Market cap
Market cap is a token's price multiplied by its circulating supply. It is a quick size comparison, not the amount of money in the market, and it depends on which tokens a data site counts as circulating.
The formula
CoinGecko describes market cap as the current price multiplied by circulating supply, and circulating supply as the coins that are tradeable by the public. Its supply methodology says circulating supply excludes locked, vested or team- and foundation-held tokens, and that when the figure cannot be verified it may be shown as unavailable.
Why two sites can disagree
Because each data provider decides which wallets count as circulating, the same token can show different market caps in different places. Supply data often comes from project teams, so a wrong or stale figure carries straight into the market cap. A very large headline number may rest on a thin pool that could not absorb real selling.
How to use it
Treat market cap as a label for roughly how big a token is, then check liquidity, holder concentration and fully diluted value. Our explainers on market cap versus liquidity and FDV cover those. A token with a large market cap and tiny liquidity can still move sharply on a small sell. None of this predicts price, and a low market cap is not a sign of upside or of danger on its own.
Common mistakes
Comparing the market caps of two tokens as if they measured the same thing is the most frequent mistake. Different data sites use different supply figures, and a project that controls its own supply reporting can influence the number. Also avoid reading a low market cap as cheap. Price per token says nothing on its own about value.
A related error is mixing up market cap with the money available to exit. Only what the pool or order book can absorb at a fair price matters when you sell.
Where this shows up
- DEX Screener — Traders who want a free, multi-chain view of new and trending DEX pairs before they trade on a separate DEX, wallet or bot.
- Birdeye — Solana-first traders who want a token tracker with a mobile app, and developers who need a metered on-chain data API.
- GeckoTerminal — Traders and developers who want free on-chain pool data across a very wide set of networks, backed by CoinGecko's API.
- DEXTools — Traders who want a long-running DEX charting app with hot-pairs rankings and DEXTscore, and are fine with ads unless they hold DEXT.
- Bubblemaps — Traders and researchers who want a quick visual check of whether a token's supply is concentrated in linked wallets before buying.
Sources
Last checked . Fees and terms change often; the venue's own page wins if it disagrees with ours.
- CoinGecko Supply Methodology (CoinGecko) — checked 2026-10-17