What Is the Crypto Fear and Greed Index? Components, Scale and Limits

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index compresses several market measurements into a single number between 0 and 100. It is widely quoted and rarely explained. This page covers what the number is built from, what its zones mean, who publishes it — and, just as importantly, what it does not measure.

One clarification first, because two different indices share this name. The CNN Fear & Greed Index tracks the US stock market. The index described here is the crypto one, built on Bitcoin market data. They are unrelated and their values have nothing to do with each other.

What it is and who publishes it

The canonical crypto Fear and Greed Index is published by Alternative.me, run by tobieskrambs GmbH, a company based in Hamburg, Germany. In the publisher's own words, they "analyze emotions and sentiments from different sources and crunch them into one simple number."

The series runs daily and begins on 1 February 2018. A new value is published every day at 00:00 UTC; of the 3,105 consecutive daily intervals in the published history, 3,103 are exactly 24 hours apart, with two brief gaps.

Crucially, the index is a description of conditions that have already occurred. Its inputs are comparisons against trailing 30-day and 90-day averages. It is a summary of the recent past, not a forecast.

How the index is calculated

Alternative.me publishes its component weights:

Two things follow directly from this table.

First, the surveys component is paused, so five of the six inputs are currently active. The publisher does not state how — or whether — that 15% is redistributed, so the effective weights of the remaining components are not publicly known.

Second, the index is largely a Bitcoin gauge. Volatility and momentum are measured on Bitcoin, dominance is Bitcoin's market-cap share, and the trends component reads Bitcoin-related searches. Only the social component is not explicitly scoped to Bitcoin. A number presented as "crypto sentiment" is, by its own published construction, mostly Bitcoin sentiment.

How to read the scale

The scale runs from 0 (Extreme Fear) to 100 (Extreme Greed), divided into five labelled zones.

The publisher's methodology page does not print the numeric boundaries. We derived them from the publisher's own labelled output — all 3,106 daily readings from 1 February 2018 to 7 August 2026, each carrying both its value and the publisher's own classification of it:

The bands are contiguous with no overlap across all 3,106 observations.

These boundaries are worth stating precisely, because the figures most often reproduced elsewhere — 0–24, 25–49, 50–54, 55–74, 75–100 — do not match the publisher's own labelling. The Fear/Neutral boundary falls at 46/47, and the Greed/Extreme Greed boundary at 75/76. Some published versions omit the Neutral zone altogether.

Note also the historical range. In eight and a half years the index has never printed below 5 or above 95. The theoretical endpoints of 0 and 100 have not occurred.

What the index does not tell you

This is the part most summaries skip, and it matters more than the number itself.

It is not predictive. Every input is backward-looking. The index describes where volatility, volume, dominance and search interest have recently been relative to their own recent averages. It contains no forward-looking information.

Extremes can persist. The 739 days in Extreme Fear and 281 days in Extreme Greed were not single moments — they include long, continuous stretches. A reading staying at an extreme for weeks is ordinary behaviour for this series, not an anomaly.

The publisher itself disclaims advisory use. Alternative.me states plainly that the information it provides "does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice."

One component is switched off, and the effect on the remaining weights is undocumented.

Sentiment is not positioning. The index reads volatility, volume, dominance, social posts and searches. It does not observe what anyone actually holds, or what they intend to do next.

Two indices, one name

CoinMarketCap publishes a separate index, also called a Crypto Fear & Greed Index, built from a different set of inputs: price momentum across the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap excluding stablecoins; volatility via the Volmex BVIV and EVIV implied-volatility indices for Bitcoin and Ethereum; the put/call ratio in BTC and ETH options markets; the Stablecoin Supply Ratio; and CMC's own social and engagement data. CoinMarketCap does not disclose numerical weights.

Because the inputs differ, the two indices can print different numbers on the same day. Neither is a version of the other, and they are not directly comparable. When a figure is quoted without a source, it is worth checking which index it came from.

FAQ

Who calculates the crypto Fear Greed Index? Alternative.me (tobieskrambs GmbH, Hamburg, Germany) publishes the most widely cited version. CoinMarketCap publishes a separate index of the same name using different inputs.

How often is it updated? Once daily, at 00:00 UTC. The public API also returns a countdown to the next update.

Is the Fear and Greed Index the same as CNN's? No. CNN's Fear & Greed Index measures the US stock market. The crypto index uses Bitcoin market data and the two are unrelated.

What do the numbers actually mean? They describe how current volatility, volume, dominance and search interest compare with their own recent averages — nothing more. The index carries no information about what happens next.

Sources

• Alternative.me — Crypto Fear & Greed Index methodology: https://alternative.me/crypto/fear-and-greed-index/
• Alternative.me public API (full labelled history, 3,106 daily observations): https://api.alternative.me/fng/
• CoinMarketCap — CMC Crypto Fear & Greed Index: https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/fear-and-greed-index/

All sources retrieved 8 August 2026. Zone boundaries derived from the publisher's own labelled history.

Sentiment readings describe both directions of the market, and derivatives markets are built to express both: on WEEX, perpetual futures let a position be opened long or short, with the same instrument available in either direction. See the WEEX futures markets.

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