Zerion API vs Allium: A Comprehensive Comparison

Your app needs reliable blockchain data, but choosing between different providers isn't straightforward. Zerion API and Allium take two distinct approaches to solving multichain data access. While Zerion is production-load-heavy, Allium is analytics-heavy. They are built for different purposes, not just better or worse versions of the same product.

This post explores both Zerion API and Allium, helping you pick the one you need.

Understanding Zerion API and Allium

Zerion API is an enterprise-grade wallet data API built specifically for high production loads. It delivers comprehensive wallet data across all major EVM chains and Solana through a single, normalized API. It covers tokens, NFTs, DeFi positions, transaction history, PnL, and everything else that’s visible in Zerion Wallet and Zerion portfolio tracker.

Allium is a blockchain data platform best suited for complex aggregation operations. It provides historical and real-time data from 130+ blockchains with SOC 1 and SOC 2 certifications, delivering normalized, timestamped balances and transactions.

Both eliminate infrastructure complexity and have enterprise-grade reliability.

But they differ fundamentally in target use cases: Zerion optimizes for apps with high production load while Allium focuses on historical data with comprehensive, heavy queries.

Core features comparison

Data coverage

Zerion API provides wallet-centric data designed for interfaces:

• Interpreted transaction history with decoded operations (approve, swap, deposit, withdraw)
• Token balances with metadata and real-time pricing in USD and other major currencies
• DeFi positions tracking for over 8,000 protocols
• NFT positions and collections with full metadata
• Portfolio analytics, including total balance chart and PnL calculations
• Chart data for assets

Data from Zerion API is ready to be used in a live product environment without any modification.

Allium delivers blockchain primitives:

• Token balances (ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155) with normalized decimals
• Historical balances at every block height
• Transaction data with rich enrichment and activity labels
• Holdings data with PnL calculations
• NFT transfers and collection histories
• Identity and wallet labeling

Allium's data is ready to be queried in internal analytical workflows, not high-load products.

Chain support

Zerion API supports EVM and Solana:

• All major EVM chains (Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, BSC, Avalanche, and others)
• Solana with full token balances and transactions 
• Day-1 integration of new in-demand chains like Robinhood Chain
• Testnet support via header configuration

Allium offers a broad support:

• 20+ chains in Realtime APIs (major EVMs, Solana, Bitcoin)
• 80+ chains in Stream Transformation APIs

If your analytical application needs Bitcoin integration alongside EVM and Solana, Allium's chain coverage is great.

For high-load productions on popular chains with protocol-specific positions, Zerion's focused coverage delivers more value.

Performance and reliability

Historical data

Zerion API provides full transaction history that can immediately be used in a production environment:

• Interpreted transaction history with pagination
• Portfolio charts with configurable time periods
• Historical PnL calculations

Allium specializes in block-level historical precision that is best suited for analytical workflows:

• Token balances at every block height
• Historical pricing from DEX trades
• Temporal queries at specific timestamps
• Audit trails for compliance

If you need to reconstruct the address state at any point in history (e.g., for tax reporting or data analysis), Allium's block-precise data is great for this. It's built for custom queries.

Zerion instead focuses on complete transaction history for production apps with minimum additional interpretation. It's fast and doesn't require any additional data wrangling.

Developer experience

API design

Zerion API uses wallet-centric endpoints:

• /v1/wallets/{address}/portfolio
• /v1/wallets/{address}/positions/
• /v1/wallets/{address}/transactions/
• Pre-aggregated data minimizes integration complexity

Allium provides endpoints focused on blockchain primitives:

• POST /api/v1/developer/wallet/balances
• POST /api/v1/developer/wallet/transactions
• POST /api/v1/developer/wallet/historical-token-balances
• POST /api/v1/developer/wallet/prices

As it originates from its own products, Zerion's endpoints map directly to common wallet UI components. Allium's granular endpoints are flexible but require additional logic to aggregate protocol positions.

Data normalization

Zerion API delivers extensive normalization:

• Unified schema across EVM and Solana
• Position types categorized (wallet, deposited, borrowed, locked, staked)
• Application metadata (DApp names, icons, contract methods)

Allium provides foundational normalization across blockchain primitives:

• Standardized schemas across blockchains
• Balances adjusted for token decimals
• Activity labels and categorization

For cross-chain wallet development, Zerion's EVM + Solana unification simplifies implementation and maximizes speed to market. Allium's chain normalization serves data teams building custom analytics layers.

Pricing and scale

Zerion API uses customized enterprise pricing:

• Generous free tier for testing
• The top subscription plan is $499/mo for up to 1 million requests
• Custom enterprise pricing for 1000+ RPS and >2M calls
• Proven scale, used by products like OpenSea  

Allium offers free tiers and enterprise contracts:

• Free tier available for testing Realtime APIs
• No subscription plans
• Upgrades available only after booking a demo

Both scale to enterprise throughput. Allium explicitly targets enterprise data teams while Zerion focuses on enterprise-scale production deployments.

Use cases and when to choose each

Choose Zerion API when:

Building consumer and institutional interfaces: Zerion powers production wallets with complete data for balances, positions, transactions, and portfolio analytics. It’s designed for instant loading and user activation.

DeFi position tracking matters: If showing users their Aave deposits, Uniswap liquidity, or staked positions across 8,000+ protocols is core to your UX, Zerion's protocol-specific positions save months of development.

Solana + EVM parity: Zerion offers unified API access to both Solana and EVM chains with consistent DeFi position support. This reduces infrastructure complexity for multi-chain consumer apps. Privy used it to get wallet data across 1,500+ apps on different chains.

Time-to-market is critical: Pre-aggregated and interpreted portfolio data, positions, and analytics reduce integration time from months to weeks. With Zerion API, OpenSea shipped token trading 3 months faster.

Choose Allium when:

Data team workflows: Analysts and engineers who need raw blockchain primitives, custom data pipelines, flexible queries or integration with data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks).

Maximum chain coverage: Supporting a large number of networks, including Bitcoin, non-EVM L1s, and long-tail networks that other APIs don't cover.

Making your decision

Both Allium and Zerion offer robust APIs suitable for enterprise scale. 

Zerion API is the stronger choice for high-load production applications, where position tracking, speed, and Solana + EVM parity drive user experience. Its wallet-first design and interpreted data reduce time-to-market. It’s a partner of choice for leading crypto products, built by Coinbase, Kraken, Uniswap, and others. 

Your decision should be guided by whether you're building consumer-facing wallet experiences (Zerion) or data infrastructure requiring compliance (Allium).

Ready to get started? Create free Zerion API keys to see it in action.