Limits & Quotas
An update is one coin in one currency. Your plan sets how many updates you get a month.
Plan comparison
| Feature | Free | Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Updates/month | 300 | Unlimited for normal use |
| Prices | Up to 30 minutes old | Up to 5 minutes old |
| Fields | All fields, 24h change | Also the 1h, 7d, 30d and 1y changes (which periods are free) |
| Price on a past date | No | Yes |
| Cryptocurrencies | 10,000+ | 10,000+ |
| Currencies | 63 | 63 |
| Refresh | When you press Refresh | When an editor opens the file, when you press Refresh, and every hour if you turn on auto-refresh for a spreadsheet |
| Price | $0 | $48 a year ($4 a month, billed yearly) or billed monthly |
Free needs no signup, no API key to paste and no credit card. Plus comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee on the first payment, and you can cancel anytime.
How updates work
An update is one coin in one currency. Every field of that coin in that currency counts once, and the same coin again within 6 hours is free. Errors and duplicates use no updates. So 50 cells of =COINTABLE("BTC") plus =COINTABLE("BTC", "marketcap") use 1 update, and =COINTABLE("BTC/EUR") is another. A tracker of 10 coins in USD uses 10 updates per refresh, and nothing if you refresh again within 6 hours. Free's 300 cover one refresh a day for a month.
The same rule holds for Refresh, for refresh on open and for the hourly refresh on Plus, and for cells that Google Sheets recalculates by itself. Each row of a whole column counts like a cell, and the CoinTable panel shows what a refresh of the file costs.
In a shared spreadsheet, formulas that recalculate on their own use the updates of the first person who used CoinTable in that file. When a Plus editor opens the file, it moves to their Plus account, and from then on it refreshes when anyone opens it. When the file is out of updates, an editor who still has some takes it over when they press Refresh or open the CoinTable panel. Refresh uses the updates of whoever presses it, and each editor's auto-refresh uses that editor's account.
Freshness
On Free, prices are up to 30 minutes old. On Plus, up to 5 minutes. When the data source is busy, prices can be older, up to an hour. Prices refresh when you press Refresh. On Plus, they also refresh when an editor opens the file, and every hour once you turn on Auto for the spreadsheet, even while it's closed.
Manual refresh
Press Refresh in the CoinTable panel, or choose Refresh data from the CoinTable menu under Extensions. Refresh, and auto-refresh on Plus, update every CoinTable formula in the file, also one inside IFERROR or arithmetic, or one that points to another sheet. A price on a date isn't looked up again, because a past price doesn't change.
Auto-refresh
On Plus, CoinTable refreshes prices when an editor opens the spreadsheet: at most once every 5 minutes, up to 200 cells, starting with the sheet you're on. On Free it doesn't; Google Sheets may still recalculate some cells by itself when you reopen a file after a while.
On Plus you can also turn on auto-refresh every hour for each spreadsheet with the Auto switch in the CoinTable panel. If you haven't allowed it yet, Google asks once for permission to let CoinTable run when you're not present. Auto-refresh is set per spreadsheet, for up to 20 spreadsheets, and Google may start a run up to about 15 minutes late.
What happens at the limit
If a refresh needs more free updates than you have left, CoinTable asks first. Refresh what's left updates as many coins as your updates cover, and the rest keep their values.
When your free updates run out, cells keep their last values. CoinTable marks each one with a small red corner. Hover over it to read, for example: "Last updated Oct 23. No free updates left until Nov 1. To update now: Extensions > CoinTable > Upgrade to Plus." A cell that never had a value shows #ERROR! with "No free updates left until Nov 1. To load this value now: Extensions > CoinTable > Upgrade to Plus." Free updates reset shortly after 00:00 UTC on the 1st, and unused ones don't carry over. The CoinTable menu shows how many are left, and the panel warns you when 80% are used.
Once they're back, press Refresh to update the spreadsheet. If you upgrade, press Refresh once Plus is active.
What Plus adds
Plus has unlimited updates for normal use, prices up to 5 minutes old, the 1h, 7d, 30d and 1y changes, price on a past date, and a refresh on open and every hour. Plus is bought inside the add-on: choose Upgrade to Plus from the CoinTable menu under Extensions.