_source_url, and every developer count to its GitHub org. Keep automated traffic modest and cache responses. The API docs and openapi.json list every parameter and field, including the crypto signals.